Written by Matt Southworth, former VFP Board Member and Iraq veteran.
Anniversaries are often a time to look back and reflect. It was ten years ago today that the United States brought “shock and awe” to Iraq under the false pretenses of Iraqi involvement in 9/11 and possession of weapons of mass destruction.
We in the U.S. have all but forgotten those days, even after nearly 4,500 U.S. service members died in Iraq and over $800 billion were spent. The Iraq War was once the focus of a plethora of media coverage and congressional debate—it was even a campaign issue as late as the 2008 presidential election. The Iraq War, its false justification and the crimes committed to cover up the truth are now distant memories for most Americas, only 53% of whom think the Iraq War was a mistake.
This is a sobering realization on a day when car bombs killed fifty people in Baghdad. Ten years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is a dangerous, violent and unstable place—but not because Iraqis are violent or “have been fighting for thousands of years and always will” as many have remarked over the years. Iraq is unstable today because of U.S. action there—beginning in the 1970s.
In 2003, after a decade of crippling sanctions that failed to displace Saddam Hussein’s regime, the U.S. upended the political order, killed an unknown number of Iraqis, created a huge humanitarian crisis, gave legs to a formidable insurgency, and then left with no real plan for political transition to mitigate violence. According to the UN, there are currently over 1.2 million internally displaced people and about half a million Iraqi refugees. The Iraqi government has been ranked as one of the most corrupt in the world. Political violence caused the deaths of nearly 300 Iraqis in the last six weeks alone.
These statistics pale in comparison to the true cost of the Iraq War: human dignity. The true legacy of this unnecessary war is pure tragedy.
I deployed to Iraq in 2004 under the guise of freedom and democracy--noble ideals for a 19-year-old. Yet the reality of war creates the exact opposite conditions. War does not liberate; it oppresses. War does not solve political problems; it creates them. The effects are devastating and lifelong. The most tragic stories aren’t captured in the ‘killed in action’ numbers. The story of the child growing up without a parent or photos of a grieving family are hardly news, but the effects will last for generations.
Since 2001, about 2.5 million servicemen and women—less than 1% of the U.S. population—have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Of these, some 450,000 have pending claims with the Veterans Administration for either Post Traumatic Stress or Traumatic Brain Injury, or both. The VA currently has 900,000 claims pending altogether from Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, with an average wait time of 273 days—and much longer for some vets. Substance abuse, homelessness and domestic violence are issues many veterans face as well. In short, we are failing our veterans.
What of the countless Iraqis affected by the war? No one knows exactly how many Iraqis have been killed in the last ten years. Some 29 million people live in Iraq: every single one of them has been directly affected by the war. Many are dealing with political violence to this day. But there isn’t a backlog in Iraq because there are no equivalent services. We cannot calculate the loss to the world that this represents.
All of this considered, there is no accountability for those who marched us into Iraq under false pretenses. There is no grand jury, no meaningful investigation, and no one (except whistleblowers) who will serve time in prison. This can only be described as a mischarge of justice that history must right. Instead, the U.S. seems to be trudging head on into the next wars—Iran, Libya, Mali, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia…the list goes on.
I am not hopeless. I know after nearly four years in Washington that the voices of ordinary people can make a difference. I saw it again this weekend when FCNL brought over 100 young adults to Capitol Hill to lobby their elected officials. Students talked; staff and members listened. Dialogues took place and the foundations of long-term relationships were laid. Only sustained efforts will ensure these relationships lead to policy change.
One thing I’ve learned is that many people undervalue their own voice. If we want to help prevent the next war, we must use our voices, draw on lessons learned from the Iraq War and others, and act. The stakes are too high to stay silent.