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Report says UK armed service has major questions to answer about conduct in war against Islamic State

Thu 23 Mar 2023 10.54 EDT

Twenty-nine civilians are feared to have been killed in nine RAF airstrikes in Iraq and Syria between 2016 and 2018, 10 more than previous estimates, and far higher than the single non-combatant fatality accepted by the UK, according to analysis.

In the worst incident, 12 civilians were accepted as likely to have been killed in Raqqa, Syria in 2017 by a US strike, while research points to an RAF drone strike killing at least four member of the same family in Abu Kamal, Syria, in 2016, according to on-the-ground reports.

The reports authors, the London-based charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), says the analysis showed the RAF had major questions to answer about the conduct of the war against Islamic State (IS), but the Ministry of Defence insisted there was no evidence of civilian casualties.

Earlier this week, a Guardian investigation identified six RAF airstrikes in Mosul, Iraq, that killed civilians during same period as that covered by the analysis. The latest data also examined British bombing in Syria as part of Operation Shader, the UK contribution to the war against IS that began nearly nine years ago.

RAF Typhoon jets launched an attack on 13 August 2017, purportedly against enemy fighters operating mortars. Syrian media reported there had been up to 12 civilians killed a figure subsequently accepted by the US Central Command, which has overall responsibility for the campaign against the terrorist group.

US Central Command released a statement, acknowledging dozens of civilian casualties, mostly from US strikes, but also referenced the attack on Raqqa by date. Regrettably, 12 civilians were unintentionally killed and six were unintentionally injured as a result of the blast, it stated.

The RAF claims to have only caused a single civilian fatality in the fight against IS during the bombing of a group of terrorists in a vehicle in March 2018 in Syrias Euphrates Valley. However, concerns about that assertion have lingered for several years after US admissions and other leaks. The US says 1,437 civilians have been unintentionally killed in 35,000 airstrikes.

The RAF is an integral part of the campaign against IS. MPs voted for RAF participation in strikes against targets in Iraq in September 2014 and Syria in December 2015, with jets and drones having flown more than 5,500 combat missions and fired more than 4,300 missiles.

Dr Iain Overton, the executive director of AOAV, said delayed or incomplete reporting made it difficult for independent groups to assess the impact of British airstrikes. However, he said, the research showed there are some major questions that the RAF should answer in relation to civilian harm from its airstrike missions, questions that all too often are ignored and rejected.

Britain says it takes reports of civilian casualties very seriously. An MoD spokesperson added: The UK always minimises the risk of civilian casualties through our rigorous processes and carefully examines a range of evidence to do this, including comprehensive analysis of the mission data for every strike.

Two Reaper drones struck targets in Abu Kamal, Syria, on 21 April 2016 using Hellfire missiles that were aimed at an improvised weapons factory and car bomb.

At least four and up to 10 members of one family were killed when their house was targeted, said Airwars, a research group that monitors western bombing in the war on IS. Its estimate is based on a compilation of reports from Syrian media.

At the time of the strike, the RAF said there was no indication of any civilian casualties in our own detailed assessments of the incident. However, the research concluded that the weight of local reporting led to the conclusion that the RAF were responsible, or, at the very least, involved in the targeting which led to civilian casualties.

Although the research focused on a two-year period ending in 2018, questions remain about RAF airstrikes. Earlier this month, it emerged that the MoD was refusing to say whether it had investigated reports of civilian casualties after an RAF drone strike against a terrorist target in northern Syria in December.

The fresh analysis of strike data was taken from combining assessments made by the US, internal Pentagon data leaked to the New York Times, analyses from Airwars and reports from international and local media.

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RAF airstrikes killed 29 civilians in Iraq and Syria in two years, analysis suggests - The Guardian

March 19 (Reuters) - Talks between French oil major TotalEnergies(TTEF.PA) and Iraq to resolve sticking points in a long-delayed $27 billion energy deal "have reached advanced stages", Iraqi oil minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said on Sunday.

"We will activate the deal very soon," Abdel-Ghani said at an energy event.

The proposed deal, which Baghdad hopes will revive foreign investment in the country, was signed in 2021 for TotalEnergies to build four oil, gas and renewables projects with an initial investment of $10 billion in southern Iraq over 25 years.

However, disputes between Iraqi politicians over the terms of the deal.

Iraq's demand for a 40% share in the project is a key sticking point while TotalEnergies wants a majority stake, sources told Reuters.

