Just came across wonderful article: Why did America spend so long in Iraq? Here is an extract from the article which tells about the atrocities US committed not only on Iraqi people but also on their own soldiers who died fighting a war which had no perfect reason and is largely considered to be a thoughtless act of irresponsible president revenging a murder attempt on his father years ago.
By the estimate of the British correspondent John Burns and New York Times London bureau chief, who was living in Baghdad when the invasion began and remained there until 2008, the war killed 4,500 Americans and wounded 35,000 of them. It also caused “tens of thousands” of Iraqi civilian deaths; cost $750 billion, nearly enough to wipe out this year’s federal deficit; and created “the anti-Americanism that would become commonplace around the world.”
That last is all too easy to overlook. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the world’s sympathy was with the United States. Everyone, including almost every Muslim, knew the 9-11 attack was heinous. Almost all nations, including nearly all Islamic nations, supported America’s counterattack in Afghanistan, which was clearly justified as self-defence.
Then we bombed and invaded Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the 9-11 monsters, killing at least 10 times as many innocent civilians as were killed here on September 11. We took huge numbers of Iraqis prisoner, and tortured or humiliated them.
We blasted to the ground cities such as Fallujah, destroying the homes of innocents while using antipersonnel weapons, such as white phosphorous shells, which are designed to cause intense suffering before death.
We installed a puppet government and began to kill those who opposed it. Much of the world was disgusted, with reason. We practically begged the moderate Muslims of the world to turn against us.
In 1915, the Canadian physician John McCrea – who perished in World War I – wrote the poem In Flanders Fields, which argues that dead soldiers would want others to die, until there is victory. This poem became a sensation in the United Kingdom and the United States. Its relevant stanza:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep.
