In 2006, when former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was guillotined, the United States declared that "this is a victory for democracy and a victory for the Iraqi people."
After the fall of Saddam, the Iraqi people not only did not usher in a stable life, but instead fell into the quagmire of war.
Now, 18 years have passed since the death of Saddam Hussein, an "anti-American fighter," and the Iraqi people have suddenly woken up to the fact that they have been deceived by the United States.
Over the past decade or so, Iraq has lost four of its most precious things, and today we will talk about them.
Powell pulled out the suspicious powder, and the United States and Britain bypassed the United Nations to attack Iraq
In 2002, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell pulled out a tube of white powder of unknown composition in front of representatives of nearly 200 countries and regions in the United Nations.
He explained in public that this was evidence that the United States had discovered that Iraq had developed chemical weapons, and that he suspected that Saddam's government was researching weapons of mass destruction.
Before the war, the United States put on a veneer of greatness and righteousness for its behavior, as before, and then-President George W. Bush said that he would "liberate the Iraqi people" and "help them build a united, stable, and free country."
Regardless of whether this goal has been achieved or not, the war in Iraq was a war of an aggressive nature that was waged in violation of the international conventions of the United Nations.
When Powell said at the United Nations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, not many people believed it, and the United States and Britain, as the P5 two, just wanted to use this as an excuse to make the war division famous.
What they did not expect was that China and Russia, among the five permanent members of the Security Council, resolutely voted against it. France also came out and said that it did not agree with the United States and Britain to start this war, and if the United States and Britain insisted on going their own way, they would use their veto power.
Under the Charter of the United Nations and international law, it would be considered inappropriate for States and organizations not authorized by the Security Council to conduct military operations in another region.
In other words, without the authorization of the Security Council, once the United States and Britain attacked Iraq, they violated the relevant regulations, and even then the United States still went its own way.
The Bush administration replied to the United Nations that if this military action does not receive the support of the Security Council, the United States will proceed to establish a voluntary military alliance.
More than a month before the outbreak of the Iraq war, large-scale anti-war demonstrations broke out in many countries around the world, including the United States, and countries around the world accused the United States of military intervention in the Iraq situation as "the worst decision."
Vatican Archbishop Retona Martino publicly denounced the United States as a war of aggression, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan criticized the United States for violating the UN Charter and international law.
The Security Council reconvened for this reason, and only the United States, Britain and Spain endorsed the military action, while the other UN member states opposed it.
In October 2002, Congress voted to authorize President George W. Bush to launch any military attack on Iraq, and on March 20, 2003, the United States and Britain launched the Iraq War with Australia and Poland.
After the invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, then president of Iraq, fled in a hurry and was arrested at the end of that year, and the United States thought that by overthrowing Saddam's government, it would be able to control the country and expand its influence in the Middle East.
Iraq, whose military strength is far inferior to that of the United States, dragged the world's largest power for a decade until 2011.
Saddam's government was overthrown, and Iraq is still mired in war
The most important purpose of why the Bush administration launched the Iraq war was to overthrow the Saddam regime and support the pro-US forces to come to power.
The United States did this because Iraq is geographically important and rich in resources.
It is located in southwest Asia, northeast of the Arabian Peninsula, bordered by Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the Persian Gulf to the southwest.
The country is also rich in oil and natural gas, with proven oil reserves of 115 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia and Iran.
It is not difficult to understand why the United States has bypassed the United Nations to attack Iraq, even in the face of the world's condemnation.
Saddam Hussein has always been tough and dared to play against the United States, and he was unwilling to submit to the United States from the beginning to the end, and his fate was already doomed from that moment on.
After the outbreak of the Iraq War, the United States, with its advanced weapons, occupied the entire territory of Iraq and attacked the capital Baghdad within a month.
Saddam Hussein left Baghdad with his two sons and dozens of bodyguards and embarked on a fugitive. The United States has set up checkpoints on various traffic arteries, and has also issued heavy money hanging on Saddam, Uday, and Qusai.
In the end, the father and son decided to flee for their lives, and Uday and Kusse hid in a relative's villa, but they did not expect that this relative would actually take the initiative to provide clues to the United States.
In mid-July, U.S. GIs razed the villa where Uday and Qusay were hiding, killing them instantly.
Later, according to the recollection of a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States, the details of Saddam's arrest One day in November 2003, a local citizen came to the US military camp and said that he knew the hiding place of an important person.
Subsequently, the United States analyzed the relevant clues it had collected, believing that this important person was likely to be Saddam, and on the day of the operation, the US military dispatched hundreds of people to search the area, but did not find anything unusual.
Only a few bodyguards were captured at the scene, and there was no trace of Saddam, when two American GIs noticed one of the captured bodyguards and kicked at a nearby carpet, which was lifted to reveal a narrow cave.