Asked if the issue of Iraq's share in the project was resolved, Abdel-Ghani said: "It's not the time to discuss the shares and we will announce them when an agreement is reached."

Abdel-Ghani also said that Iraq is committed to maintaining its 220,000 barrel per day (bpd) oil output cut in line with its quota under the latest OPEC+ agreement.

The country is also ready to increase production if required to do so by producer group OPEC+.

"We obliged some oil companies operating in the south to cut production to come in line with OPEC+'s agreed rates," he added.

Reporting by Moayed KenanyWriting by Ahmed Rasheed and Hatem MaherEditing by David Goodman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Iraq in final stages of talks on $27 billion TotalEnergies deal, says ... - Reuters

ali hamdani

It looked more and more real that this is it. It is happening. In fact, I had a to-do list that was almost impossible to achieve, of preparing for the war.

What did the list say?

[CHUCKLES]:: That list said, starting with grocery-shopping, canned food, grains, fuel, kerosene, up to digging an actual well in your garden.

Operation Iraqi Freedom. The attack came in waves cruise missiles, followed by the F-117 stealth bombers, with so-called bunker-busting bombs.

[EXPLOSIONS]

Its the night that everybody was anticipating. Weve had all these conversations. Were staying, were staying, were going to, you know, weather it. Were going to stay here our home, our resources, our network of people. Were not going anywhere.

Then, the siren kicks in. My sister started panicking. My mother seemed very scared. And here, I realized this is my very small window to actually take them out of this mess.

I decided, OK, all the food we got in the car. Everything we need in the car. IDs, documents, everything, all the cash we had in the car, immediately.

And then, we drove. Its about 180 kilometers west of Baghdad.

And we find a small apartment through my brother-in-laws contacts and family members. They secure an apartment for us, and we stay there. But I had two Great Dane dogs that I had to leave behind, with some food and some water, because they were too big to take with us in the car.

So I established a routine of driving back every other day to feed the dogs and refill the water. They were not even my dogs. They were my brothers dogs. And when he left the country, I was like, I am counting on you to look after them. And this is something in me, that I dont like to let people down.

I know that about you.

[ALI CHUCKLES]

I didnt know what was waiting for me. What am I heading into? What are the risks? Working with foreigners, that is, like, an immediate death sentence with certain groups, because youre looked at as the collaborator, the spy.

My family, of course, didnt want me to do it. They were like, no, no, screw it. No money, no nothing is worth it. Stay here with us and be safe. And that was just not me. I thought, I will be doing something more important by joining the media.

You thought you were going to be doing something more important than being a doctor by being with the media. What did that mean for you at that time? What was that important thing that you thought you were going to be doing?

I thought I would have a chance at actually telling the true story. Youve seen the fog of war. Theres so much blabbering going on, so many inaccuracies. And of course, truth gets buried in the process.

And let me tell you, from an Iraqi perspective. Because we were sitting, back then in Baghdad, listening to all the allegations of WMDs and ties to al-Qaeda and 9/11. And for us, this was a sad joke.

Because we knew that the Iraqi army didnt have a functioning tank, barely had a rifle that could fire a few bullets before exploding. And the ties to al-Qaeda give me a break. Saddam would never have allowed any other group to claim power or to seek power. And it was so frustrating for us as Iraqis yes, we wanted to get rid of Saddam, but not based on a false-flag operation like the invasion.

Let me ask you this. I have, literally, no recollection of when we first met. Do you have a do you know when we first met?

Yes, in a car, in a moving car. We stopped very quickly. You jumped in, in a very Lulu fashion.

And James introduced you. I

Was Yasser driving the car?

Yes, yes. Yasser was driving the car.

Yasser was the driver that we were very close to, and I still remember his laugh in my head someone we all loved very much. Can you, for people who may not understand, what was a typical day like for us?

I mean, I remember I would be dressed in my abaya, my robe. You would tell me to pretend I was mute, in case we got stomped. Because I look Iraqi, but I certainly dont sound Iraqi. I guess every day what I remember is that every day was very different.

Well, we dont really what is happening at the moment. All the press is assembled there, but they have not been led into the actual chamber where Saddam Hussein is tried. So we dont really know what

You would be meeting, maybe, a top official one day, and another day, youd be rushing towards a bombing.

