Iraq War 20 years on: How Ukraine conflict, growing power of Iran and rise of Trump can be traced back to 2003 invasion
At the turn of the century, America had emerged victorious from the Cold War and stood unchallenged.
It had greater power and influence than any other nation in history. It could have wielded that power judiciously to protect the American-led post-war world order and inspire other countries to follow its values of freedom and democracy.
Instead, it squandered that supremacy embarking on a calamitous misadventure in Iraq that was ill-advised and disastrously executed. It would be the beginning of the end of the pax Americana.
A direct line can be drawn between that debacle, which began on 20 March 2003 and others that followed, right up to the perilous state of the world today.
The war in Ukraine, the unchecked ascendancy of China, the growing power of Iran, and even the rise of Trump and the politics of populism all have roots that can be traced back to America’s folly in Iraq.
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein standing by an Iraqi flag in 2002
George W Bush had the support of Britain’s Tony Blair in his decision to invade Iraq
The falsehoods and delusions that led to war
America went to war led by ideologues who believed they could refashion the Middle East in their own likeness and bring democracy and a more pro-Western outlook to the region.
The failure of that neoconservative project has done lasting damage to Americans’ claims of exceptionalism, and their belief that their form of governance is an example to the rest of the world. And that has by extension done enduring harm to the American-led world order.
The failings of that project in Iraq are well documented. The false premise of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the delusion that invaders would be welcomed as liberators, the absence of any plan for the day after. The damage to America’s standing in the world has been incalculable.
Equally, human rights violations, violations of democratic norms, targeted killings, and the atrocities of Abu Ghraib prison, from where photographs showing abuse of inmates by US soldiers emerged, tarnished America’s image as the standard-bearer of democracy and human rights.
This has weakened Washington’s influence in the world. When India and other countries in the global south sit on the fence in UN resolutions on Ukraine, their ambivalence can in part be traced back to America’s record in Iraq.
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US military escort a group of Iraqi soldiers dressed in civilian clothes north of Basra, Iraq, in 2003
An Iraqi man cries in front of a house damaged by a missile in Baghdad in 2003
A lasting impact on US foreign policy
The failure undermined America’s own self-confidence. The spectre of Iraq made Barack Obama reluctant to be drawn into the Syria conflict and punish its leader’s diabolical use of chemical weapons.
That reluctance was seen in Moscow as an American weakness, and arguably emboldened it to defy the West and seize Crimea with relative impunity a few years later. And that in turn encouraged Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine in earnest last year.
The distraction of Iraq led to failure in Afghanistan, a protracted two decades of occupation and a disastrous withdrawal.
Iraq sucked up what policymakers in Washington call bandwidth year after year, while in the east a far greater challenge was rising. The West would take years to wake up to the threat posed by China.
Closer to Iraq, Iran was strengthened. Before the invasion, its regional influence was limited to a militia in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah. Today it has clout in capitals from Beirut to Damascus to Baghdad to Yemen.
The war in Iraq has done damage to America’s belief in itself. The conflict cost a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives. It has fuelled opposition to any more military adventures abroad.
And it has undermined Americans’ faith in both government and the political and media elites meant to hold it to account. That only in part helps explain the rise of populism that ultimately brought Trump to the White House.
An explosion rocks Baghdad during air strikes on 21 March 2003
US military escort a group of Iraqi soldiers dressed in civilian clothes north of Basra, Iraq, in 2003
Iraq still recovering from journey to hell and back
In Iraq, people are now no longer living under tyranny. There is reportedly some sense of hope and renewal, but only recently. And the country has literally been to hell and back to get there.
Hundreds of thousands have died in the war and the waves of sectarian violence that followed. The country has been broken, its institutions destroyed and its economy ravaged.
It is only just beginning to recover from all that trauma. But perhaps it can now look forward cautiously to a slightly better future. That is more than might have been said had Saddam Hussein remained in power or any of his impulsive, venal sons.
Another view of Saddam Hussein’s statue being pulled down
Thousands of crosses at a memorial for US troops killed in the Iraq war, in Lafayette, California
Ten years ago, George W Bush said the final verdict on his actions in Iraq would come long after his death.
That may be true, and it may take more time to judge whether the removal of one of the worst tyrants in history in any way justified the enormous cost and pain that then ensued.
Twenty years on, though, we can say the invasion and occupation have had a lasting legacy on the region and the world, and much of that has not been for the better.
It could be a scene from centuries ago. In the Nevada desert, Native Americans are protesting over a mining project they say desecrates sacred land.
They are riding to Sentinel Mountain, which their ancestors once used as a lookout in times gone by. Here, they say, more than 30 of their people were massacred by US cavalry in 1865.
Today, the land is at the heart of America’s electric car revolution and Joe Biden’s clean energy policy
Native American tribal members say the mine neglects their interests and offends their history.
The route of the “Prayer Horse Ride”, a journey on horseback through mining-affected communities in Northern Nevada, is designed to publicise their objections.
