Tangle - The Iraq War anniversary.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Twas the season of chaos, and all through the house, not one person was stressing. Holla differently this year with DoorDash.

Starting point is 00:00:31 Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.

Starting point is 00:00:56 It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about the Iraq War, and more specifically, the anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and where things stand today. Before we jump in, though, as always, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reasserted her confidence in the United States banking system and assured Americans that regulators are prepared to support banks further if necessary. Number two, roughly 30,000 Los Angeles school employees went on strike yesterday, forcing 400,000 students to stay home. The Los Angeles Unified

Starting point is 00:02:26 School District is the second largest in the country. Number three, a judge approved a $626 million settlement in Flint, Michigan over the water crisis that started there in 2014. Number four, Chinese President Xi Jinping left Russia after a three-day visit, and China proposed a 12-point peace plan for Ukraine that does not involve Russian withdrawal from any occupied areas. Number five, TikTok CEO will testify before Congress tomorrow and reveal ahead of time that the app has 150 million users in the United States, nearly half of the total population. My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. It's been 20 years now since American and coalition forces have invaded Iraq

Starting point is 00:03:30 on a mission to topple Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and find weapons of mass destruction. Within three weeks, Saddam's regime had fallen, but no stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons were ever found. Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right? Now, you can take it any way you want, and it took Jeb Bush, if you remember at the beginning of his announcement, when he announced the president, it took him five days, he went back, it was a mistake, it wasn't a mistake, it took him five days before his people told him what to say, and he ultimately said it was a mistake. It wasn't a mistake. It took him five days before his people told him

Starting point is 00:04:05 what to say. And he ultimately said it was a mistake. This week marks the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. On March 17th, 2003, former President George W. Bush gave Saddam Hussein an ultimatum, leave Iraq within 48 hours or face military action. On March 19th, the U.S. began bombing Iraq and on March 20th began a ground invasion. The Bush administration says it launched the war in order to topple Hussein's dictatorship and find purported weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs. His administration told the American public that Hussein was hiding those weapons, though they were never found. Just two years into the war, the WMD commission called it one of the most damaging intelligence failures in recent American history. At the time of the invasion, the war was unpopular globally, but

Starting point is 00:04:54 quite popular domestically. In February of 2003, a little more than two years after September 11th, 66% of Americans supported the invasion and 26% disapproved. In April, just a month after the invasion, U.S. forces took Baghdad and Bush delivered his now infamous mission accomplished address. For the next eight years, U.S. forces battled Iraqis in a bloody, grinding, and largely unsuccessful war that led to sectarian violence and insurgency. war that led to sectarian violence and insurgency. Hussein was captured in 2003, found guilty of crimes against humanity, and was executed in 2006. In 2008, former President Barack Obama based his presidential campaign in part on opposition to the war and pulled the remaining American troops out of Iraq in 2011. But much of the damage had been done. Estimates on war-related Iraqi deaths run as high as 461,000,

Starting point is 00:05:47 but we know at least 200,000 Iraqis were killed, including roughly 100,000 civilians. 4,480 U.S. troops died and more than 32,000 were wounded, and the U.S. spent at least $806 billion on the war. Hussein was removed from power, but his exit left a power vacuum that has been fought over by warring factions ever since. Three years after the United States' withdrawal, ISIS conquered much of the country and American troops were sent back into Iraq and Syria. Today, roughly 2,500 American troops are stationed throughout Iraq as part of the United States' ongoing partnership with the Iraqi government. Americans now hold largely negative views of the war, with a 2019 Pew survey finding 62%

Starting point is 00:06:30 of Americans and 64% of U.S. veterans saying it wasn't worth it. With the anniversary this week, commentators from across the political spectrum have been writing about the war. Given the international significance of this story, today we are going to share some views from the left, right, and Iraq, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. Many liberals still regret the invasion of Iraq, though some argue the outcome is much more complicated than being a total failure. Some argue Iraq was about oil revenge in the military-industrial complex, calling it Bush's worst act as president.

Starting point is 00:07:21 Others say toppling Saddam Hussein had some positive impacts, even if Bush misled Americans about the justification for the war. In the Daily Beast, Freddie DeVos said the war was the worst of Bush's many terrible acts in a presidency that was one of the worst in American history. The war cost us at least $3 trillion, ruined America's credibility for a generation in much of the world, and killed 600,000 people. Yet these days, you could argue about politics every day for months without ever once bringing it up. It's politically inert. In many ways, the war is just gone, DeBoer wrote. People forget the