Well, it was a double bombing. It happened near the center of town, near a bridge that leads to the green zone, which is the seat

Yes, a typical day in Iraq back then was anything but. There was nothing typical about it. But let me tell you about that abaya and the hijab. That was my favorite attire for you. [LULU LAUGHS]

And I always wished that in my head, I was like, can we just leave James behind, please, with his blond hair and blue eyes?

Well, do you remember when he dyed his hair black and he looked like Elvis? Yeah.

Uh, he did, and it made it actually even worse, because it looked comical and attracted more attention. It didnt look real. It looked so funny.

And we were doing that, of course, because if youre in a car, you just dont want to attract attention from anybody, and you want to look like you belong there. And having a foreigner in the car, of course, is a problem.

Yes. One thing that I may have not always conveyed perfectly, I would say, is how much people resented your presence in the country, how much people, literally, hated foreigners, because they associated them with the invasion. And when I say that, of course, youre aware of all the groups that targeted journalists, but Im telling you, even the closest people to me, even the people who are educated, the people who know that you are there just to do journalism even those people resented your existence.

But of course I always had to find the balance between keeping you safe and aware of your basically, situationally, aware, but also not to demoralize you by telling you how much people hated your existence.

It is very complicated and sometimes puts me at risk of being seen as the collaborator. And I would wake up in the morning. I would deliberately go to work different time of the day every day. I will take a different route, because we knew that some groups were watching.

So if someone spotted me or seen me with foreigners, then that is it. That is the end of it. And I remember a very funny now, its funny, it wasnt back then incident where one morning, I was leaving home, and I saw one of my neighbors who waved me down and [INAUDIBLE]..

And he goes, are you going to work? I instinctively said, yes, I am, because I was. And he goes, great. Because my son has an X-ray appointment at Baghdad hospital. I need to take him there. Can you please give us a ride?

Oh.

And of course, I wasnt heading there. Of course, I was heading to the media compound. So he jumps in the car, and we drive completely the opposite side of town. I drop him off. As soon as he leaves, I rush back to the office. Of course, James was sitting there, waiting, asking where the hell have I been. And that was the story of my life the double life I lived because of this job.

That must have been really, actually confusing.

Yeah, its its an identity crisis of some sort. And who am I, and how long will this last for? But remember, there was no clear

End in sight.

way out, yeah, of it.

Ali, I think about and thought about the risk to you a lot. And I think one of the moments where that really hit home was in the moments where you actually saved our lives. You know, James got kidnapped in Sadr City. Thats a Shiite area in Baghdad. It was overrun at the time by militia members.

How do you remember that day?

I was going to say, when you said, the moment you saved our lives, I was going to say, which one?

But that was part of my job, or my commitment, to be honest. And I remember that very clear.

We get stopped by two cars filled with gunmen, who jumped out. They started yelling and screaming and shouting at us, pointing their AK 47 towards us. We step outside the car, and I start hearing them saying, only the foreigner, [SPEAKING ARABIC] which means, foreigner, in Arabic.

And then, I realized that I had a choice to make. I can just let them take James, and here I am, safe and sound, and I can leave.

Or I can help James. Then in a split second, I realized James chances of survival were almost zero.

And without me helping translating, James would be clueless of what was going on. So I immediately started yelling, Im with him. Im with him. And they kept saying, just the foreigner.

I jumped into the kidnappers car. And I kept saying, Im with him, Im with him. Take me. Im with him. And I ended up sitting in Jamess lap, actually, because the car was so crowded. At least some fun funny moment in that not-so-funny situation.

And Yasser followed you in his car. He also

Yes.

put himself in harms way.

Absolutely. Yasser, instead of just driving away, as he was instructed he goes, no, no, no, no, Im also with them. Im coming. So I immediately started talking to them and reassuring them, Im just an ordinary Iraqi. And then, I tried to, basically, psychologically manipulate them into thinking Im on their side.

And after many hours, they eventually let you go. And I think the story about this, for me, is just how unbelievably brave you were. Did you think, like, why are these people here

Oh, trust me, I asked this question every day. Why are they here? Its so much nicer on the other side of the world. Just go away, go live your lives. You dont have to be here. And actually, that brings me to a question to you. Why were you there in the first place?

I mean, I dont know that I asked myself that question then. I think 20 years on, I ask myself that question a lot now. And Ive come up with a different answer now than I had then.

I would say I believe that we were really there to tell the story of this country, to make sure the real story got out, that when the government of America would say everything was going great, we were there to say that it was a catastrophe. I felt that it was, on balance, important.

