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      "US Army Go Home" Iraqi men walk past anti-US graffiti in Baghdad on October, 2003.

      It Is Time for a National Reckoning About the Iraq War

      Twenty years ago, the U.S. destroyed Iraq with an invasion that also constituted an attack on the very concept of the international rule of law.

      Dave-Inder Comar
      Mar 20, 2023

      The attack against Iraq by the United States and its coalition in 2003 was a blatant and reprehensible act of aggression for which there has yet to be any meaningful accountability. At least hundreds of thousands and possibly more than one million Iraqis lost their lives through this illegal undertaking. Millions more were displaced. The self-determination of the people of Iraq and their ability to choose their own destiny and place in the world was irreparably shattered.

      Numerous cultural and political elites in the United States gleefully supported the war as a courageous or even joyous act. It was the opposite. The Iraq War constituted an attack on the very concept of the international rule of law. In addition to the injuries inflicted upon Iraqis, two decades have now passed since the invasion without any examination of how U.S. conduct has contributed to current international anarchy and aggravated great power violence and confrontation.

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      Opinion
      iraq invasion
      Nasariyah residents protest 15 April, 2003 the presence of US troops in Iraq.

      The Illegal Invasion of Iraq: Never Forget

      None of us can afford to remain silent or apathetic about the devastation we continue to cause to innocent civilians. The money being spent on war must be redirected to those most impacted by U.S. aggression.

      Lisa Ling
      Clare Bayard
      Mar 18, 2023

      How did we get here? 20 years after the U.S.-led invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq, we still refuse to reckon with the last decades of war as yet another decade of violence unfolds. Since the invasion, tens of thousands if not over a million lives have been lost. Millions of Iraqis are still displaced, while tens of millions have endured relentless violence ever since the destabilization of their country beginning in the 1990s through bombing, sanctions, multiple military invasions, and the occupation that began in 2003.

      We share these reflections as two antimilitarist organizers in the U.S. who met years after the invasion through our shared work with About Face Veterans Against War (formerly known as Iraq Veterans Against the War). Twenty years ago this weekend, one of us was deployed as a communications technician and heard nothing about the massive protests the other participated in. One of us was organizing with Direct Action to Stop the War, coordinating twenty thousand people to shut down San Francisco's financial district, in an attempt to raise the financial and social cost of invasion that was being steamrolled through despite the largest global street protests in the history of the world.

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      Opinion
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      Rep. Ilhan Omar

      Ilhan Omar Warns 'The Next Iraq Will Be Even Worse'

      "Have we fully learned the lessons from this failed war of aggression, or are we doomed to repeat it?" the progressive lawmaker asked on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.

      Brett Wilkins
      Mar 17, 2023

      Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Friday marked the upcoming 20th anniversary of the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq—where thousands of U.S. troops remain today—by asking if Americans have learned anything from the "failed war of aggression" and warning that waging another such war will have even more dire consequences.

      In a Twitter thread, Omar (D-Minn.) asserted that "20 years later, the Iraq War remains the biggest foreign policy disaster of our generation, one that took thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives."

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