SeniorBen
Senior Member
It's been called the biggest blunder in U.S. history — even greater than the Vietnam War. Some Iraqis are demanding reparations for the damage we did to their country.
America illegally invaded Iraq in 2003, occupied and destabilized and flattened it, and then never left. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, and millions more have been made refugees or internally displaced persons. The consequences for the population are almost beyond comprehension: After decades of conflict, more than 2 million Iraqis are disabled, while the PTSD is inescapable. Entire generations have been left unable to look at the sky the same way.
The Iraqi people must be added, alongside the American dead and their families, to the register of 9/11’s victims, after that day’s events were used as a justification for war. The atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison, the bombardment of Fallujah, the attack on civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square by the military contractor Blackwater — these events are a small part of a long list, made exceptional not by the character of their violence but by their outsize impact on the collective psychology. America trained, funded, and commanded Iraqi Interior Ministry special police forces to run a network of torture centers across the nation. Parts of Iraq are now rubble, a ruin-monument to western folly. One hundred military orders were signed into law by the U.S.-backed Coalition Provisional Authority to privatize state-run companies and amend the tax laws to facilitate foreign ownership.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/iraq-war-reparations.html
After WWII, the U.S. put a lot of money and effort into rebuilding Japan and Germany in an effort to prevent retaliation. And they started the war! We've also spent a lot of money trying to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure but with little to show for it due to all the corruption.
So, should the U.S. pay reparations to Iraq? Personally, I'm on the fence.
America illegally invaded Iraq in 2003, occupied and destabilized and flattened it, and then never left. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, and millions more have been made refugees or internally displaced persons. The consequences for the population are almost beyond comprehension: After decades of conflict, more than 2 million Iraqis are disabled, while the PTSD is inescapable. Entire generations have been left unable to look at the sky the same way.
The Iraqi people must be added, alongside the American dead and their families, to the register of 9/11’s victims, after that day’s events were used as a justification for war. The atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison, the bombardment of Fallujah, the attack on civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square by the military contractor Blackwater — these events are a small part of a long list, made exceptional not by the character of their violence but by their outsize impact on the collective psychology. America trained, funded, and commanded Iraqi Interior Ministry special police forces to run a network of torture centers across the nation. Parts of Iraq are now rubble, a ruin-monument to western folly. One hundred military orders were signed into law by the U.S.-backed Coalition Provisional Authority to privatize state-run companies and amend the tax laws to facilitate foreign ownership.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/iraq-war-reparations.html
After WWII, the U.S. put a lot of money and effort into rebuilding Japan and Germany in an effort to prevent retaliation. And they started the war! We've also spent a lot of money trying to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure but with little to show for it due to all the corruption.
So, should the U.S. pay reparations to Iraq? Personally, I'm on the fence.
