20 years ago, the US began the invasion of Iraq. The US explained this aggression against a sovereign state against international law with lies. Such US behavior has a lasting impact – in the region and around the world.
Even after 20 years, there is no end to deadly violence in Iraq: in February alone, at least 52 civilians lost their lives - people killed by firearms, blown up by bombs.
This current violence is an echo of the attack that began on the night between March 19 and 20, 2003, when American ships fired 40 rockets at the district of Baghdad where the institutions and the government are located.
USA, Great Britain, Australia and Poland
Militarily, Iraq had nothing to counter a large-scale invasion by a "coalition of the willing" consisting of the US, Great Britain, Australia and Poland. The brutal dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown after three weeks. And six weeks after the start of the war, on May 1, 2003, US President George W. Bush triumphantly announced the end of major combat operations on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.
According to an American military study, the US-led coalition had dropped and fired - exactly 29.166 bombs and rockets. A large part of the country's infrastructure was destroyed. And according to the respected British non-governmental organization Iraq Body Count, more than 7.000 civilians lost their lives.
The number of dead has increased many times since May 2003. The total number of people killed in the war in Iraq is between 200.000 and one million people, depending on the estimate; As early as 2006, the respected medical journal Lancet published a figure of over 650.000 "additional deaths". And the war in Iraq was far from over then.
American soldiers withdrew only in 2011. And that temporarily. They returned to support Iraq in the fight against the terrorist organization Islamic State. German soldiers are still stationed in Iraq today: there are currently 120 of them, the Ministry of Defense confirmed to DW.
Won the war, lost the peace
Building a new, democratic Iraq according to Western ideas turned out to be much more difficult than the political class in the US imagined in their embellished strategic documents: a wealthy, democratic island under Western influence was not created in the Middle East.
The US-led occupation was unable to deal with the country's complex ethnic and religious divisions. On August 19, 2003, a car bomb killed 22 people in front of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. It was the bloody beginning of the uprising and the long civil war.
Dan Smith, director of the SIPRI Peace Research Institute in Stockholm, told DW that the US invasion was "an audacious expression of the Western belief that they can reshape the country and the regional order according to their wishes".
Javier Solana, former NATO Secretary General and EU High Representative for Foreign Policy and Security, finally drew a bitter balance sheet: "If the mission was to rid Iraq of terror, restore and increase security at all levels, then it was absolutely unsuccessful."
International law
However, the attack on Iraq was primarily "the use of force contrary to international law and in violation of the UN statute," as Kaj Ambos, an expert in criminal and international law from Göttingen, explained to DW.
"The invasion of Iraq was not based on a UN Security Council resolution. Besides, the only option left to justify the use of force is self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, which is clearly not applicable in this case." This is why UN Secretary General Kofi Annan described the war in Iraq as against international law.
The role of Germany
Although Germany refused to participate in the war, by making bases available and giving overflight rights to the invading army, it "helped in an act contrary to international law," as Ambos says.
Shortly after the start of the war, Jürgen Habermas summarized one of the consequences of this violation of international law for FAZ: "Let's not fool ourselves: the normative authority of America has been destroyed." Almost clairvoyantly, the philosopher warned that with its behavior the US "sets a dangerous example for future superpowers".
Torture and war crimes
The USA's reputation was further tarnished by cases of war crimes and torture.
In the spring of 2004, the whole world heard about Abu Ghraib: it was a prison of horrors even under Saddam Hussein, and photographs showed how American soldiers tortured them there.
Massacres of the civilian population were also frequent. Like in Haditha, where in 2005 US marines killed 24 unarmed civilians.
Or in 2007 in the busy Nisur Square in Baghdad, where Blackwater mercenaries fired automatic weapons at random into the crowd and killed 17 people.
Or as in the "Collateral Killing" video released by WikiLeaks: Two helicopters shoot at unarmed civilians with 30mm cannons. At least 12 people were killed, including two Reuters journalists; two children were seriously injured.
Lies and manipulations
The US cited two reasons for its regime change operation: the alleged threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda. None of that was true. No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And the information - obtained after torture - that the Iraqi dictator was connected to the assassins of September 11 also proved to be false.
In an interview with DW, Harvard political scientist Steven Walt says: "They had already made a decision and were just looking for reasons. The decisions were not based on information: they manipulated the information to justify what they had already decided."
The culmination of the campaign to persuade a public skeptical of entry into the war was a carefully staged speech by then-Colin Powell on February 5, 2003, at the United Nations in New York.
Powell presented numerous alleged "evidences" that the tyrant in Baghdad already has biological weapons of mass destruction and is rapidly working on atomic bombs.
Two years later, Powell distanced himself and said that his speech was a "shame": "I am the one who presented false information to the world on behalf of the United States, and it will forever be a part of my life."
Iraq has long been in the US crosshairs
There have long been those in the US who have been calling for regime change in Iraq. Under the Clinton administration, the "Iraq Liberation Act" of 1998 made it official US policy.
And the hawks in the new administration under George W. Bush pressed for Saddam to be removed as soon as possible. This was before Al Qaeda terrorists carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001.
American historian and foreign policy expert Steven Wertheim explains in an interview with DW:
"Saddam posed a challenge to the US - simply because he survived the 1991 Gulf War. The US hoped he would be overthrown, but he remained in office. And he was an obstacle to US hegemony in the Middle East."
The war on terrorism that was declared after September 11, 2001 created an opportunity to implement those old plans. Because, "the president had a lot of room to maneuver to channel public anger and shape the reaction," says Wertheim.
US double standards and the war in Ukraine
A decade after the end of the Soviet Union, the US felt it was at the height of its power. At that unipolar moment, the US administration did not want to be constrained by the rules of the UN charter. American Steven Walt describes it like this:
"Americans like to talk about the rules-based order and how important it is. But those are the rules we're happy to break when they bother us."
Kaj Ambos assumes that this is one of the reasons why so many countries from Brazil to South Africa to India are restrained in condemning Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine or imposing sanctions on Moscow.
"These obvious double standards have been recognized precisely in the global south," says the international law expert from Göttingen. "And now it's coming back to us like a boomerang".
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