After
14 years of War on Terror the West is great at fomenting barbarism
and creating failed states
by
Vincent Emanuele
For the last
several years, people around the world have asked, "Where did
ISIS come from?" Explanations vary, but largely focus on
geopolitical (U.S. hegemony), religious (Sunni-Shia), ideological
(Wahhabism) or ecological (climate refugees) origins. Many
commentators and even former military officials correctly suggest
that the war in Iraq is primarily responsible for unleashing the
forces we now know as ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, etc. Here, hopefully I can
add some useful reflections and anecdotes.
Mesopotamian
Nightmares
When I was
stationed in Iraq with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 2003-2005, I
didn't know what the repercussions of the war would be, but I knew
there would be a reckoning. That retribution, otherwise known as
blowback, is currently being experienced around the world (Iraq,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, France, Tunisia,
California, and so on), with no end in sight.
Back then, I
routinely saw and participated in obscenities. Of course, the
wickedness of the war was never properly recognized in the West.
Without question, antiwar organizations attempted to articulate the
horrors of the war in Iraq, but the mainstream media, academia and
political-corporate forces in the West never allowed for a serious
examination of the greatest war crime of the 21st century.
As we
patrolled the vast region of Iraq's Al-Anbar Province, throwing MRE
(Meal Ready to Eat) trash out of our vehicles, I never contemplated
how we would be remembered in history books; I simply wanted to make
some extra room in my HUMVEE. Years later, sitting in a Western
Civilization history course at university, listening to my professor
talk about the cradle of civilization, I thought of MRE garbage on
the floor of the Mesopotamian desert.
Examining
recent events in Syria and Iraq, I can't help but think of the small
kids my fellow marines would pelt with Skittles from those MRE
packages. Candies weren't the only objects thrown at the children:
water bottles filled with urine, rocks, debris, and various other
items were thrown as well. I often wonder how many members of ISIS
and various other terrorist organizations recall such events?
Moreover, I
think about the hundreds of prisoners we took captive and tortured in
makeshift detention facilities staffed by teenagers from Tennessee,
New York and Oregon. I never had the misfortune of working in the
detention facility, but I remember the stories. I vividly remember
the marines telling me about punching, slapping, kicking, elbowing,
kneeing and head-butting Iraqis. I remember the tales of sexual
torture: forcing Iraqi men to perform sexual acts on each other while
marines held knives against their testicles, sometimes sodomizing
them with batons.
However,
before those abominations could take place, those of us in infantry
units had the pleasure of rounding up Iraqis during night raids,
zip-tying their hands, black-bagging their heads and throwing them in
the back of HUMVEEs and trucks while their wives and kids collapsed
to their knees and wailed. Sometimes, we would pick them up during
the day. Most of the time they wouldn't resist. Some of them would
hold hands while marines would butt-stroke the prisoners in the face.
Once they arrived at the detention facility, they would be held for
days, weeks, and even months at a time. Their families were never
notified. And when they were released, we would drive them from the
FOB (Forward Operating Base) to the middle of the desert and release
them several miles from their homes.
After we cut
their zip-ties and took the black bags off their heads, several of
our more deranged marines would fire rounds from their AR-15s into
their air or ground, scaring the recently released captives. Always
for laughs. Most Iraqis would run, still crying from their long
ordeal at the detention facility, hoping some level of freedom
awaited them on the outside. Who knows how long they survived. After
all, no one cared. We do know of one former U.S. prisoner who
survived: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS.
Amazingly,
the ability to dehumanize the Iraqi people reached a crescendo after
the bullets and explosions concluded, as many marines spent their
spare time taking pictures of the dead, often mutilating their
corpses for fun or poking their bloated bodies with sticks for some
cheap laughs. Because iPhones weren't available at the time, several
marines came to Iraq with digital cameras. Those cameras contain an
untold history of the war in Iraq, a history the West hopes the world
forgets. That history and those cameras also contain footage of
wanton massacres and numerous other war crimes, realities the Iraqis
don't have the pleasure of forgetting.
Unfortunately,
I could recall countless horrific anecdotes from my time in Iraq.
Innocent people were not only routinely rounded-up, tortured and
imprisoned, they were also incinerated by the hundreds of thousands,
some studies suggest by the millions.
Only the
Iraqis understand the pure evil that's been waged on their nation.
They remember the West's role in the eight year war between Iraq and
Iran; they remember Clinton's sanctions in the 1990s, policies which
resulted in the deaths of well over 500,000 people, largely women and
children. Then, 2003 came and the West finished the job. Today, Iraq
is an utterly devastated nation. The people are poisoned and maimed,
and the natural environment is toxic from bombs laced with depleted
uranium. After fourteen years of the War on Terror, one thing is
clear: the West is great at fomenting barbarism and creating failed
states.
Living
with Ghosts
The warm and
glassy eyes of young Iraqi children perpetually haunt me, as they
should. The faces of those I've killed, or at least those whose
bodies were close enough to examine, will never escape my thoughts.
My nightmares and daily reflections remind me of where ISIS comes
from and why, exactly, they hate us. That hate, understandable yet
regrettable, will be directed at the West for years and decades to
come. How could it be otherwise?
Again, the
scale of destruction the West has inflicted in the Middle East is
absolutely unimaginable to the vast majority of people living in the
developed world. This point can never be overstated as Westerners
consistently and naively ask, "Why do they hate us?"
In the end,
wars, revolutions and counterrevolutions take place and subsequent
generations live with the results: civilizations, societies,
cultures, nations and individuals survive or perish. That's how
history works. In the future, how the West deals with terrorism will
largely depend on whether or not the West continues their terroristic
behavior. The obvious way to prevent future ISIS-style organizations
from forming is to oppose Western militarism in all its dreadful
forms: CIA coups, proxy wars, drone strikes, counterinsurgency
campaigns, economic warfare, etc.
Meanwhile,
those of us who directly participated in the genocidal military
campaign in Iraq will live with the ghosts of war.
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