ACTION ALERT: All US Troops Out of Iraq Now
World BEYOND War and Action Network
(March 19, 2020) — The mass killing and destruction of Iraq that began on March 19, 2003 —17 years ago — killed over 1.4 million Iraqis (assessed by the most scientifically respected measures available).
While US troops have been reduced in Iraq, they have never been removed. In January, the Iraqi Parliament voted that all US troops should leave. The US government has refused to leave, and has instead proposed installing (“defensive”) missiles in Iraq targeting Iran.
While Iran is depicted in US media as an evil enemy, the US military does not claim that Iran is a threat to the actual United States, only to US troops near Iran and US “interests.” The refusal to leave and the decision to install missiles endanger Iraq, Iran, the entire region, and a world at risk of nuclear escalation and climate collapse that cannot afford any more wars.
The terrorist attack on Baghdad 17 years ago, which was intended to “shock and awe” people into terror and submission, followed months of pro-war propaganda in US corporate media and from the US government.
Senate Foreign Relations Chair Joe Biden promoted the White House’s lies about weapons of mass destruction, pushed hard for war, and orchestrated hearings that excluded dissenting voices.
“Worth the Price: Joe Biden and the Launch of the Iraq War”
Many were fooled or claimed to be. Donald Trump’s last public comment on the war before it started was that he supported it.
It is now popular in US politics to deny having supported the war, even to claim to have ended it. But there is virtually no discussion of the moral and practical necessity of complying with the wishes of the Iraqi government – wishes that line up with a demand that many of us have been making for exactly 17 years – to withdraw all US troops and mercenaries and bases and weapons from Iraqi soil.
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Background:
• CNN: “Iraqi Parliament Votes for Plan to End US
Troop Presence in Iraq After Soleimani Killing”
• Mideast Eye: “US Offers Iraq Partial Pullback”
• Newsweek: “US Sending Missile Defense [sic] to Iraq”
• David Swanson: “Ever More Shocked, Never Yet Awed”
• FactCheck.org: “Donald Trump and the Iraq War”