Britain is receiving blow after blow these days. First, the British people decided to pull their country out of the European Union. This was then followed by threats from the Scots and the Northern Irish to pull out of the United Kingdom.
Just as the dust started to settle down, England bade farewell to Euro 2016 in France when they lost to tiny Iceland, a result that was seen as a disaster equal to pulling out of the EU… But that is not all.
Now a report prepared by Sir John Chilcot, an official inquiry, has shattered British confidence and has shown that the invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain 13 years ago was a great mistake based on lies and deception and has served to ruin Iraq, divide it into pieces, push the Shiites into the laps of the Iranians, create DAESH and eliminate Saddam Hussein.
But for the one Saddam Hussein that was removed, another 1,000 Saddam’s have emerged. It has also led to the groundwork that has pushed neighboring Syria into utter chaos…
Then-U.S. President George W. Bush and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair today are trying to justify what they have done. Up to now, nearly a million Iraqis have died because of the mess these two created and nearly 5 million people have been displaced.
The two have being justifying themselves by saying Saddam was a tyrant and had to be deposed of. But what they have created and the mess they have left behind is unforgiveable.
The Chilcot report shows that while the legal basis for the war was “far from satisfactory” it also shows that the British had no plans to build a new Iraq after the invasion. In view of the current events, the same is valid for the Americans who have left a devastated country in total collapse.
This columnist was in Iraq on and off from 2002 until 2007 and has seen the developments in the post-Saddam era with deep concern. While nation-building and creating democratic institutions may have been a serious problem in Baghdad, it could have been achieved in most of the country in Northern Iraq, where there was no violence.
Yet the Americans and the British did nothing. The Kurds did their own brand of nation-building, but in a Middle Eastern manner, and thus ended up with the current mess in Northern Iraq with the Kurdistan Regional Government, which currently faces nightmares of all kinds…
Today Iraq is being run by Shiite feudal lords controlled by Iran, one third of the country has been invaded by DAESH and no one can dislodge them. The Kurdish area has been devastated by political bickering and discord, as well as a lack of finances, and the people are simply fed up.
This is the legacy of Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair. Are they proud of themselves?
What is sad is that the Iraqi people and most probably the Syrian people are paying the price for their hypocrisy.
But worse, the Turks are also paying a heavy price for all this. We are hosting 300,000 migrants from Iraq and about 3 million from Syria because of the remaining instability in our neighbor’s countries.
We have lost trade money and our security has been seriously jeopardized because of the PKK and DAESH terrorists exploiting these areas of instability against us. The wars in these countries have hurt Turkey and there is no prospect that the suffering will end.
Yet today we see the Americans and the British turn a blind eye to all this and continue their policies of further creating conditions of instability in our region. It seems both Bush and Blair have much to explain not only to the American and British people, but to the masses in Turkey as well as in all other countries in the Middle East…
By İLNUR ÇEVIK
Modified from the original: They killed 1 Saddam and created 1,000 others (Daily Sabah)