Retrospective Latent Thoughts

"Our inability, unwillingness to put the hammer down in terms of security in the country allowed chaos to ensue, which gave rise to ISIS."

"]The invasion] might be as big a strategic error [as Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which served to help bring Germany to defeat during the Second World War."

Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state, U.S.

"It was worth it because the decision was not simply: 'Does Saddam pose a WMD threat in 2003'?"

"Another question was: 'Would he pose a WMD threat five years later'? To which I think the answer clearly was 'yes'"

"The worst mistake made after the overthrow of Saddam ... was withdrawing in 2011."

John Bolton, Trump administration era National Security Adviser

"We just decided we didn't want to do this stuff anymore. That began ... with president Obama declaring ... he was going to pull all forces out."

"These were U.S. decisions not forced by a collapsing economy, not forced by demonstrators in the streets."

"Our leadership just decided we didn't want to do it any more. And that started the alarm bells ringing ... in the Gulf."

Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador in Iraq

 

"The net result ... has been bad for U.S. leverage, bad for U.S. influence, bad for our ability to partner with countries in the region."

Jim Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, Obama administration

Lesleigh Coyer, 25, of Saginaw, Michigan, lies down in front of the grave of her brother, Ryan Coyer, who served with the U.S. Army in both Iraq and Afghanistan, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia in this March 11, 2013, file photo. Coyer died of complications from an injury sustained in Afghanistan. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/Files UNREST OBITUARY)

 

There was the American withdrawal from VietNam as a national trauma, the withdrawal from Afghanistan as a national shame, and there was the invasion and eventual withdrawal from Iraq that had unforeseen and unanticipated consequences that time has been incapable of healing. American intervention in foreign situations, particularly that of violent conflict has often left it tired and uninspired, demoralized, its determination moribund, leading to inglorious withdrawal. 

 

Hindsight is meant to be helpful in teaching lessons, but some lessons simply fail to resonate, to caution that similar outcomes in dissimilar situations may repeat themselves endlessly. When the United States decided to invade Iraq and remove a tyrannical mass murderer little did the invading forces' executive politicians who made that decision imagine that the ultimate empowering would be to the Islamic Republic of Iran's advantage.

 

And nor did the Bush administration comprehend that in a tribal, sectarian Arab landscape ancient enmities would be violently unleashed with the removal of the tyrant that kept them in check under his clenched fist. And never would any American administration believe that occupying Iraq for no other choice left to them to continue attempting to tamp down Islamist terrorism, would eventually cost them both a loss of face and of influence.

 

When Saddam Hussein's minority Sunni rule came to its final stumbling end to be replaced with a majority Shi'ite government, Iran's Ayatollahs beamed with pleasant anticipation of the removal of an enemy with whom a sustained and deadly war was fought, to be replaced by a regime compatible with its own. Iran's plans to influence states across the Levant was given a good head-start for which they will be eternally grateful, expressed by admiring shouts such as "Death to America!".

 

Iraq war widow Sheryl McIlvaine visits the grave of her husband, U.S. Marine Sgt. James R. McIlvaine, in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, in this October 19, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/Larry Downing/Files

 

When U.S troops were withdrawn in 2011 a vacuum was left in Iraq quickly entered by the Islamic State militants who seized a third of both Iraq and Syria for their Caliphate. Gulf Arab states shuddered when they realized with reluctance they could no longer rely on the protective arm of the United States. In 2014 former President Obama returned some troops to Iraq, A year later he deployed to Syria; at present 2,500 U.S. troops remain in Iraq and 900 in Syria. Mired, as good a word as any.

 

There to continue opposing Islamic State terrorists active as well from North Africa to Afghanistan, steeply, deeply entrenched as Islam's most fervent and vicious jihadists. And then there are the considerable, actually massive costs resulting from U.S. involvement in Iraq and Syria. Estimates published by the "Costs of War" project at Brown University put the price tag for America for the wars in Iraq and Syria at a whopping $1.79 trillion. That includes Pentagon and State Department spending, veterans' care and interest on debt financing for the conflicts.

American military deaths for the past two decades are put at 4,599, with an estimated total death of Iraqi and Syrian civilians, military, police, opposition fighters, media and others coming in at a total of 5500,000 to 584,000; staggering numbers no price can be placed on. This number does not include indirect deaths from disease, displacement or starvation. 

As for American credibility, the decision taken by President Bush to invade based on exaggerated, ultimately erroneous intelligence of weapons of mass destruction was a grave error in judgment. According to war advocate John Bolton, even though errors were made by Washngton, by failing to deploy sufficient troops and administering Iraq rather than swiftly handing that over to Iraqis, removing Saddam justified the costs.