And I was also willing to put my life on the line for that. But as you know, I ended up getting PTSD quite seriously. It started at these multiple bombings in Karbala very early on in the war, when I was in the crowd there, and all of a sudden, these suicide bombers started detonating their vests.

And there were so many people, that the bombs acted like meat grinders. And I remember running through the crowd and seeing these pools of blood and the chaos and the fear. And it broke something in me, and over the course of the war, that only got worse.

Did you have something like that at all?

Of course. If I didnt, then probably, theres something wrong with me. In fact, it is something that we Iraqis always joke about that if youre an Iraqi with no PTSD, there is something wrong with you. But maybe it manifested differently.

Because for you as a foreign journalist, when you come to Iraq, you know that youre leaving after, lets say, six weeks, eight weeks, or however long youre going to stay. For someone like me, this is where I am. This is where Im going to be.

And it is different. It is like that boiling frog effect, where you dont really sense the water boiling. You just keep adapting. But at a huge cost, though. Because this is not normal.

So it does break something in you, but differently. Because for you, you know that you can go out of it and seek, maybe, help. For someone like me, there is no way out. You have to deal with it.

But finally, something did happen, where you kind of broke. I never saw you as wrecked as when the assassination attempt happened in 2008. I wasnt there for that, but you were there with a colleague of mine, Ivan Watson.

NPRs Ivan Watson and a team from our Baghdad Bureau were reminded of that yesterday.

Residents say Rabia Street was once one of the prettiest places in Baghdad, a boulevard of boutiques

What happened on that day?

Yeah. That day started like any other day. We were reporting, ironically, on how the security situation in West Baghdad has been improving. And we were sitting with a restaurant owner, talking to him about how the situation is improving, and whether it is or not.

RPGs were everywhere in the street, and gunmen were everywhere, clashes, regularly.

Mojud invited us in for lunch.

And as we concluded our conversation and walked out, we hear people running and screaming at us, saying, stay back, car bomb. Car bomb.

Iraqi Army Lieutenant Mohammed

So we I remember, we hunkered down from just [INAUDIBLE] away from our our car.

[EXPLOSION]

[BLEEP]

And then, our own car explodes.

Its in our car!

Its our car. They put a sticky bomb in our car.

Wow.

Later on, we figured that apparently, what had happened is someone passed by our car and stuck what was called a magnet bomb back then

Sticky bomb.

A sticky bomb, yeah. Im sorry, sticky bomb. You can tell its been 20 years now.

Anyway, so they were trying to kill me and the rest of the crew, because we were foreigners. We were collaborators. We were considered the infidels.

And at that moment, I felt how real it was.

Later on, we went to the wreckage of the car. And I looked at my backpack. It was completely burnt. And the recording device that I left behind. And I was thinking, this was supposed to be me.

So in my head, I was like, when is it ever going to stop, though? And when is the time for me to say, this is it, Ive done my part? And that was, to me, the cutoff moment. I didnt want to be that boiling frog anymore.

This brings me to something, which is, during the worst of the civil war, I stopped going for quite a few months while I got treatment for PTSD.

Im wondering if you ever felt resentful that I could leave.

I was away when this happened. I wasnt there, because I didnt have to be. Even though I lived in Iraq and I worked in Iraq, I was able to go out when I wanted. Did that feel unfair? It must have felt unfair. It is unfair.

Unfair, yes. Maybe resentful is a big word. I would say I felt and specifically that time I remember I was on the phone with you after.

I remember.

And you were telling me, Im coming, Im coming. Im going to be there soon. And I, in my head in fact, you said, dont leave just yet, because I need to see you. I want to talk to you.

And I knew, deep in your heart, you wanted to make sure I was OK. Because like you said, we were friends. Were not just colleagues. But for the first time in my head, I was thinking, Lulu, you just dont get it. You dont get it.

Originally posted here:
Opinion | The Shameful Secret at the Heart of My War Reporting - The New York Times

Around 4 a.m. on March 21, 2003, U.S. soldiers and Marines crossed the border from Kuwait to Iraq, marking the start of a ground invasion that would reach Baghdad a little over two weeks later and ultimately destroy Saddam Husseins regime after 26 days of heavy fighting.

Two days later, U.S. troops began fighting a major battle in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, showing just how difficult the advance to Baghdad would be.

The U.S.-led military coalition that invaded Iraq had expected to face little resistance in southern Iraq, but instead, they encountered paramilitary forces including Fedayeen Saddam fighters that had been sent to southern Iraqi cities to buttress defenses, according to the first volume of the U.S. Armys history of the Iraq War.

