Departments

;

Iraq War

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    5/25/2023

    Americans Still Fumble in the Dark for Facts on Torture

    by Karen J. Greenberg

    The persistent efforts of scholars and human rights advocates are chipping away at the secrecy surrouding America's use of torture under the banner of national security in the War on Terror. 

  • 5/21/2023

    From "Shell Shock" to PTSD, Veterans Have a Long Walk to Health

    by Charles Glass

    Iraq War veteran Will Robinson brought himself out of a mental health crisis by hiking more than 11,000 miles of trail from the Pacific Crest to the Appalachian, following the century-old prescription of British military doctor Arthur Brock. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    3/29/2023

    What Iraq Should Teach Advocates of Foreign Policy Restraint

    by Joseph Stieb

    Many advocates of a less assertive role for United States power in the world point to Iraq as an example of the folly of intervention. But if they want to make their views a reality, they need to understand why pro-war arguments succeeded by offering a solution to Americans' post-9/11 fears and anxieties. 

  • SOURCE: New Statesman
    3/24/2023

    The 2003 Iraq Invasion Was the Culmination of a Long Betrayal

    by Noah Kulwin

    Although the UK backed the US invasion of Iraq, that nation had been supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein since the 1980s to advance anti-Iranian policy in the middle east. Before the invasion, the government worked to cover those tracks. 

  • SOURCE: Jacobin
    3/20/2023

    Iraq Discredited Liberal Interventionists. Why are they Still in Charge?

    by Daniel Bessner

    "War for oil" explains only part of the push to invade Iraq in 2003; the ideological belief that American militarism serves a noble and righteous cause appealed to many liberals. That general belief has been frustratingly immune to 20 years of exposure of facts about the falsehoods that sold the war. 

  • SOURCE: Contingent
    3/20/2023

    A Known and Unknown War

    by Michael Brenes

    "Time and distance are essential to the historian’s craft. They help us pursue the false promise of objectivity. I should embrace them when thinking about the Iraq War, but I don’t."

  • SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
    3/19/2023

    How One News Desk Got Iraq Right When Others Failed

    by John Walcott

    The former head of Knight-Ridder's national security desk explains how his agency passed by the agency bigshots, interviewed experts and analysts closer to the intelligence, and followed up on red flags that others missed in the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, instead of protecting their access to the administration. 

  • SOURCE: The Century Foundation
    3/7/2023

    America Broke Iraq, and Itself

    by Thanassis Cambanis

    "The U.S. occupation of Iraq normalized torture, impunity, manipulation of intelligence, and a new level of official mendacity."

  • SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
    3/10/2023

    Iraq War at 20: What the Neocons Got Wrong

    by Max Boot

    "I desperately wanted to believe that spreading freedom could solve the security dilemmas confronting the United States—that by doing good in the world, it could also serve its national security interests."

  • SOURCE: Financial Times
    3/7/2023

    20 Years Later, What is the Cultural Imprint of the Iraq War?

    The US war against Vietnam sparked a broad array of artistic responses, and more importantly became a litmus test for a future generation of leaders. Despite disagreements about the invasion and its serious consequences for the Middle East, the war seems to have left no trace on the West. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    1/23/2023

    Why We Went to War on Iraq

    by Melvyn P. Leffler`

    One foreign policy historian argues that the decision to invade Iraq was made out of genuine concern for thwarting attacks on Americans and preserving the United States' ability to use military power in the Middle East. 

  • SOURCE: Substack
    10/18/2021

    Why Powell's UN Speech Was So Crucial (and Bad)

    by Greg Mitchell

    Colin Powell's 2003 speech to the United Nations was short on evidence for Saddam Hussein's WMD program, but he put down his reputation as collateral, changing history for the worse.