An elderly man sits speaking incoherently amid the rubble of a building in the Mosul al-Jadida neighborhood of Mosul, Iraq, on March 24. (Alice Martins for The Washington Post)
Ultimately, this is what GWB’s war in Iraq has resulted in. Destruction, misery, death, and ISIS. The die was cast in March of 2003 when the United States invaded Iraq under false pretense, toppled the Baath government, and created regional instability. Nothing has been the same since. Trump’s campaign promise of defeating ISIS quickly is a pipe dream. Middle East instability, bringing about more destruction, misery, and death will continue. And, the West will only be reviled all the more by the eastern world.
Continuing to think in the same box, refusing to acknowledge our responsibility for heavily contributing to Middle Eastern instability, and continuing on our present course will serve only to perpetuate war. The only winners will be the United States Military Industrial Complex. Hate begets more hate, violence begets more violence, and war begets more war. Humankind, as advanced as we have become, remains stupid. All of us…
From The Washington Post a story abut misery and despair in Iraq and Syria.
MOSUL, Iraq — A sharp rise in the number of civilians reported killed in U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria is spreading panic, deepening mistrust and triggering accusations that the United States and its partners may be acting without sufficient regard for lives of noncombatants.
The increase comes as local ground forces backed by air support from a U.S.-led coalition close in on the Islamic State’s two main urban bastions — Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.
In front-line neighborhoods in western Mosul, families described cowering in basements for weeks as bombs rained down around them and the Islamic State battled from their rooftops. Across the border in Raqqa, residents desperately trying to flee before an offensive begins are being blocked by the militants, who frequently use civilians as human shields.
Throughout his election campaign, President Trump pledged to target Islamic State militants more aggressively, criticizing the U.S. air campaign for being too “gentle” and asking for a reassessment of battlefield rules. The United States has denied there has been any shift and defended the conduct of its campaign.
But figures compiled by monitoring organizations and interviews with residents paint an increasingly bloody picture, with the number of casualties in March already surpassing records for a single month.
The worst alleged attack was in Mosul, where rescue teams are still digging out bodies after what residents describe as a hellish onslaught in the Mosul al-Jadida neighborhood during the battle to retake it two weeks ago. Iraqi officials and residents say as many as 200 died in U.S.-led strikes, with more than 100 bodies recovered from a single building. The wooden carts that residents use to carry vegetables and other wares in the once busy market area instead ferried out cadavers recovered from the rubble last week.
The U.S.-led coalition, which has acknowledged carrying out a strike against militants in the area, says it is investigating the reports. “If we did it, and I’d say there’s at least a fair chance that we did, it was an unintentional accident of war,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the top U.S. commander for Iraq and Syria, said Tuesday at the Pentagon.
Amnesty International on Tuesday said the coalition was not taking sufficient precautions to prevent civilian deaths in Mosul, in a “flagrant violation” of international humanitarian law.
It was just one of numerous incidents across Iraq and Syria in recent weeks that have raised concerns that the United States has flouted rules requiring it to protect civilians. In both countries, politicians and activists say the high numbers of deaths are spreading alarm among civilians and sowing distrust of the U.S.-backed campaign advancing toward their homes.
“People used to feel safe when the American planes were in the sky, because they knew they didn’t hit civilians,” said Hussam Essa, a founder of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which monitors violence in Raqqa province. “They were only afraid of the Russian and regime planes. But now they are very afraid of the American airstrikes.” American planes are “targeting everywhere,” he said.
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“The scale of the destruction is huge, and we are reeling from the number of alleged cases, not just in Mosul but in Raqqa, too,” said Chris Woods, the director of Airwars. “Casualty numbers from western Mosul are absolutely shocking. In Syria it’s a car here, a family there. It happens every day.”
The group said in a statement last week that it had stopped monitoring Russian strikes in Syria, in order to focus on accusations linked to the U.S.-led coalition, saying its organization is overwhelmed. In the first two months of the year, U.S. strikes were responsible for more civilian casualties than Russian strikes for the first time since Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015, according to Airwars figures. Russian strikes are now climbing again as a partial cease-fire collapses.
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Could the human race be nearing The Eve of Destruction?
It seems the more things change the more they stay the same. Only the geographics change. But now it’s global.