Starting point is 00:07:56 mandatory patriotism, the unquestioned militarism, and the sense of ambient fear as everyone kept expecting the next big attack. It was not about whether we had to harden our defenses, but how to do it. If we wanted to be particularly naive, we could ask why the reaction to 9-11 influenced the run-up to the Iraq war, given that none of the hijackers was Iraqi and that no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda had ever been found, Abor wrote. 9-11 pierced our feeling of invulnerability, and support for invading Iraq had everything to do with our anger. Yes, the war was about oil, about George H.W. Bush's previous battles with Saddam, and about perpetuating the military-industrial

Starting point is 00:08:37 complex. But it was also motivated by a simple, unadulterated desire for revenge. They were Arabs and Muslims, and a group of Arab Muslims had humiliated the United States. In CNN, Peter Bergen said there is little question that Saddam is one of the worst tyrants of the 20th century. He killed as many as 290,000 of his own people and launched wars against two of his neighbors, Iran and Kuwait, that conservatively killed a half a million more. So when Saddam was toppled by the Americans two decades ago, at least some Iraqis were happy. And today Iraq has made some strides to a more accountable political system compared to its neighbors in the Middle East. Iraq has

Starting point is 00:09:16 held several elections since the U.S. invasion in 2003 that were followed by peaceful transfers of power. But the incompetent American occupation of Iraq contributed to a civil war that tore the country apart, killing hundreds of thousands. 4,500 U.S. soldiers also died. The war also gave al-Qaeda a new lease of life. The group known as al-Qaeda in Iraq later morphed into ISIS, which seized vast amounts of Iraqi territory in 2014 and instituted a reign of terror, Bergen said. Today, Iraq should be one of the richest countries in the Middle East, but instead, endemic corruption has eaten away at the government institutions.

Starting point is 00:10:03 All right, that is it for the leftist saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many conservatives also regret the invasion of Iraq, though some say they think it was a net positive. Some argue the war didn't just cost hundreds of thousands of lives and destabilized the region, but was a gift to China's PR machine. Others say the arguments for invading don't hold up in hindsight, but disposing of Saddam was still worth the fight. In the American Conservative, Andrew J. Bisevich argued that China won the war by prudently avoiding any direct involvement. Looking past the fog of propaganda generated by Bush and his lieutenants, Operation Iraqi Freedom had almost nothing to do with

Starting point is 00:10:42 freeing Iraqis. Its actual purpose was to crush any doubts about who calls the shots in the Persian Gulf, Bosovich wrote. It was a response to the humiliation of 9-11 meant to teach an object lesson to any nation or group tempted to have a go at the United States. There weren't just the tangible costs, the thousands of U.S. dead, maimed, and mutilated, and the trillions of dollars expended, all without benefit, but the more difficult things to measure, the destabilization of the region and the poisoning of American politics. Put simply, the recklessness of the United States in embarking on this needless war contributed mightily to the emergence of ISIS and to Donald Trump's rise to national political prominence, he wrote. He also notes China recently brokered an agreement between

Starting point is 00:11:25 Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations, exploiting its own advantage, the mess created by the heavy-handed U.S. pursuit of militarized hegemony in the Persian Gulf. In the New York Times, Brett Stevens said 20 years on, I don't regret supporting the Iraq war. Most have disavowed it, Stephen said, and a few of the arguments are strong, like America's government being slow and wasteful and our inability to nation-build. But other arguments are weaker. One is that, failing to adequately anticipate the insurgency that followed the invasion, the U.S. abairs the brunt of moral blame for the misery Iraqis endured, Stephen said. In fact, Iraqis suffered horrifically under Hussein and

Starting point is 00:12:05 suffered horrifically under the insurgency, and the force that destroyed both was the U.S. military, with tremendous sacrifices by Iraqi security forces. American troops help Iraqis do so against ISIS to this day. Their courage and sacrifice should be saluted, not disparaged. Another weak argument is that Iraq wasn't a geopolitical threat. This ignores the horrors of the Iran-Iraq war, the rape of Kuwait, the Persian Gulf War, the Scud missile attacks on Israel, and the Kurdish refugee crisis, to say nothing of Saddam's genocidal assault on his own people, Stephen said. Hussein also repeatedly made real bids to acquire nuclear weapons. There was one indisputably real WMD in Iraq, Stephen said.

