A Third Decade of Bombing Iraq

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http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/nat-parry/58292/a-third-decade-of-bombing-iraq

A Third Decade of Bombing Iraq
Iraq | War
by Nat Parry | September 13, 2014 - 8:36am

The great American tradition of bombing Iraq – now in its third decade – has recently been revived by the “hope and change” presidency of Barack Obama, the fourth consecutive U.S. Commander-in-Chief to launch strikes against the beleaguered Middle East nation. Iraq may be alone in the world in being able to claim such a dubious distinction.

I remember the first time the U.S. bombed Iraq, in January 1991. I was a sophomore in high school and Wilson Phillip’s “Hold On” was at the top of the charts. I didn’t really know what to think about it, but a lot of people were tying yellow ribbons to trees and wearing “Operation Desert Storm” t-shirts with bald eagles and American flags on them, so it seemed like a good idea. Plus, there was the whole babies-being-pulled-from-incubators story, which turned out to be a complete fabrication, but we didn’t know that at the time, so the war’s justification seemed pretty solid.

It wasn’t until later when I started learning more about U.S. foreign policy in general and the lies that accompanied the build-up to Operation Desert Storm in particular that I started to question these policies, and by the late 1990s, I became actively opposed to the sanctions regime and the periodic bombings of Baghdad.The first time I protested a U.S. bombing campaign of Iraq was in 1998. It was in the midst of Congress’s efforts to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about his illicit affair with Monica Lewinsky, and the day after his announcement of the Operation Desert Fox bombing campaign, I joined a picket in front of the White House holding a hand-made sign reading “IMPEACH HIM FOR WAR CRIMES.”

As a young college student, I remember feeling passionately that the United States had no right to bomb another country, especially for so flimsy a pretext as the justification the U.S. was offering at the time. In announcing the attacks, President Clinton stated that they were a response to Saddam Hussein’s refusal to cooperate with the United Nations weapons inspectors who had been monitoring the destruction of chemical and biological weapons for seven and a half years.

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