The 2003 invasion didn't immediately undermine American influence in the Gulf, according to Ryan Crocker, but the 2011 withdrawal pushed Arab states in part to begin hedging their bets. Waning U.S. influence can be seen most latterly in China brokering the re-establishment of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia two bitter regional antagonists in terms of power and sectarian rivalries.

Whether President Obama's decision to withdraw tracking a timeline laid out by the Bush administration, reflected an American inability to secure immunity for American troops backed by the Iraqi parliament is a debate raging still among former officials. According to John Bolton, removing Saddam was value given to the cost. Armitage on the other hand responded "FUBAR", a military acronym standing for "Fouled up beyond all recognition", when he was asked the first word coming to mind relating to the invasion and its aftermath.

U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman HM1 Richard Barnett, assigned to the 1st Marine Division, holds an Iraqi child in central Iraq in this March 29, 2003 file photo. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Justice: Never Too Late To Start

"It means a lot to me because I have a feeling that justice is happening."

"It's a small step toward the justice we hope will be achieved: accountability for all those who committed violations [of human rights], including the criminals who killed my son."

Mariam Alhallah, Syrian refugee in Germany

 

"It's hard to talk about justice given that hundreds of thousands of people have been tortured and tens of thousands have died as a result."

"International criminal justice, universal jurisdiction always comes too late and it's never enough but… I would say it's an important step forward."

Wolfgang Kaleck, European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights

Syrians stood outside the court in Koblenz clutching photos of victims of the civil war    Getty Images

"For me, this is the first step in a very long way towards justice."   

"[Many stories have not been heard]. Either because they are still detained now - while we're talking, they're suffering torture and horrible situations in the detention centres. Or because they were murdered."   

"[And then], there were those who died as they tried to reach Europe, drowning at sea or freezing on Europe's borders."

Wassim Mukdad, Syrian refugee in Germany

Twenty-four survivors were co-plaintiffs in the case including Wassim Mukdad (L) and Hussein Ghrer (R) Getty Images

 

Anwar Raslan, an ex-intelligence officer for the Syrian Alawite regime of President Bashar al-Assad, -- where a Shiite minority rules over a Sunni majority, and raised a protest movement to a civil war where the regime barrel-bombed and chemical-bombed its Syrian population, killing an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people creating millions of refugees fleeing state-ordered military violence to quell a revolt of mistreated Sunni civilians -- was found guilty of murder, rape and crimes against humanity in a German court on Thursday.

Colonel Anwar Raslan had exited Syria, removing himself from the Syrian military, jointed the opposition, abandoning his country to seek refuge elsewhere, and ended up in Germany after his defection in 2012, being granted asylum in Germany in 2014. An investigation by German authorities of backgrounds of some of the estimated 800,000 Syrian refugees that Germany had welcomed in a mass shift of populations under duress, saw him arrested and stand trial.

It is a trial that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while denying that Syria had committed war crimes against its Sunni population, has watched with curiosity, obviously interested in the outcome. It is the West that was aghast at the criminal violence the Syrian regime inflicted on its people. And although Sunni Arab states in the Middle East were displeased with the violence that left half of Syria's population homeless, none chose to intervene, though President al-Assad was in bad odour with the region's Arab League. 

 

The Arab League now seems prepared to welcome him back into the fold.

Anwar Rasland was found guilty of 27 counts of murder, rape and sexual assault that took place at a Damascus prison operated by a unit of the regime's security services that he happened to be the head of. Germany's universal jurisdiction laws, allowing courts to proceed with prosecutions of crimes against humanity committed anywhere outside Germany led to this prosecution.

The UN International Criminal Court has been hands-off in prosecuting any within the Syrian regime, including Bashar al-Assad, because of the protective intervention of two of the permanent members of the UN Security Council; Russia and China. Making an example of Syria in respect of its horrendous persecution and lethal violence hurled at its dissenting population would headlight similar crimes committed by both China and Russia.

Supported by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, German prosecutors had gathered evidence from close to fifty Syrians since 2015, who had survived torture in Syrian prisons and who now live in Germany. They recounted truly terrible experiences where detainees were beaten, doused in cold water, raped, hung from ceilings for hours. Their fingernails were torn out, and torturers administered electric shocks.

The agonized screams of people being tortured rang out through the prisons constantly. Detainees spoke of their attackers in possession of specialized "tools" of torture, people whose sadistic streaks gave them huge enjoyment in the power of life and death they had over their fellow citizens in a sectarian-opposition conflict of uneven proportions; unarmed citizens languishing under the brutality of 'security' personnel at the orders of the state regime.

Ex-officer jailed for Syrian war crimes after landmark German trial    Reuters

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