Starting point is 00:12:48 It was Hussein himself. Stephen still supports the decision to invade, not for the reasons given at the time, but on the baseline question of whether Iraq and the left here in the United States. And now a couple of perspectives from Iraq. and all through the house, not one person was stressing. Holla differently this year with DoorDash. Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book,

Starting point is 00:13:35 Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Iraqis are mostly critical of the U.S. actions during wartime, but there are differing opinions on the quality of life before and after Saddam. Some say they are still optimistic that toppling Saddam will have long-term positive impacts as Iraq begins to thrive. Others say the war ushered

Starting point is 00:14:15 in so much violence and horror that people long for the days of Saddam's firm authoritarian rule. In the Free Press, Faisal Saeed al-Mutar wrote about his experience in Iraq and eventually having to flee to the United States as a refugee. By the time his brother was killed, al-Mutar says he was desensitized to death and used to seeing dead bodies tossed in the street, mere feet from where the taxi picked me up. Many days I had to step over corpses on my way to school in the Al-Qadra district, he said. Yet, for all the chaos, for all the dislocation, for all the grief that will never leave me, I don't harbor any ill will toward America, he wrote. Before the war, al-Mutarr and 30 million others were living under Saddam,

Starting point is 00:14:56 who was the symbol of an ideology that was hateful and warlike. A man whose sons were known for picking out women at weddings, raping and killing them, and sending their corpses to their family, who would be killed if they complained. Maybe it sounds crazy, but he doesn't view this war as an unmitigated failure. It is hard to express what it means if you have lived under an authoritarian regime to experience freedom, he said. Having a chance to elect your leaders is better than having zero say in who governs you for life. Having a chance to speak freely leaders is better than having zero say in who governs you for life. Having a chance to speak freely is better than being hunted down for the sin of wrong-think.

Starting point is 00:15:33 Being able to defend yourself is better than being a people so utterly subjugated they will lose the will to fight. That is why he remains optimistic that one day he will be able to go back to his old home. In time, Gaith Abdul-Ahad said there were many ways to die in Baghdad. Killed by car bombs, taken out by militias working in tandem with security forces to target Sunnis, targeted by Sunni insurgents killing Shia and those deemed to be U.S. collaborators, translators and contractors and government employees were under fire, journalists and even cleaning women working for the Americans were kidnapped, American retaliation meant the fairly indiscriminate killing of civilians. Civilians also died at the hands of militias and insurgents

Starting point is 00:16:10 when they found themselves in the midst of the fighting, always the collateral damage of war, he said. It was not even a year after the toppling of Saddam that people, quote, started uttering the unthinkable that maybe life under Saddam had been better, end quote. At least then, we knew the parameters of fear and we knew how to survive. This reality was much worse than anything we could portray in the snippets of news and articles, and the real misery and bewilderment could never be captured and translated into words. When 1,000 U.S. soldiers died, a flurry of coverage came from Western media.

Starting point is 00:16:41 What was the critical benchmark for the number of Iraqi civilians killed? To this day, there is no accurate number of those killed through the sanctions, in the war, and in the violence that followed. All right, that is it for some opinions from the left, right, and Iraq, which brings us to my take. So, it's impossible to know where to begin or end. Reading about the Iraq War now evokes an odd combination of horror and anger and confusion and utter hopelessness. Reading the modern-day black-and-white takes full of 2020 hindsight is just confounding. There were no weapons of mass destruction, but was Bush lying or did our intelligence just get it wrong? Yes, our invasion led to decades of unspeakable horrors, untold deaths on the order of hundreds of thousands,

Starting point is 00:17:31 but are we certain world history tilts more toward justice, freedom, and peace if we hadn't? Of course, Americans regret the war now. How could we not? From where we're sitting, Iraq looks the same because from where we're sitting, we hardly understand or know it. Aside from the fact that a lot of Americans died, a lot of Iraqis died, we spent a lot of money there. From where we're sitting, Iraq looks the same, because from where we're sitting, we hardly understand or know it. Aside from the fact that a lot of Americans died, a lot of Iraqis died, and we spent a lot of money there. It's even more jarring to examine the contours of the invasion today in the context of what is happening in Ukraine. They are, of course, vastly different

Starting point is 00:18:10 wars in two very different countries that have vastly different connections, but there are parallels that jump off the page. Both the US and Russia invaded based on lies, WMDs and the quote-unquote threat of Ukraine. Both had media who repeated those lies uncritically, our mainstream press and Russia's state-owned media. And both had populations who bought the lies wholesale. And in both cases, opposition to the war was strong on the international stage. Of the American perspectives, I think Freddie De Boers, under what the left is saying, and Andrew Bosovich, under what the right is saying, resonated most for me. This war was about revenge, oil, and the military-industrial complex. It was about America running red-hot after the shock of 9-11, attempting to reassert

Starting point is 00:18:56 its dominance in a region where most Americans couldn't pick out Iraq or Afghanistan on a map. And today, the ramifications of that invasion are not just the tangible deaths. It gave birth to a bipartisan breed of isolationism, birthed more skepticism of the U.S. government, destabilized our politics and theirs, and ultimately opened the door for countries like China to supplant our influence where we failed so abjectly. As for the Iraqi perspective, there is deep and frustrating irony in how we discuss it. When the war began, many Americans believed we were doing right and projected those beliefs onto the Iraqis, who would assuredly welcome our presence and support our efforts to remove Saddam.

