Members of Veterans For Peace have been examining war for many years and have always found it wanting. All wars do more harm than good, serving only the vanity and the profit of their makers. The 10th anniversary of the start of the War On Iraq serves as a powerful reminder of just how noxious and criminal the conduct of war always is, and we hope that the following account of that tragic history will keep the evil of the action fresh within our minds.
Ten years ago, on March 20, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq based on lies by the George W. Bush administration. His administration claimed that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and ties to al-Qaeda. Much of the world realized that these claims were false at the time and there were widespread demonstrations against an attack on Iraq involving 36 million people in the streets worldwide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War). George W. Bush ordered the U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq before they could complete their job, in spite of the fact that they had reported no evidence of WMD. Osama Bin Laden and Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, had been enemies ever since Bin Laden had offered to fight against Hussein's earlier invasion of Kuwait. So there was never any reasonable basis for the Bush administration's claims of either WMD or links between Hussein and Bin Laden.
Based on obvious lies, the Bush administration not only invaded and occupied Iraq, they claimed that an "Axis of Evil" comprised of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, were conspiring jointly against the United States. Yet Iraq and Iran were mortal enemies who had fought an eight year war against each other, and North Korea was on the other side of the world and shared no religious, ideological, or other ties with either Iran or Iraq, making these claims obviously ludicrous. In spite of the clear falsehood of their claims, the mainstream U.S. media repeated the lies and the Bush administration attacked Iraq.
What followed the invasion was eight bloody years of war, in which between 100,000 to over a million Iraqis died, depending on which estimate is used (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_Iraq). The United Nations estimate that 3.4 million Iraqis became refugees either internally or externally. Meanwhile, 4,486 American soldiers died and over 31,000 were wounded. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and their administration are directly responsible for all of this death and suffering and the lies that led to them, but have never been held accountable. While most American troops may have left Iraq, the internal war continues and people continue to die.
Furthermore, the consequences of that invasion and war continue to spread and be felt far beyond Iraq. The entire situation in the Middle East has been destabilized by it, and reactions and counter-reactions continue to ripple back and forth. Various state and non-state players vie for power, sometimes violently. Because George Bush falsely named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an "Axis of Evil" and then proceeded to attack Iraq, Iran and North Korea reasonably concluded that they could be next. Iran has since accelerated its domestic nuclear program, which prompted the United States to accuse Iran of developing nuclear weapons. North Korea openly ramped up their nuclear weapons program. Other nations in the regions look on and ask themselves if they too, need nuclear weapons. Thus, questions of a potential future nuclear arms race in the Middle East and Asia loom in the minds of many, which if realized could risk a nuclear nightmare. All of this was set in motion by Bush's invasion, war, and false claims of links between "Evil" rivals that never existed.
On this tenth anniversary of the illegal and immoral Iraq war, Veterans for Peace calls on the government of the United States to cease aggressive actions which provoke aggressive counter-reactions from other nations, to cease illegal drone strikes in Pakistan and other nations with whom we are not at war, to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan, and instead to address the underlying causes of suffering and discontent which cause conflicts, rather than engaging in more conflicts ourselves. We call on the government of the United States to admit its past illegal actions and to offer compensation to nations and victims whom we have harmed. We call on the government of the United States to hold George Bush and other leaders in his administration accountable for their lies and war crimes. Lastly, we call on the government of the United States to cease its prosecution of whistle blowers such as Chelsea Manning, who are the truest heroes of these wars.
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Submitted by Mike Wong , VFP member of Chapter 69 in San Francisco, CA