- 18 months after the September 11 attacks, while the United States was bogged down in Afghanistan, George W. Bush decided to attack Iraq, which was not involved in the conflict. The American president believes that Iraq supports terrorism. But, unable to prove the presence of terrorists, the Bush administration and the CIA set up a real state lie, claiming before the UN that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
- Most countries oppose this war, which seems more motivated by the desire for revenge against Saddam Hussein and profit than by humanist pretensions. The United States and its British allies are therefore unilaterally engaging in a disastrous war for Iraq as well as for the United States.
March 19, 2003 - December 18, 2011
Characters
George W. Bush
Tony Blair
Saddam Hussein
Barack Obama
Procedure
From 2002, the vast majority of the international community opposed going to war, and only Tony Blair's England agreed to support the United States.
On March 19, 2003, the Americans formally declared war on Iraq, and the regime collapsed in early April. They think they will be welcomed as heroes in Baghdad and establish a Western democratic model, but the army commits blunders after blunders and quickly attracts the hostility of the population.
On December 13, 2003, Saddam Hussein, the region's last secular leader, was found. He was hanged on December 30, 2006.
On March 8, 2004, a new (provisional) Constitution was passed. Arousing many disagreements, it stirs up tensions. The Southern Shiites form a guerrilla and take control of Baghdad; the Sunnis took up arms in turn, it was civil war. For their part, the Kurds of the North East take advantage of the instability to install an autonomous territory, reviving the claims of the Turkish Kurds.
The Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, Daesh) thrives on the divisions of this failed state.
The oil resources of the country make it possible to finance the war of the various factions.
Towards the end of the decade, Iraq was ruined, in terrible sanitary conditions and instability spread to Syria, Libya and then the entire region.
The United States is overwhelmed by murderous guerrillas, torn apart by internal struggles, and is bogged down on a second front much more complex than it had imagined. Many scandals linked to the civilian victims of the bombings but also to torture (Abou Grahib prison) led to a strong popular rejection of this war, close to a second Vietnam.
On November 17, 2008, an “Agreement for the withdrawal of foreign troops” was signed. This withdrawal was carried out by the United States in 2011:they left behind them a ruined and divided country, in the midst of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Consequences
- The Iraq War left 4,500 American dead and between 100,000 and 300,000 Iraqi dead, mostly civilians. This war, unjust in many respects, reinforced the negative image of the United States in the East and fueled Islamist terrorism.
- The development of ISIL destabilized the whole region, leading more or less directly to the wars in Libya and Syria. In 2014, the EEIL took the city of Mosul and made it its capital.