Lessons from the Iraqi-American War

It seems that no lessons have been learned from the Iraqi-American War, which has dragged on for five years now.

It is said that Hermann Goering complained to the Nuremburg tribunal that they were on trial because they lost the war. And the answer was that they were not on trial because they lost the war, but because they started it.

clipped from www.straightgoods.ca after five years of war, it seems that no real lesson has been learned. Indeed, there's a refusal to even acknowledge why it was wrong to invade Iraq. Sure, there's lots of criticism of the Bush administration for poor war planning, and for squandering US lives and "treasure". All this is true, but it skirts a more fundamental problem — one that was barely mentioned in all the fifth-year anniversary commentaries last week — that the invasion was a war of aggression carried out in defiance of international law. This is not a mere technicality. According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, set up by the Allies after World War II: "War is essentially an evil thing... To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime." None of this seems to concern Senator Hillary Clinton, who stands a good chance of being the "anti-war" candidate in the US presidential election. Of course, Clinton voted in 2002 to authorize an invasion of Iraq.

And Goering's is the lesson that many US supporters of the Iraqi-American War have failed to learn. They like to talk about "appeasement", but forget that in the 1930s the ones who were being appeased were the aggressors. In the case of the Iraqi-American War the appeasers were people like Tony Blair, who appeased George Bush, and did not stand up to his plans for aggression.

And Hillary Clinton apparently went along with her husband's bombing of Yugoslavia.