At Samawah, Zubayr, and Nasiriyah, U.S. ground troops ran into tenacious resistance from the Fedayeen instead of the Iraqi Army units they had anticipated fighting, according to the official history.

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Nearly 6,000 Marines and sailors under Task Force Tarawa first entered Nasiriyah, on March 23, 2003, to capture two bridges on the eastern part of the city. The Marines were met with powerful and determined attacks from Iraqi paramilitary forces using pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, according to the Armys official history; and the battle for Nasiriyah quickly became a damned tough urban fight, said then Army Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, who commanded all U.S. and coalition ground forces during the invasion.

A total of 18 Marines were killed that day, including eight who died when Air Force A-10 Warthogs mistakenly attacked Marines.

Also on March 23, 2003, the Armys 507th Maintenance Company was ambushed in Nasiriyah. Eleven soldiers were killed and six taken prisoner including Pfc. Lori Piestewa, who later died. Of the remaining prisoners of war: Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch was rescued by special operations forces on April 1, 2003, and the other soldiers were liberated by Marines on April 13, 2003.

The Marine Corps Regimental Combat Team 1 had to pass through Nasiriyah on March 24 and 25, 2003. The units commander, Col. Joe Dowdy, was later relieved by then Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division at the time, for not moving quickly enough.

Marine veteran John Hoellwarth said he remembers how Dowdy told his unit bluntly the night before it passed through Nasiriyah that they would take casualties in the coming battle for the city.

I remember being terrified that shit just got real, said Hoellwarth, who was a corporal with Regimental Combat Team 1 at the time.

The following day, Hoellworth was in the back of a Humvee with canvas doors as his unit pushed through Nasiriyah. He saw the bodies of enemy fighters in the citys streets as well as defensive positions that had been abandoned.

I remember the sound of bullets flying around as we made our way through the city, Hoellwarth told Task & Purpose. You can tell because they sound like popcorn. I dont know if you know this, but when someone is shooting at you, you can hear a little click in the air its like a miniature sound barrier being broken and thats the sound of bullets flying past you.

Donald Rumsfeld, who was defense secretary at the time, had not expected that U.S. troops would have to engage in so much close combat on the way to Baghdad, said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University.

Rumsfeld and others who pushed the U.S. military to invest in transformational technology had expected that standoff weapons such as cruise missiles along with precision-guided munitions would be able to destroy the Iraqi militarys armored vehicles, artillery, and infantry formations, Biddle told Task & Purpose.

Instead, U.S. forces fought a series of intense pitched battles, including in Baghdad itself, showing the limits of what standoff weapons can accomplish, he said.

And so, the era of close combat clearly had not ended in 2003; and the experience in Ukraine is demonstrating that it hasnt ended as of 2023, Biddle said. That means that skills, equipment, and organizations you need to do close combat right remained important in 2003 and they remain important today.

While the conventional phase of the Iraq war in 2003 holds tactical and operational lessons that still apply today, the biggest lesson from the war is arguably that capturing an adversarys capital is not the same as victory, Biddle said.

Within weeks of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Baghdad had fallen and Iraqi forces were more destroyed than the German army at the end of World War II, he said. But instead of ending, the war morphed into an insurgency that lasted for years.

Yet the U.S. military seems to still believe that the way to win wars is by destroying an enemys military, and that has shaped the U.S. governments approach toward Ukraine, Biddle said.

The war doesnt end until both sides decide to stop shooting, Biddle said. If one side decides to keep shooting, even if their conventional military has been driven from the field, the war doesnt end and it isnt yet clear whos going to win and whos going to lose. Thats just as true for Ukraine as it was for Afghanistan in 2001 and it was for Iraq in 2003.

Originally posted here:
How the Battle of Nasiriyah foreshadowed the long slog of the Iraq War - Task & Purpose

As I absorbed the strident commentary on just how gross a violation this was with which I agreed I couldnt outrun an obvious question: didnt we do that, too?

Russian President Vladimir Putin. AP

I dont mean to say these invasions are the same, as so many Putin apologists do. You could point to any number of differences, and Id agree with most of them. Iraq was a brutal dictatorship; Ukraine is a democracy, albeit a flawed one. A reasonable number of Iraqs majority Shiite population would have welcomed an invasion to remove Saddam Hussein, whereas even if you believe the claim Ukraines Russian-speaking citizens would rather be part of Russia, that doesnt explain why Putin started pounding Kyiv.

