The Consequences of US War in Iraq with Dena Al-Adeeb

<p>This Memorial Day weekend, when American’s customarily commemorate military personnel fallen in its numerous and now seemingly endless wars–”a flag for every fallen hero”--SWANA Region Radio turns its attention to the largely forgotten toll that those wars have taken on the countries and people that have been devastated by them. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, a preemptive “war of choice” that amounts to a crime against humanity and followed hard on its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, a war that lasted twenty years, ending in the shambolic withdrawal of August 2021. Meanwhile, the US continues what it considers counter-terrorism operations in more than 80 countries and maintains more than 750 military bases around the world, many of them located in West Asia and Northern and Eastern Africa. </p> <p>Increasingly, US warfare is conducted “over the horizon”, via drone surveillance and aerial bombings, though the continuing presence of US “boots on the ground” in many parts of the SWANA region should not be underestimated. US troops remain in Syria and Iraq and across the Sahel region, and bases in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, Turkey, Djibouti, Chad, Niger are only a few through which it maintains its enduring presence in the region. At the same time, many of America’s most devastating wars have been fought by its proxies, like the Saudi-UAE campaign in Yemen or Israel’s 75 year war on the Palestinian people, both supported by the United States with billions of dollars annually.</p> <p>The impact of the US’s actual wars and of its ongoing military domination of the region is both direct and indirect.Brown University Watson Center’s invaluable <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/about" target="_blank">“Costs of War” Project</a> summarizes some of the dismal statistics:</p> <ul> <li>Over <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeathToll" target="_blank">937,000</a> people have died in the post-9/11 wars (Afghanistan