“Being the original inhabitants of the land means we have cultural ties and roots to these landscapes,” says Gary McKinney, a member of the Duck Valley Shoshone Paiute tribe.
“To me, it’s sacred ground,” says Myron Smart. His grandmother survived the massacre of 1865 as a baby. Industrialising this place, he says, offends her memory and reflects the story of Native Americans through time.
“We’re people too. We have red blood just like everybody in the United States.”
Myron Smart says the land is sacred ground
Myron Smart’s grandmother, who survived the 1865 massacre
However, a US judge has rejected their complaints and the project is going ahead.
The open mine, which is on public land, will source lithium to power up to a million electric vehicles a year and will create 1,800 jobs in its construction phase.
President Biden aims to make the United States a world leader in electric vehicle technology and reduce reliance for lithium supply on countries like China.
The Thacker Pass project has supporters as well as opponents.
Lithium Americas, the company behind the project, insists the mine is not located on a massacre site. This was supported by a judge in 2021 who ruled the evidence presented by tribes “does not definitely establish that a massacre occurred” within the proposed project area.
Tim Crowley, the company’s VP of Government and External Affairs, said in a statement to Sky News: “Lithium Americas is committed to doing this project right, which is why we have a community benefits agreement in place with the local Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe that ensures benefits from Thacker Pass accrue to them.
“Concerns about cultural and environmental resources were thoroughly addressed in the BLM’s (Bureau of Land Management) approved Environmental Impact Statement, which withstood comprehensive reviews by the Federal District and Circuit Courts.”
However, members of different Nevada-based Native American tribes continue to oppose the mining project. They say their evidence of the 1865 massacre, and a separate inter-tribal conflict, is rooted in the oral history passed on from their ancestors, through generations – not collated with a court case in mind, but compelling nonetheless.
“Back in our ancestors’ days, they didn’t write any documentation down, they didn’t send letters, they didn’t write in journals,” says Gary. “So there was no way that the United States government could know our story.
“These stories have been passed down generation to generation, so we have direct lineage from survivors of these massacres, which is how these stories remain in our families.”
The courts have also rejected complaints by tribal members and conservationists on the environmental impact and planning consultation.
The project throws a focus onto the issues surrounding the pursuit of clean energy.
“First off, we have to acknowledge that we need electric vehicles,” says Amanda Hurowitz of Mighty Earth, a global environmental non-governmental organisation.
They are more efficient than petrol and diesel cars, she says, and they are needed for the US to hit its climate targets.
But they also need more mined minerals – like lithium – and getting those materials out of the ground has an impact.
“All mining operations need to get consent from the local people,” she adds, “and the more consent, the better.”
Authorities in California have been mocked over a “billion-dollar” bridge to nowhere.
The state government of California has long planned for a Los Angeles to San Francisco high-speed rail project.
Despite initial funding being approved back in 2008, the line is still a long way off and expected to cost over $100bn in total.
So far, construction has only begun on the earliest phase and further funding has been used on environmental planning ahead in the Phase I System.
However, the California High-Speed Rail Authority recently publicised one of the completed sections of construction – finished back in 2018 and reported to cost $1bn on its own.
This is a 0.3-mile stretch of bridge, called The Fresno River Viaduct in Madera County, and it has attracted ridicule for going from nowhere to nowhere.
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Pictures shared by the authority of the bridge show it connected to nothing at either end with some claiming it is indicative of the wider project.
It runs above a road and close to a number of houses – parallel to another rail track – but currently serves no purpose.
Elon Musk poked fun at the recent X post of the construction, with the billionaire posting a crying emoji in response to news of the project.
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Others waded in as well on social media.
However, a number of those criticising it made false claims of the viaduct, its cost and time it took to complete it.
Since it was finished six years ago, after three years of construction, dozens more structures have been completed and there are over a hundred miles in active construction across the project.
Due to the vast scale of high-speed rails, they are often complex, expensive and lengthy projects – with the California High Speed Rail being no different.
The rail would come into use some time in the early 2030s but scrapping it reportedly remains a possibility.
California High Speed Rail has been approached for comment.
It is a paradox that humanity at its very worst so often also brings out its very best too.
This is a story about the kindness of strangers. It’s a story about hope over hopelessness. It’s about the war in Gaza but also about the rarest of diseases.
It is about two families in worlds far apart. It is a story about two little girls, Julia and Annabel.
I don’t yet know how it will end. But this is how it started.
It was two weeks ago when my phone pinged: a message on Instagram from a friend-of-a-friend. Her name is Nina Frost.
Nina and I first met a few years ago at a party in Washington DC where she had told me about her daughter Annabel, a little girl with an ultra-rare genetic disorder called AHC.
I remember Nina explaining how it was a disease like no other.
‘The human time bomb disease’ she had called it, based on the all-consuming parental nightmare that their little girl could have a fatal seizure at any moment.