Starting point is 00:19:36 Today, many Americans assume all Iraqis must hate the United States and disavow the war because many Americans now believe we were wrong to invade. In truth, it's our perspective that has changed, but we are still simply projecting it onto the Iraqis as if they are a monolith of thought and feeling. Spend any time reading the many Iraqi perspectives on the war from people who lived through it, and you'll see it still shapes everyday life. But those perspectives, even in polling, vary widely. Today, younger Iraqis see some signs of hope, despite the incalculable damage done by the United States. Like many anti-establishment conservatives and progressive liberals, I view the Iraq war as an abject failure, the pinnacle

Starting point is 00:20:17 of what can go wrong when the United States is out for bloody revenge, motivated by greed, buttressed by hubris, insistent on ignoring its domestic issues, operating with unchecked war powers, and convinced we get to control the world. But I also know my life has only been marginally impacted by the war, if at all, and my opinion matters less and less as time goes on. This week, it's worth meditating not just on what it meant for the Iraqis who lived through it, but what it means for their future. Iraqis who lived through it, but what it means for their future. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to today's reader question. This one is from Dan in Marco Island, Florida. Dan said, I believe both parties should have to propose a budget at the same time,

Starting point is 00:20:59 even though this is not how the game has been played. Did Democrats disclose a budget for the years that Trump submitted his budget? So first of all, Dan, I agree with you. I think both parties should propose a budget every year so Americans can compare and contrast. Even better would be if we had more than two parties, but maybe that's an argument for another time. To answer your question, usually yes, parties will share counter proposals. Most often it happens when there is divided control of government, when one party controls the White House and another party controls one or both chambers of Congress. So if one party wins the White House and both chambers of Congress, there is not a lot of political upside to going through the work of proposing

Starting point is 00:21:38 a budget that you can't pass. You might as well just spend time criticizing the other side and getting what you can. When Trump was in office, Democrats did propose various spending bills and budget proposals. The Democratic-controlled House also passed spending bills, knowing that they were going to be rejected by Republicans and Trump, but using them as a baseline for negotiations. While Republicans have yet to share a budget proposal to counteract Biden's, they will, and I assume negotiations will begin in earnest once they do. All right, next up is our Blind Spot Report. Once a week, we present the Blind Spot Report from our partners over at Ground News, an app that tells you the bias of news coverage and

Starting point is 00:22:19 what stories people on each side are missing. Many on the left missed a story about a CNN correspondent who was reporting on street crime in San Francisco when someone broke into her what stories people on each side are missing. Many on the left missed the story about a CNN correspondent who was reporting on street crime in San Francisco when someone broke into her car. Many on the right missed the story about California entering a 10-year partnership with a drug maker to produce $30 insulin for residents. All right, next up is our under the radar section. A wave of state-sponsored cyber attacks by China have been evading common cybersecurity tools and enabling them to burrow into government and business networks to spy on victims for years without detection. Researchers from Google's

Starting point is 00:23:00 Mandian division said they are finding hacks that aren't typical targets of espionage, targeting systems at the edge of networks, including sometimes firewalls themselves, and then working their way in. The attacks routinely exploit previously undiscovered flaws and represent a new level of ingenuity and sophistication from China, the Wall Street Journal reported. There's a link to that story in today's episode description. There's a link to that story in today's episode description. And next up is our numbers section. The number of days the United States expected it would take to destroy Iraqi forces and topple Saddam Hussein was 125. The number of years the Iraq war actually lasted was eight. The estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed in conflict

Starting point is 00:23:45 between 2003 and 2022, according to the Iraq Body Count, is 209,982. The estimated number of civilian deaths due to the war, according to the Lancet, is about 600,000. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in 2014 in ISIS attacks was 20,218. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in 2014 in ISIS attacks was 20,218. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in 2006 during the U.S. occupation was 29,526. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story today. For the sixth year in a row, Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world, according to the World Happiness Report. Over the course of three years, data is gathered from 150 countries, measuring things like gross domestic product per capita, which indicates financial resources, health, social support, sense of freedom, generosity, and a country's level of corruption.

Starting point is 00:24:40 According to the report, the 10 happiest countries in order are Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and New Zealand. The United States also ranks high among the countries at number 15. Deseret has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to repandvote.com slash membership and become a paying subscriber. We'll be right back here tomorrow. Same time.

Starting point is 00:25:12 Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by Zosia Warpea. Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who created our podcast logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.tangle.com. T'was the season of chaos and all through the house, not one person was stressing.

Starting point is 00:26:06 Holla differently this year with DoorDash. Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported

Starting point is 00:26:44 across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Tangle - The Iraq War anniversary.

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