Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Conclusion

(See parts 1-6 below)

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.

One result of the change in U.S. government policy toward Iraq after August 1990 has been continued suffering for most people in Iraq since 1991. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by the Pentagon's 1991 attack on Iraq, for example. Another 1 million Iraqis died as a result of the U.S. government-organized economic embargo between 1990 and 2001, according to a United Nations estimate.

Continued U.S. military attacks on Iraq and U.S. military intervention in Iraq's internal affairs has been a bipartisan policy of the U.S. White Male Corporate Power Structure's political duopoly. The Democratic Clinton Administration, for example, launched 27 cruise missiles against Iraq in 1996 and 400 cruise missiles against Iraq in December 1998. In addition, Clinton also ordered 600 air raids that killed many people in Iraq in December 1998.

More recently, of course, the Republican Bush Administration’s war machine attacked and occupied Iraq in March, 2003, under the false pretext that the Iraqi government was developing "weapons of mass destruction." Tens of thousands of Iraqis and over 4,500 U.S. occupation troops have died as a result of this latest U.S. military intervention in Iraq. Yet in March 2009, the U.S. military occupation force of nearly 150,000 troops and 200,000 private contractors has still not been withdrawn from Iraq by the Democratic Obama Administration..

But isn't it about time that the people in Iraq were finally allowed to determine for themselves the direction that the people's history of their country should go?