Iraq War: From 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' to 'Operation Inherent Resolve' and beyond

Nineteen years ago today, then-US President George W. Bush announced the beginning of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” from the Oval Office, invading a sovereign nation to destroy its non-existent weapons of mass destruction, in a senseless war that has brought the Iraqi people anything but freedom.

At the time, Bush and Tony Blair, Britain’s then-prime minister, declared that their war coalition aimed to “disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people,” even though UN inspectors had found no evidence of programs of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“None of those pretexts will really help us explain the overall project that the US had in this region,” Tim Anderson, director of Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, told Press TV.

Since the invasion, more than one million Iraqis have been killed and millions more have been displaced. Sectarian violence, widespread displacement, poverty, and diseases such as birth defects and cancer have also sharply increased. But the leaders and commanders of the war have never been charged for any of their crimes.

“The war on Iraq was one of hate wars in West Asia/North Africa, which the US was carrying out in service of its plans to create a so-called New Middle East, where the entire region would be under the tutelage of the US and its key allies – Israelis and the Saudis,” Anderson said.

Operation Inherent Resolve

In 2011, after seven years of carnage in Iraq, the US officially withdrew all of its troops, only to return to the country three years later under a new pretext, namely fighting the Daesh (ISIS) terrorist group. This time, the re-occupation of Iraq occurred under what Washington called “Operation Inherent Resolve,” which brought with it a new round of chaos and bloodshed to the oil-rich country.

Despite its claims of fighting Daesh, the US has repeatedly targeted the position of anti-terror forces in recent years. In 2020, the US assassinated prominent Iranian and Iraqi commanders, Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who had played a significant role in the final defeat of Daesh in 2017.

Iraqi resistance groups have been vehemently calling for the withdrawal of all American forces from their country, while, as observers say, the US is trying to create new crises in the Arab country to prolong its presence there.

Americans don’t care I

Throughout the course of the war, the Americans committed countless atrocities in Iraq, as a result of which the Iraqis will suffer for years to come. But a video, titled Collateral Murder which was published by WikiLeaks over a decade ago, best captures how American soldiers, commanders, and leaders commit crimes against the people of Iraq – and by extension the Middle East – and how they feel about them.

The video shows the aerial view of an attack by a US Apache helicopter on a crowd of Iraqis in 2007. It depicts the indifference of the pilots as they open fire at the civilians and after they are informed that two children were killed in the attack.

“Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle,” one of the pilots said to the other in a calm, uncaring voice. The other responds: “That’s right.”

Americans don’t care II

While there are many more instances of how American politicians and officers dismiss the killing of civilians in the Middle East and elsewhere as “collateral damage,” it is worth mentioning remarks made by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright long before the US invaded Iraq.

On May 12, 1996, a reporter asked Albright about the impact of US sanctions on the Iraqis: “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

Then she infamously replied, “We think the price is worth it.”

Americans don’t care III

Fast forward to 2022, only days into Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine, another former US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, fascinated observers by condemning the attack as a “war crime,” without a hint of irony about her own involvement in the killing of more than one million Iraqis in the illegal US war.

In an interview on Fox News on February 27, Rice, one of the key architects of the Iraq War, nodded along as Fox News host Harris Faulkner said, “I have argued that when you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.”

“I think we are at just a real basic point there,” Faulkner added, as Rice nodded in solemn agreement, before responding, “It is certainly against every principle of international law and international order.”

In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Rice falsely claimed that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction.” She infamously declared before the war that “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

Americans don’t care IV

Other recent examples of the American – and also European – indifference toward human life in the Middle East include the racist coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as Western commentators and reporters grieved over the loss of life in a “civilized” country that is nothing like “Iraq or Afghanistan.”

“This isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan. [Kiev] is a relatively civilized city where you wouldn’t expect this to happen.” CBS correspondent Charlie D’Agata said while reporting from the Ukrainian capital.

On the French channel BFM TV, a commentator noted that “we’re not talking about Syrians fleeing bombs of the Syrian regime backed by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, we’re talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives.”

Journalist Ulysse Gosset remarked that “we are in the 21st century, we are in a European city, and we have cruise missile fire as though we were in Iraq or Afghanistan, can you imagine!”

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