Chris Greenberg/AP Photo
Peace activists hold up a banner reading ‘Mission Accomplished?’ in front of the White House, April 30, 2007, to protest the war in Iraq and mark the fourth anniversary of President George W. Bush’s speech declaring an end to major military actions in Iraq.
On January 5, the Iraqi Parliament, in a nonbinding resolution, gently suggested we get the hell out of their country. President Trump responded by threatening to impose sanctions on Iraq, and have it repay the many billions of dollars we’ve spent there.
The Iraqis were reacting, of course, to the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani just outside Baghdad’s main airport. Their response was a completely logical consequence of the Bush administration’s 2003 decision to invade Iraq and overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein, which inevitably brought to power representatives of Iraq’s Shiite majority, which Hussein had long oppressed. Many of those Shiites felt far closer to the Shiite regime next door in Iran than they did to the U.S. troops remaining in Iraq.
In their zeal to depose Hussein, Bush, Cheney & Co. completely ignored the probability that the void created by the Hussein regime’s elimination and the years of violence that removal required would more likely be filled by pro-Iranian politicos than by any committed to the U.S. neocons’ vision of a laissez-faire Iraq where a stock market flourished and social rights were few. In short, the one predictable consequence of our Iraqi misadventure was that the nation would fall more under the sway of Iran. Once Trump bumped off Soleimani, it would have been surprising if the Iraqi Parliament didn’t ask us to leave.
A couple of weeks after Hussein fled Baghdad, Bush staged a victory rally under a banner reading “Mission Accomplished.” And if that mission was to swell Iran’s power, indeed it was.