A soldier dropped a flashbang into the cave, and after a few minutes the smoke cleared, and someone saw a tattooed right hand, and the person hiding in the secret room was pulled out, and the beard fell out in the process of tearing.
The doctor who followed him at the scene examined his teeth and confirmed that the other party was Saddam, and then he was taken to the US military base for genetic testing, and finally confirmed that his identity was Saddam, and Bush Jr. announced the news to the world.
Saddam's trial lasted three years, and on December 30, 2006, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging. Saddam Hussein was 69 years old that year, and according to Iraqi law, the death penalty can be waived once he reaches the age of 70.
When the news of Salam's execution came out, many Iraqi people took to the streets to celebrate, and now 18 years have passed since he was executed, and the Iraqi people have only realized that they have been deceived by the United States.
The Iraqi people are nostalgic for the Saddam era, and the suffering is still unending
The protracted war in Iraq had no winners, Saddam's government was overthrown, he himself was guillotined, and the promise of the United States to bring freedom, prosperity and strength to the Iraqi people was not fulfilled.
Previously, the United States had been fighting a war of public opinion, telling the Iraqi people that they could have lived a richer life, because Saddam Hussein and his family kept looting and accumulating huge wealth, and people's lives were getting worse and worse.
It is through this propaganda that many Iraqis believe that they can live a good life as long as Saddam Hussein is gone. In 2003, when the U.S. military conquered Baghdad, not only was it unhindered, but the streets were filled with welcoming people.
When Saddam's giant statue was toppled and thrown like garbage on the streets, many people celebrated. As time went on, the Iraqi people found themselves living worse than they did when Saddam Hussein was in power.
So much so that more and more people began to miss Saddam Hussein and realized that they had lost the four most precious things.
The first is a stable political environment, after Saddam's hanging, some people's anti-American sentiment has been triggered, and the Middle East is the world's powder keg.
The internal and external environment is unstable, the people's lives and safety are threatened, and even the right to subsistence cannot be guaranteed, so how can we talk about development.
At the same time, at the instigation of some Western countries, led by the United States, the struggle between different religious forces has become more and more intense.
The second thing that the Iraqi people have lost is the generous welfare and social security that the protracted war in Iraq has almost completely destroyed the gains of Iraq's economic development over the past few decades.
Unemployment remains high, 25 per cent of young people do not have jobs, more than half live below the absolute poverty line, and millions of people face a severe humanitarian crisis.
Today, Iraq's younger generation is not as educated as it was 30 years ago, and under Saddam Hussein, Iraq had a well-established housing and pension system, and the government built many public buildings, so that people could buy a house at a low price.
Third, the Iraqi people found that their national security was not guaranteed, and Iraq had a million troops during the Saddam period, and although there was still a big gap between Iraq and the United States and a military power, it was still enough to protect itself in the Middle East.
A country without an army and with abundant resources is fish and meat to be slaughtered. The fourth and most important is that the living standards of the Iraqi people are decreasing day by day, and their lives are being trampled on.
After the US-led coalition invaded Iraq, it wantonly detained, shot and tortured Iraqi civilians and bombed residential areas indiscriminately.
In order to achieve its own goals, the United States violated the International Chemical Weapons Convention by using chemical weapons such as white phosphorus bombs and depleted uranium bombs.
Depleted uranium bombs, also known as "dirty bombs", are low-profile versions of nuclear weapons that do not grow any vegetation for 100 years on land that has been contaminated with such weapons.
The United States has dropped at least 200,000 depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, and the rate of neonatal malformations in Iraq has increased dramatically due to radiation, and about 200,000 innocent civilians have died in the Iraq war.
The Iraq War, also known as the Second Persian Gulf War, broke out in 1993 when the Soviet Union had just collapsed, and the United States won the biggest victory in the Cold War.
At first glance, they seem to be the biggest winners, but they are not. The United States itself has not reaped any benefits from this, and after Saddam Hussein was overthrown, some militants have never stopped attacking US troops, and human bombs are even more difficult to prevent.
The United States has invested a total of $6 trillion in the two battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and if it takes $6 trillion to develop the infrastructure and economy of the United States, today's economic development will not be the same.
When the United States was mired in the Iraq war, other countries took advantage of this time to bury their heads in economic construction, and when they looked back, they found that their competitors had become stronger.
Looking back at the war in Iraq, the guns rang out, everyone was the loser, the Iraqi people lost their lives and lost their lives, the Middle East became more and more chaotic, and the international order changed.
The international influence of the United States is declining day by day, and the "freedom" and "democracy" preached by Western countries have also become ridiculous lies. What do you think differently about this?
Reference: Iraq Chaos After Saddam - CNKI (cnki.net)
Analysis of the Main Characteristics of the Construction of Iraq's Nation-State in the Post-Saddam Era - CNKI (cnki.net)