17 October 2016
By Jacob G. Hornberger
When the U.S. government invaded Iraq in 2003, I wonder how many U.S.
officials contemplated the possibility that the cycle of death and destruction
that they were initiating would be continuing 13 years later. And yet, here we
are — more than a decade after Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched — and U.S.
and Iraqi soldiers are, once again, battling over control of Mosul.
The battle for Mosul is being met with considerable indifference or
nonchalance among many Americans. After all, there are so many more important
things to talk about, such as sex scandals. But the fact that U.S. troops are
still fighting, killing, and dying in Iraq 13 years after the U.S. invasion of
the country (and 26 years after the U.S. government's Persian Gulf
intervention) is truly remarkable.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. mainstream press and the U.S. national-security
establishment are doing their best to put their best spin on the upcoming
battle for Mosul. They are showing how U.S. warplanes are ''softening'' up the
enemy with bombing raids on the city. They are reporting how Iraqi troops,
counseled by U.S. military advisers, are readying for their long-awaited
attack to liberate the city from ISIS, which is the group that came into
existence as a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
U.S. officials and the mainstream press, however, are missing the big picture:
The battle for Mosul, thirteen years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only
goes to show what a disaster U.S. interventionism has been in Iraq and, for
that matter, all over the Middle East. After all, thirteen years is more than
enough time to have brought peace, prosperity, harmony, and liberty to the
Iraqi people.
The ultimate goal in the battle for Mosul is the preservation of the Iraqi
government — that is, the regime that the U.S. invasion installed into power.
In fact, not surprisingly, many of the people who compose ISIS are former
members of the Saddam Hussein regime — the regime that the U.S. invasion
ousted from power.
Here's the thing to bear in mind: The Iraqi government is a U.S. creation. It
owes its existence to the U.S invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Yet, obviously there are people in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East who
will never accept the legitimacy of a regime that has been installed by a
foreign power, especially when that foreign power is the U.S. government. They
will continue to fight to the death to remove what they consider is nothing
more than a vassal state in the U.S. government's far-flung overseas empire.
This is what all too many U.S. officials and their supporters in the
mainstream press and among the American people just don't get. They see all
the death and destruction that the U.S. military-industrial complex has
brought the Middle East — not just in Iraq but also Libya, Syria, Yemen,
Egypt, and Israel — and all they see is freedom, peace, and prosperity. That's
why they continue to thank the troops for their service and why they get tears
in their eyes at MLB baseball games when they asked to wave their caps in
appreciation for what the troops have done in the Middle East.
They blind themselves to the obvious: After 13 years of death and destruction
that the Pentagon and CIA have wreaked in the Middle East, that part of the
world is one miserable caulron of tyranny, conflict, discord, war, death,
destruction, torture, and misery. Equally important, the more they intervene
to fix the problems with the original intervention, the more the situation
gets worse.
The current battle for Mosul is a mini-poster for the manifest failure of U.S.
interventionism. The overall situation in the Middle East, including Libya,
Syria, Egypt, Syria, and Israel, is a real-life advertisement for what U.S.
interventionism does to foreign countries and, indirectly, to America. After
all, don't forget that when terrorists retaliate for all the people who U.S.
forces are, once again, killing in Iraq, U.S. officials will then use that
threat to suspend even more of the rights and freedoms of the American people
in order to ''keep us safe'' from the enemies their endless interventionism
continues to produce.
Why do so many Americans seem blind over all this? After 13 years of senseless
death and destruction, out of control federal spending and debt, and
infringements on our liberty, privacy, and well-being there at home, why
aren't they demanding that the troops be brought home without any further
delay? Do they really think that more interventionism or even a new president
is going to produce a different result?
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom
Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in
economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the
University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He
also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught
law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become
director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has
advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the
country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and
he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show
Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full
Context.
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