By John Grant
Who exactly is responsible for US casualties in Iraq during the Iraq War? The question has been raised thanks to President Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian General Qessim Suleimani.
On January 13, the New York Times published a front-page story about a lawsuit filed against Iran in federal court by US veterans and veteran families; it charges Iran with wounding or killing these men. The crux of the lawsuit is that the explosive devices that killed and maimed these soldiers were designed by Iran’s Quds Force led by General Suleimani. Whether this is true or not, the allegation has been used to argue the general’s assassination by a drone was justified. On the day he was killed Soleimani was reportedly to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi to advance a fledgling peace dialogue with Saudi Arabia. Thus, Democrats and other Americans concerned about avoiding future wars should be arguing the Suleimani drone hit was a criminal act to thwart peace negotiations.
In 1980, Iraq initiated a war with its much larger neighbor Iran that like a runway train stretched into an incredibly gruesome and bloody eight-year war in which the US allied with Iraq and supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons and intelligence; over a million people died in that war. Next, there was the Gulf War in which the US turned on its ally Saddam Hussein. 9/11 happened and the United States invaded and occupied Afghanistan, the smaller, weaker neighbor to Iran’s east. In 2003, the most powerful nation in the world, then, chose to send a huge army halfway around the world to bomb, invade and occupy Iraq, Iran’s smaller neighbor to the west. The US wrecked the Arab city of Baghdad. While many Americans are ignorant of the geography, Iranians knew that these US decisions left their country boxed in by its very powerful worst enemy.
In 1953, CIA and British intelligence operators overthrew the legitimately elected government of Iran and installed the Shah, who became a bloody tyrant who turned Iran into a US proxy in the Middle East; it already had Israel filling that role. The indisputable fact is the United States has militarily dominated the Iranian people since the 1953 coup. At the beginning, the issue was control of Iranian oil. By 1979, the Shah’s brutality had pushed opposition to the level of critical mass and the so-called Islamic Revolution threw out the Shah. This led to the hostage crisis that destroyed Jimmy Carter’s presidential career.
To expect the sovereign nation of Iran to passively accept United States military action on its eastern and western borders and not to look out for its own interests is willfully naïve and arrogantly hypocritical. Unfortunately, this is typical of US war-making behavior…
For the rest of this article by JOHN GRANT in ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, six-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site, please go to: https://thiscantbehappening.net/iran-is-not-responsible-for-us-dead-in-iraq/