New Dawn for Iraq

L. Panetta, the American Secretary of Defense, traveled to Iraq to participate in the final stage of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The press reported (12/16/11) the passage of the last American military convoy into Kuwait. Only a few hundreds American soldiers are left to train the Iraqi military on the new weapons obtained form the U.S. Furthermore, it was also revealed that the U.S. State Department has signed a contract with private security companies that will bring thousands of agents to provide protection for U.S. diplomatic missions in Iraq, whose number has been estimated to be more than 16,000 individuals. It is the largest U.S. foreign diplomatic mission in the world. The state department stated that the financial cost to provide protection has been estimated at $3.8 billion per year. The size of the private security is estimated to be more than 5,500. It should be of interest to estimate that the total number of Americans who will be operating in Iraq in various capacities will be between 20,000 and 25,000 people.

For that and other reasons, questions are raised about when the U.S. government and military presence in Iraq will come to an end? The answer to such a question will become clearer during next few months. Nevertheless, the American invasion of Iraq officially came to an end after more than eight years of fighting, which is considered the longest war the U.S. was ever involved in. It was an unnecessary war by any standard, because Iraq did not pose a threat to the U.S. in any way, shape, or form. There were no accurate reports that Iraq possessed WMD.

All evidence available prior to and after the invasion revealed that it was a personal war in the mind of an irrational and unwise American president, George W. Bush. The Iraq war was an obsession in the mind of the president, because he wanted to remove Saddam Hussein since Hussein publicly threatened to kill his father. The Iraq war was a personal vendetta. In some ways, it was reflected in the public statement Bush made aboard an American Navy carrier 40 days after the Iraq invasion in 2003, when he said, “The mission is accomplished”. At that time, Hussein’s government had collapsed. This reflected the short sightedness of Bush, because at that time, the war that would last eight years had just started.

The consequences of Bush’s personal war led to many negative consequences to both the U.S. and Iraq. The most tragic part is the deaths of more than 4,500 American soldiers and more than 1.25 million Iraqi civilians.

Those who advocated and misled the American people should be tried for war crimes, starting with Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Several international organizations have been calling for the prosecution of Bush, but the members of congress have ignored such requests. It is, of course, to be noted that the majority of the members are as guilty as their president because they gave him the green light to start the war without investigating the false reports given to them by his administration. Many of these congressional members were and are under the influence of American lobbyists who viewed the war as a profitable business. This is one face among others that reflects the corruption of the American style of democracy. Finally, Bush should be prosecuted for the war crimes that he was responsible for.