And the history is also incomparable. Russias invasion follows an era of Soviet dominance, in which most of Ukraine was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet empire, which then sought to crush Ukrainian nationalism and inflicted atrocities upon the Ukrainian people.

The nadir was surely Stalins Holodomor of 1932-33, in which the Soviets drastically cut back food rations to the very Ukrainians who had been growing that food. The result was a man-made famine that killed at least 3.5 million Ukrainians, and which the European Parliament officially recognises (with pro-Soviet objections) as a genocide deliberately targeting the Ukrainian people. Against that background, Putins invasion is especially chilling.

But the commonalities bear contemplation, too. Both invasions relied on a similar melange of dubious justifications. For Iraq, the claim that Saddams regime had weapons of mass destruction, as well as connections with terrorist organisations which made it a terrorist threat to the West all of which was quite predictably untrue.

Illustration by Andrew Dyson

For Ukraine, that it was seeking NATO membership, thereby continuing NATOs onward march to surround Russia, placing American forces on the Russian border and leaving Russia seriously under threat. Both, then, followed the logic of pre-emptive strike, in which a grave threat need only be asserted to justify invasion.

Then there were the human rights justifications. In Iraq, Saddams persecution of non-Sunnis, and especially the Shiites which was true. In Ukraine, an alleged genocide of ethnic Russians which was not. In both cases, though, these were never primary reasons for war. They were convenient narratives, invoked to add a veneer of legitimacy to illegitimate invasions.

Its 20 years ago this week that we embarked on our share of that illegitimacy. To our peoples credit, the Iraq war was never popular outside the United States, and youll no doubt remember the enormous rallies against it. Today, even most Americans think it was the wrong decision. But if were honest, while we might have this general sense the Iraq war was a blunder of sorts, we dont seem to regard it as an especially grave moment, if we pay any regard to it at all. If I had to summarise our attitude towards this invasion two decades on, it wouldnt be how could we? It would be whoops!

But its not a whoopsie to precipitate that many civilian deaths (estimates range from about 180,000 to a million, but we dont know because we never tried to count them). Its not a whoopsie to have handed Iraq over to Iranian influence, especially when you regard Iran as a serious foe. Its not a whoopsie to have promised a democratic utopia, but instead left behind a traumatised country, racked with corruption and sectarian bloodshed, and power blackouts with a third of the countrys people living in poverty. These are major failures, none of which could possibly have come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the tectonic plates on which Iraqi society is built.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping speak of their great friendship and deepening political ties.

All this has thrown up some galling ironies. We went to war to disrupt a fictional association between Saddams Baathist regime and terrorist groups. Then those vanquished Baathists wound up in prison with terrorists, where they actually did forge an alliance we came to know as Islamic State. And so, our fictional threat became a real one.

But perhaps the most current irony is that the Iraq invasion took an axe to the rules-based order Western nations so frequently like to trumpet. So when Putin decided to nick Crimea and then finally invade Ukraine, there was little left of the rules we might have invoked to restrain him. Putin even facetiously referred to weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine.

Would Putin have invaded in any case? Quite possibly. But its a counterfactual scenario in which our objections couldnt so easily be dismissed as hypocrisy. And its also a scenario in which the threat of American power might have been more real. The disaster in Iraq has made America uncharacteristically gun-shy: a fact which showed up most starkly when Barack Obama declared Syrias Assad regime had crossed a red line in using chemical weapons, then promptly proceeded to do nothing about it. If it will sit idle over that, Putin could be sure it would have no real response to him taking Crimea.

Thats the final commonality these invasions share. They began as demonstrations of the invaders military might, but instead exposed the limits of their power. Both assumed victory would be swift, then found themselves ensnared.

Putin apparently figured hed take Kyiv in a few days, has manifestly failed, and may never win the war. George W. Bush famously stood before a Mission Accomplished banner a mere six weeks after he unleashed Shock and Awe, only to see American troops stuck in Iraq for another eight years, sustaining 97 per cent of their casualties after this moment.

Power, it seems, can be blinding. If its possible Putin took the opportunity Iraq opened for him, its certainly true he never fully learnt its lessons. Meanwhile, we seem to have forgotten just how much weve taught him.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. .

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Putins war has uncomfortable parallels with our invasion of Iraq - Sydney Morning Herald