Editorial
Ten lost years
Iraq war has achieved little
It has been ten wasted years. Waste of Iraqi lives that ran into thousands, waste of the lives of thousands of US and the so-called allied forces arrayed against Saddam, and waste of American dollars that ran into trillions. The primary Bush objective has been met. Removal of Saddam has been achieved, and the only country that could stand up to the bullying and browbeating of the US proxy in the Middle East, Iraq, has had its backbone broken, and which is surviving barely as a nation, after ten years of "Operation Iraqi Freedom."
Wednesday was the 10th Anniversary of the US led invasion of Iraq and the day was heralded with a dozen car bombs detonating in several parts of Baghdad including the heavily fortified Green Zone and a Shiite dominated neighbourhood in the Iraqi capital. The bombs killed more than 60 people and nearly triple the numbers were wounded.
It is only right for the world to ask the initiators of the war to account for an action that was based on deceit, lies and falsehood. If it was to liberate Iraq and bring democracy what is the nature of democracy that that has evolved in the country after ten years of an imposed war and an illegal occupation; and at what cost?
As for democracy, the ethnic divide continues to remain as strong as it has ever been, and sectarian feuds continue to dominate the government of Nuri-al-Maliki, a Shiite, who shares power with the Sunnis and Kurds. What Iraq has got now is not democracy but collective dictatorship.
It is a pity that people like Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister and a Bush acolyte continues to defend the invasion on the ground that it was to prevent Saddam from using WMD, when they knew very well that there was none. And after ten years Iraq has spawned terrorism with al Qaeda links established more firmly, and insurgency and sectarian violence very rife.
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