America's Legacy In Iraq

Shortly after the attacks in America on September 11 2001 the administration of George W. Bush focused its attention not on those who perpetrated the crime Al Qaeda but Saddam Hussein and the government of Iraq and Saddam Hussein a man whose army was a threat to the people of that country but lacked the ability to project power beyond its boarders. Members of his administration seeking justification fo military intervention created a narrative that in time would be proven false. Statements like mushroom clouds over Baghdad or other gulf states even though Iraq's military lacked the technological wherewithal to accomplish such a mission.

Following a UN briefing given by then Secretary of State Colin Powell which contained utter falsehoods and misinformation the Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, March 17 2003 saw the United States invade a country that had never attacked America. In May of 2003 George W. Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. To bad it was all a lie meant to complete the false narrative that had been created. What followed was more than 2 years of Civil War leaving untold thousands of Iraqi's dead along with more than 4,000 U.S. service members. What does the U.S. have to show for it? The worlds largest embassy. An embassy so large that it would under any other circumstances be considered a small city. Like there's a need for 17,000 people to staff an embassy in a country with fewer than 32 million people. I'm sure its not because of oil reserves. Why would the U.S. be interested in Iraq's oil? Because it was real reason for the invasion? After all one can't have Iraq controlling its own natural resources when American oil giants could do a much better job of stealing Iraq's only means of providing for the countries GDP.

Way out on the edge of Forward Operating Base Hammer, where I lived for much of my year in Iraq as a Provincial Reconstruction Team leader for the United States Department of State, there were several small hills, lumps of raised dirt on the otherwise frying-pan-flat desert. These were "tells", ancient garbage dumps and fallen buildings.

Thousands of years ago, people in the region used sun-dried bricks to build homes and walls. Those bricks had a lifespan of about 20 years before they began to crumble, at which point locals just built anew atop the old foundation. Do that for a while, and soon enough your buildings are sitting on a small hill.