What We Lost: Top Ten Ways the Iraq War Harmed the U.S. (Juan Cole)

[Hissyspit]

http://www.juancole.com/2013/03/what-iraq-harmed.html

What we Lost: Top Ten Ways the Iraq War Harmed the U.S.

Posted on 03/18/2013 by Juan

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1. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq harmed the US in bringing into question its basic competency as a world leader. Almost everything the US did in Iraq was a disaster. It went into the war having no plans, and the plans the Bush administration made on the fly were mostly poorly thought-out and doomed to fail. It fell into search and destroy as a tactic for counter-insurgency, with the same results as it had had in Vietnam– it caused resistance to swell. Billions were wasted on reconstruction projects that assumed Iraqi know-how and equipment that they did not have, and which could not therefore be maintained even if they were completed. The US tried to run in English an Arabic-speaking country that had been deliberately isolated and cut off from the world by sanctions, without any basic understanding of Iraqi culture, customs, beliefs or ways of life. The pro-Israel Neoconservatives high in the administration blackballed (as insufficiently pro-Israel) Arabists who volunteered to go help and left the Coalition Provisional Authority blind.

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5. The US, which once prosecuted Japanese generals for water-boarding, and which had laws against torture and against assassination, became an international symbol of torture pornography when some of the Abu Ghraib photographs of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners were released. I talked to a US embassy official charged in the middle of the last decade with upbraiding Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov for his use of torture; the diplomat knew that Abu Ghraib had pulled the rug out from under him.

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8. The Iraq War allowed Iran to rise as a regional power, so that a Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut political axis was created. This alignment is visible in the Syria conflict, with Iran and its allies attempting to prop up Syria’s ruling elite (which adheres to the Alawi sect of Shiite Islam). This Iranian geopolitical dominance exacerbated sectarian conflict throughout the region, with militant Sunnis striking back at ascendant Shiites, contributing to a destabilization of the region.

9. The financial cost of the Iraq War to the US will rise over time into the trillions. This cost derives in large part from the need to treat the thousands of Iraq War veterans who were injured by roadside bombs, and who have damaged limbs, spines and/or brains. Some 33,000 vets were injured seriously enough to go to hospital, a number seldom mentioned when the over 4,000 soldiers killed are eulogized. (Dead and wounded contractors are also seldom mentioned).

REST OF LIST AT LINK[p]

[xxqqqzme]

1. K n R

[steve2470]

2. k&r nt

[90-percent]

3. Contractor Deaths

These guys don't even show up on the radar, but I think between 400 to 800 contractors were killed, also.

PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG!

They were mercenaries that knew the risks, right?

-90% Jimmy

[Berlum]

4. 66,081++++ civilian deaths - at the orders of Republican Chickenhawks

Republican Chickenhawks lied America into this war, and then sat home counting up War Profiteering MoneyBucks while women and children died, and our honorable sons and daughters in uniform went to battle at the orders of the Republican Chickenhawk 'authorities.'

That fits the definition of evil.

[xchrom]

5. Du rec. Nt