The Frost family
I’ve followed Nina’s Instagram, @HopeForAnnabel since we first met.
The good news is that Annabel is doing well, albeit with that eternal danger hanging over her. She requires constant care, attention and love.
Nina’s message to me wasn’t about her own daughter. It was about another little girl, in Gaza.
Rare diseases like AHC, which stands for Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood, generate tight networks; the families living with the condition. Only about 1,000 people worldwide have been diagnosed with AHC. It really is rare.
“There is a little girl stuck in Gaza with the disease,” Nina wrote to me.
“Julia is three – after the last few months she has become paralyzed and unable to eat as her symptoms have worsened dramatically. We are desperate to help as she is massively vulnerable – literally on the brink of death.”
Julia’s mother administers medication
Nina told me how she and her husband, Simon, are trying to organise the impossible: to get specialist drugs into Gaza and, ultimately, to try to get Julia and her family out.
Nina was modest about an endeavour that I now know has been all-consuming and expensive.
To tell this remarkable story of kindness and hope, I asked Nina to share with me Julia’s father’s number. Our local colleagues in Gaza then tracked the family down to a tent in the southern city of Rafah.
Julia Abu Zaiter is from northern Gaza originally. But with her father Amjad, her mother Maha and her older sister Sham, she was forced south by the Israeli military.
“My girl is three and a half years old. I want her to go out and play with the other children. Now, she cannot move at all,” Julia’s mother told our team, cradling her severely disabled little girl.
Annabel Frost
Rafah is on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. Safety is so close and yet beyond reach unless the right strings are pulled with different authorities and governments in a labyrinth of wartime bureaucracy.
The images filmed by our team confirm what Nina had feared in her message to me.
Julia and her family are in the toughest of conditions. The house next to the tent was bombed a few days before our team visited.
The Abu Zaiters are now stuck in the city that could be the next battlefield and with a daughter whose condition is compounded by just the slightest stress, a little girl with, as Nina had told me, the ‘time bomb disease’.
“I told myself ‘it’s over, my girl is gone’,” Julia’s mother told our Gaza team, showing them Julia’s semi-paralysed state.
“Then a man named Simon contacted us and told us he will see if he can help, because his daughter’s situation is similar to mine.”
Five thousand miles away, and a world apart, in a leafy northwest suburb of Washington DC, I am now sitting with Simon, Nina and Annabel.
Julia Abu Zaiter
It is humbling to listen to their words – about their own daughter, but about their fight for a stranger too.
“Annabel lives with the most challenging condition that we can imagine – a neurological degeneration – and she lives with it with a smile on her face,” Simon says. “And we’re imagining the same for Julia in the most dire of circumstances.”
We look at videos of Julia which Amjad has sent to Simon.
“Our kids are all so similar… we feel a sense of connection to so many families and our world of rare disease,” Nina tells me.
“This is like that but on steroids. I mean, we feel so distressed for the situation that they’re facing.”
“Julia’s circumstances are exponentially worse, but I think we’ve always embraced the idea that we can do something to help, we must do something to help and that we should. I mean, I think it’s always been if not us, then who?” Nina adds.
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Amjad’s message highlights concerns he has about his daughter. He is looking for reassurance from Simon.
Julia is experiencing some severe paralysis and via a translated SMS and a few photos, Amjad wants some encouragement which Simon can’t give.
“They don’t have the medicines they need and the doctors that they need to really treat and properly prevent episodes and to address them when she has them,” Simon says.
“So we’ve been trying to gather a group that can support her. It’s been constant communication and really difficult with the translation issues,” Simon tells me.
Over in Gaza, Julia’s mum is desperate. “Our conditions due to the war are below zero.
“Our situation is horrible. I cannot provide my daughter with any food or drinks. I can get medications through lots of difficulty, and I tell myself that getting these medications is more important than getting food for us.”
The Frosts speak to Sky’s Mark Stone
Against the odds, Simon has managed to coordinate with the right people to get the right medication into Gaza for Julia.
Through the tight AHC network, one doctor has prompted another who knows another and another. That’s how this works. Threads of kindness stitched together.
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Now the challenge is getting Julia out to Egypt and then on a medical flight to Abu Dhabi. It will be hard, maybe impossible.
“And it seems like she’s really declined,” Nina says looking at the latest videos of Julia.
“I mean, it seems like exactly what we would have predicted has happened. She has gone from being a happy three-year-old with a profoundly difficult disease to being this shell of herself.”
“I feel like I am losing her,” Maha says with Julia in her arms. “She is dying right next to me and I cannot even do anything. The thing I fear the most is losing my daughter.”
There is some chance of an extraction to safety soon. It is not guaranteed but it is some hope for one little girl in a place where uncertainty is all around.
This is a story about two families worlds apart but bound by a disease.
I don’t yet know how it will end. This may feel sometimes like a world of hopelessness, but I have some hope.
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