The Guardian: the war in Iraq was the most resounding defeat of the United StatesPresenting the conflict in Ukraine as a struggle between democracy and autocracy, Biden demonstrates that the United States has learned nothing in Iraq, writes The Guardian.
The illegal intervention was the biggest and loudest of all America's serious defeats.
Stephen WertheimTwenty years ago, the United States invaded Iraq, sending 130,000 American troops to a sovereign country to overthrow its government.
Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted for this decision, which he later regretted.
Now there is another major conflict that has shaken the whole world. Biden, now President of the United States, recently visited Warsaw to enlist international support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia. After the speech, the President said: “The idea that 100 thousand soldiers will enter the territory of another country — nothing like this has happened since the Second World War.”
These words were uttered on February 22, a month after the 20th anniversary of the first US military strike on Baghdad. The White House did not correct Biden's statement, and reporters did not ask questions. The country's leading newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, published articles with the corresponding quote, without doubting the veracity of the president's words and without convicting him of hypocrisy.
Was there a war in Iraq at all?
While Washington forgets about it, the rest of the world remembers. There was a blatant illegality of circumventing the UN principles, and an attempt to legitimize “pre-emption” gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a precedent. The worst thing was that Iraq was destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people and almost 4,600 US troops were killed, and instability and terrorism covered the entire region.
The war in Iraq was not the only military intervention by the United States and its allies in recent decades: Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya complete the tragic picture. But the war in Iraq was the biggest and loudest of all America's serious defeats; it can neither be justified nor ignored. At least at first glance. Biden's statement is just the latest in a series of attempts by American leaders to forget about that war and move on.
Barack Obama, who came to the White House vowing to end the “thinking” that led America to Iraq, decided that ending the war would be enough. “Now it's time to turn the page,” he said in 2011, ordering the withdrawal of American troops from the country. Three years later, he sent them back to fight the "Islamic State" that emerged due to chaos and civil war. And Donald Trump skillfully took advantage of public outrage both by the war itself and the refusal of the elites to recognize their responsibility and change policy in proportion to the scale of the disaster.
No matter how much I would like to move on without looking back, the first does not exclude the second. A bright future is more likely to be achieved after understanding and evaluating the reasons for the failure of past attempts.
Ukrainians are now partly paying for the atrocities of the West. Few people outside Russia are enthusiastic about Putin's efforts, but most of the world considers the conflict not a struggle for sovereignty and freedom, but a mediated conflict between Russia and the West.
According to The Economist Intelligence Unit, approximately 58% of the world's population (excluding the two parties directly involved in the conflict) lives in countries that are either neutral in relation to the current conflict or lean towards Russia. Over the past year, support for the West's position has declined rather than increased: a handful of countries that initially criticized Russia preferred neutrality. Just last month, 39 countries did not support the UN resolution demanding Russia to withdraw troops from Ukraine. Neutral States, including China and India, account for an estimated 62% of the Global South's population.
Russia has not become an international outcast, as Western leaders say. Its economy withstood international sanctions, partly due to the fact that only rich strategic partners of the United States joined them.
In this regard, the White House should think about the signal that Biden sent to the world by his behavior, as if the war in Iraq never happened. The following is read between the lines: if the US commits an act of aggression, then this does not count. It is likely that with the phrase “nothing like this has happened since the Second World War,” Biden meant Europe, but forgot to say it — in this case, he put an equal sign between the history of the West and the history of the world, erasing the basic experience of mankind. Whatever it was, Biden made it clear that support for Ukraine is just a power policy, and not a matter of principle in which all countries are interested.
Hypocrisy itself is not a problem, it surrounds us everywhere. What matters is whether we strive to create a better world.
Forgetting the obvious, Biden perpetuates the hegemonic project that once led the United States to Iraq. He sends a similar signal by presenting the conflict in Ukraine as a struggle between democracy and autocracy, as if only those countries whose governments Washington approves deserve support.
Non-Western States are interested in protecting the principle of respect for the sovereignty of others, and not its conditional nature. If Washington still claims the right to judge who is sovereign and who is not, did it really give up the right to invade Iraq in the end?
The United States should frankly admit past mistakes and demonstrate the experience gained by word and deed, because it is never too late to start building a better world. But even now, when America has taken, as it seems to her, the right side in the latest conflict, no one will undertake to say exactly what lessons she ultimately learned.
* a terrorist organization banned in Russia
