Is Iraq Better Off Now? Is Anyone?

Given the current state of affairs in Iraq and the path leading to it, it is difficult to imagine how anyone can make the claim that the people there are better off than before the invasion. In practically every category of reconstruction activity, pre-invasion levels have not yet been re-established (including oil production). Careful documentation shows that over 28,000 Iraqis have died directly as a result of combat activities. Approximately 14,000 are being held in prisons under circumstances, both legal and humanitarian, that would not be condoned in any modern society. And now, after three years of occupation, security for ordinary Iraqi citizens worsens by the day as incendiary acts, such as the bombing of the shrine in Samarra, bring the country to the edge of outright civil war.

As this horrific situation unfolds, our President proclaims that Iraq has reached a point of “choosing between unity or chaos”, as if the people of Iraq must simply clarify in their own minds which they desire. There has perhaps never been such a disingenuous false choice presented. The disunity and chaos they are experiencing was unleashed by our invasion and occupation. Under their previous governmental rule; suppressive, ruthless and, perhaps, maniacal as it was, there was not chaos and there was unity. Now that full scale civil war is a real possibility, our President says our troops will not intervene in “sectarian conflicts.” These are conflicts, this is bloodshed, this is escalating violence and instability that did not exist before we took the extraordinary and discretionary decision to invade and occupy the country. It is simply shameful to now invent new rhetoric to frame the situation in a way that shifts the responsibility to the very people who have been already victimized.

Of course, the only responsible course of action, because it is the only action that has any hope of ameliorating the stimulus for the on-going violence seems beyond the grasp of the administration—removal of our military. The military itself knows it—Zogby International released a poll of military personnel stationed in Iraq on February 28, 2006, (http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075), which showed that 72% of the those surveyed thought the U.S. should “exit the country in the next year.” The rest of the world knows it—recent polls show that 60% across 35 countries think that the threat of terrorist attacks has increased because of the Iraqi invasion and occupation.

So is anyone better off?