Five years after the invasion of Iraq: A debacle for US imperialism

A “war of choice” that was launched as a demonstration of the overwhelming and irresistible force of American militarism has turned into an operational debacle that has strained the US armed forces to the breaking point and eroded the strategic position of the United States in every corner of the world.

For the Iraqi people, the war has produced a catastrophe. For the American people, as well, it has yielded nothing but suffering and tragedy. It unquestionably constitutes the single greatest war crime of the twenty-first century. In both its motivation and execution, it embodies the essential characteristics of similar crimes carried out in the last century.

The International Tribunal at Nuremburg that convicted the leaders of the Third Reich summed up its verdict with the following observation: “War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”