an anniversary without questions or answers.

The 10th anniversary of an illegal invasion  of a country deserves at least  a debate within the  invading country. By its citizens. It does not seem to be happening.The lack of a debate only means that  future wars will be easier to launch  and will again go unquestioned. At huge cost to the rest of the world and to the country whose citizens refuse to be responsible citizens. 

Why the Anniversary of Iraq Means More Than We Were Told

The Retrospective We Deserve

by ANTHONY DiMAGGIO

March 19, 2003 marked the 10^th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.  For those who remember those polarizing days, it doesn’t seem like so long ago, although I’m constantly reminded of how much time has passed every day when I lecture with my 18 year old students who were just eight years old at the time of the invasion.  Sadly, the youngest generation of American adults remembers little about this war in light of the failure to promote critical awareness in our K-12 educational system.  University professors have hardly fared any better from what I’ve seen, as most seem preoccupied with esoteric research of limited practical utility.  When it comes to teaching, most professors avoid controversy or engagement in real world politics like the plague.

America’s critical awareness of the Iraq war hasn’t been helped along by the mass media either, which prefers to remember Iraq as a noble mistake.  This much was apparent in the New York Times’ March 19 retrospective news analysis and editorial.   One the one hand, the memory of Iraq has been nearly erased from political-media discourse.  In a news story titled “Iraq War’s 10^th Anniversary is Barely Noted in Washington,” the Times reported on the “conspiracy of silence” in which “Republicans and Democrats agreed” in in the run-up to the anniversary “that they did not really want to talk about the Iraq war.  Neither party had much interest in revisiting what succeeded and what failed, who was right and who was wrong.  The bipartisan consensus underscored the broader national mood: after 10 years, America seems happy to wash its hand of Iraq.”

Going beyond limited challenges to the war as a blunder or mistake, I asked respondents: “Was the U.S. role in Iraq a well-intentioned mistake or was it fundamentally wrong and immoral?”  Revealingly, 52 percent of respondents went beyond the “war as a well-intentioned mistake” narrative and concluded that the war was “fundamentally wrong and immoral” (just 30 percent claimed it was a “well intentioned mistake”).  I also asked: “what was the main reason for why” respondents opposed the war.  The possible answers that were provided included: “the war was unwinnable” (a pragmatic challenge); “the war was fundamentally wrong and immoral” (a moral challenge); “American casualties were too high” (a moral challenge); “Iraqi casualties were too high” (a moral challenge); and “the war was costing too much money” (a pragmatic challenge).  Revealingly, just 11 percent of respondents claimed the war was “unwinnable” and just 13 percent cited that the “cost” of the war were too high.  Only 10 percent of respondents cited “American casualties,” while a meager one percent mentioned “Iraqi casualties.”  Far and away, the most commonly provided answer from respondents (embraced by 47 percent) was that the war was “fundamentally wrong and immoral.”  These findings suggest how extraordinarily limited national journalists and pollsters have been in their emphasis on the Iraq war as a strategic blunder, rather than something that citizens fundamentally reject as morally unacceptable.  Moral challenges to the war (concern with American and Iraqi casualties and feelings that the war was immoral) were jointly subscribed to by 58 percent of Americans, as compared to pragmatic challenges, which were supported by just 24 percent.


Sadly, I have not seen a single polling question asked in the last ten years that measured whether Americans thought the war in Iraq was imperialist or not.  The question of whether the war was a “well-intentioned mistake” or “fundamentally wrong and immoral” has never appeared once in the national discourse when it comes to public opinion surveys.   Polls that might have questioned whether the U.S. invaded Iraq primarily for its massive oil reserves seldom materialized because the answers would have been too damning to report in a country where the political discussion revolved around whether the war was just and necessary or a noble mistake.  After spending hundreds of hours studying mass media coverage of and public opinion on Iraq in the last decade, I have yet to uncover much of any evidence that the critical questions above were ever addressed by pollsters.  The closest I found was an August 2002 poll from Gallup that queried Americans on “why the United States may take military action against Iraq” and in which interest in “oil” was mentioned as one among many possibilities.[i]  Public opinion polling is never absolute in terms of marginalizing critical viewpoints, as tough questions are sometimes asked.  In general, however, it was extremely rare for such probing challenges to U.S. foreign policy to appear in public opinion surveys I’ve seen over the years.








The 10-year anniversary of the Iraq war should be remembered as a teachable moment – one in which Americans reflect retrospectively on the reasons for why they rejected the war in Iraq.  Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to do so when there’s an unspoken effort in the mass media to ignore the basic reasons for why Americans turned against the invasion and occupation of Iraq.  The real reasons for why so many opposed the war are unspeakable in a political-media system that prides itself on promoting an image of the United States as committed to selflessly promoting democracy, human rights, and American security abroad.  When academics, journalists, pollsters, and politicians all join together to consciously ignore moral challenges to U.S. foreign policy, then it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to have a rational national dialogue on war.  Without such a dialogue, it also makes it difficult to have a productive discussion about how to challenge and reject official propaganda, misinformation, and lies in the future.  On this 10-year anniversary, that dialogue is needed more than ever if there’s to be any hope of limiting wars of aggression in the future.


http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/21/the-retrospective-we-deserve/