It was mid-March 2003, our final exams were done, we are getting ready for the commencement exercises and our summer vacation begins before getting ready for the next school year. However, all of our excitement for the summer vacation got easily overshadowed by the biggest news the world witnessed.
It was March 20, 2003, when the US and UK forces stormed Iraq and unleash hell against Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein's command. This was known as The Iraq War and this is the war that forever changed Iraq in the blink of an eye.
How did this mess start? It's a long story if you ask me but the tragic events of September 11, 2001, drove then-US President George W. Bush, the son of George H. W. Bush who initiated the Gulf War in the early 90s, the starting point of the conflict between the US and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, into overdrive. He launched an all-out war in Afghanistan, fighting against Al-Qaeda. He even accused Iran, Iraq, and North Korea of breeding terrorism and labeled them the "axis of evil" during his 2002 State of the Nation Address as well, and then this.
Unhappy about Iraq's status ever since Saddam Hussein's rule survived the Gulf War of 1991, the George W Bush administration and a group of Republican lawmakers are determined to oust Hussein once and for all, even when facing condemnation from the global community. Although he has nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks, the administration claims that Hussein has developed an arsenal of "weapons of mass destruction" and was seeking to acquire nukes. Of course, most of the assertions turned out to be false but the US decided to unleash hell on Iraq anyway and the US Congress passed a resolution authorizing the president to use force if necessary.
A month before the US launched an attack in Iraq, the whole world expressed condemnation on Bush's war on Iraq with some saying that this war deflected attention from the war against Al-Qaeda. Almost the entire United Nations voted against a "pre-emptive strike" against Iraq but the US decided to go to war anyway with a little help from the United Kingdom, which was under the administration of Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bush gave Hussein an ultimatum to leave Iraq by the 20th of March or face what the US President called the "Coalition of the Willing".
With that, the Iraq War began on the 20th of March, 2003. American and British troops stormed Baghdad which lasted for almost a quarter. The Iraq War of 2003 has similar effects to last year's Russian Invasion of Ukraine with gas prices skyrocketing to historic levels and inflation hitting historic records. Mind you, unlike the war in Ukraine, the war in Iraq ended quickly with American troops capturing Saddam Hussein and being put on trial before an Iraqi court. Three years later, Hussein was found guilty of killing Iraqis during his rule and was sentenced to death.
Moments after the capture of Saddam Hussein, President Bush declared victory in the Iraq War but all that victory was overshadowed by the anarchy Iraqis faced in the aftermath of the war, not to mention a civil war between the Shiite and Sunni Muslims to name a few. This is the worst aftermath Iraq felt since the US/UK-led offense that led to Saddam Hussein's downfall from power.
Two decades have passed since the war in Iraq, but the stains forever haunted the hearts and minds of Iraqis today. Not only that, it's a grim reminder of what happens when a world superpower violates international law and pushes forward with their so-called agenda, much like China disregarding the 2016 UNCLOS ruling that favored the West Philippine Sea and carrying on deploying Chinese ships across the sea as well as the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine that got the ICC issued arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin.
Had the international community interfered, this wouldn't happen two decades ago but because of ongoing threats, the lines between war and peace have forever been blurred. Learning from history, it seems that a certain saying from a certain something is right all along; peace is nothing more than a fantasy or an illusion. How can the world achieve "peace" when the whole world's gone to war? Are we stuck in the Infinity War? Not the Marvel kind but the real-life Infinity War or Infinite Warfare as you like to call it but still is there an ending to this Infinite Warfare?
Sadly, there's no end to this Infinite Warfare because of the political warlords ruling the world. Unless the international community decided to free the world from the so-called political warlords, the Infinite Warfare goes on until the earth is gone too soon. Sigh...
Guess the Bible's words regarding ongoing wars are right all along but for us, it's never too late. There's still time to make the change. There's still hope out there. There's still light shining toward the never-ending darkness. There's still...you and me who can make a difference.
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