Wreckage of War
M1A1 Abrams pose for a photo under the "Hands of Victory" in Ceremony Square, Baghdad, Iraq.
What we haven’t learned from history
By Sarah Kittle
Most have heard the famous quote by philosopher George Santayana: “Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” You may not, however, know the quote attributed to one of the smartest men of our times, physicist Stephen Hawking: “We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let’s face it, is mostly the history of stupidity.”
Take war. Please! We have been waging it since the time of Cain and Abel. And what have we learned? Apparently, not much. Most of what we know about war comes from our history books which, admittedly, were written by the winners. What of those who were vanquished, or merely caught in the crossfire? Who tells their stories?
The world media has taken upon itself to give us up-to-the-minute reports of war in Ukraine, where citizens are being invaded, tortured, and killed by the Russian army under Vladmir Putin. There is a large outcry. Sanctions are placed. Iraqis know the sufferings of sanctions; the citizens, who have nothing but ‘skin in the game’ are the biggest losers. They lose their livelihoods, homes, belongings, and too often, their lives.
What about Iraq?
It has been almost two decades since the American invasion of Iraq, an action that was widely heralded in the Western mainstream media, and one which had popular support in the U.S. public arena.
In the perfect vision of hindsight, the presence of “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs) used to legitimize that war (a conflict which continues on a smaller scale) was a fallacy created by warmongers to incite drastic action. While it appeared to work, the fallout from that experience has been mistrust of the press and suspicion of any kind of outside intelligence. If it were put to a vote today, most Americans would shy away from invading anywhere in the Middle East.
So why is everyone so gung-ho about helping Ukraine?
They look American, or at least European
“The vast majority of the victims in Ukraine are European, White, and Christian,” writes Eugene Robinson, a columnist for The Washington Post. “Their children play with Muppets dolls and Legos.”
He went on to say that civilians during invasion of Iraq suffered no less grievously, and added, “But the fact is that we rarely get intimately acquainted with the victims (who, in that case, were neither European nor White nor Christian) when U.S. forces are the ones firing the cruise missiles and lobbing the artillery shells.”
While we take issue that victims weren’t Christian (knowing full well many were), we do get his point. It is easier to identify with people who look like you. And it’s difficult to tell in the moment if you are on the right side of history.
In Middle East Eye, a young Baghdadi named Nabil Salih writes about his experience growing up in Iraq under U.S. attack. He laments his loss: “It is painful to be Iraqi. Even the sweetest memories are now buried deep under the rubble of nightmares that haunt us.”
His bitterness stems from the fact that American leaders who waged war in Iraq are many of the same now so vehemently denouncing Russian aggression. What has changed? What is different about this conflict? “In the face of this forgetfulness and denial of our pain and our dead, I feel violated.”
Media bias
The pictures coming out of Ukraine right now show people fleeing in orderly lines that look like they could be anywhere in the United States. Their clothing and facial features, as Europeans, are indistinguishable from white America.
The Washington Post covered this media bias very well in a piece by Sarah Ellison and Travis Andrews: “Reporting of the Ukrainian conflict tended to shine light on ‘stereotypes that people in places like the Middle East, South Asia or Latin America are less civilized,’ said Hoda Osman, president of the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association. ‘There were several comments that were…disheartening.’”
Stephen Kinzer, a Boston Globe columnist and former New York Times foreign correspondent said, “In the runup to the Iraq war, patriotic hysteria enveloped the United States. Americans gobbled up the narrative that Saddam was a savage killer — another ‘new Hitler’ — and that destroying him and his government would help pacify the Middle East. Those who dissented were considered near treasonous. Nonetheless some did dissent. That’s not the case today.
“The mass hysteria and war frenzy that is now consuming the United States is beyond anything in living memory. Nearly everyone in Washington — and in the American press — seems to believe that it’s better to risk nuclear war than to accept a non-aligned Ukraine.”
The responsibility of the US
Fadi Farhat, a lawyer based in Britain, wrote an editorial in The Arab Weekly arguing that the US is in large part responsible for Putin’s reasoning in invading Ukraine. Crying “weapons of mass destruction,” the American military came in force, annihilating everything in their way.
He writes that Putin’s justification for aggression in the Ukraine is right out of the U.S. playbook. “The ghostly wrongs of Iraq 2003 have now come back to haunt the West,” Farhat says, “as the Kremlin puts forward its legal justification based on the ‘pre-emptive principle’ first argued by the USA and its coalition in 2003.”
In an article in the UK publication Tribune, writer Andrew Murray states, “The Ukraine invasion takes place in the world the Iraq invasion made…. It will be decades more before the invaders of Iraq can consider claiming the moral high ground.”
Nabil Salih would agree. “Like many Iraqis, I was first orphaned by the theft of Iraq,” he writes. The people suffer for the actions of the leaders. As many struggle to go about their daily lives, they care not about who is making the policies, only about how the policies affect them.
The new risks of war
Another substantial difference between Iraq and Ukraine is their military capabilities.
“Contrary to its public claims, the Bush administration knew full well Saddam Hussein’s Iraq could not pose an existential threat to the United States. The same cannot be said of Vladimir Putin’s nuclear-armed Russia,” stated Bonnie Kristian, acting editor-in-chief at TheWeek.com, in a symposium on comparative press coverage.
The threat of nuclear war is once again a reality, even if everyone knows it is a lose-lose situation. Reagan’s “Mutually Assured Destruction” faces off against Putin’s “Special Operation” to ‘disarm Ukraine and protect it from Fascism.’ Is this really where we are in 2022?
As Murray said, “The ghosts of Iraq are unquiet.”