WASHINGTON: A majority of Americans believe the US invasion of Iraq was a mistake that killed about a million people and ruined the Arab country two decades ago, according to an Axios/Ipsos poll.
While two-thirds of Americans supported the military action in 2003, 61% now believe it was a mistake. When the United States ground invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003, only 26% of Pew poll respondents opposed military action to destabilize Saddam Hussein’s government.
Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the White House on Saturday afternoon to demand an end to endless United States wars and the “War Machine” before the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq. The anti-war protest was the second in less than a month in the nation’s capital.
Claudia Lefko, a Northampton, Massachusetts, protester, told reporters that it was a terrible mistake. The country is a ruin. He claimed we had destroyed it. The Iraqis are still suffering as a result. The eight-year war cost the United States nearly two trillion dollars and the lives of over 4,000 troops, and it hastened the country’s polarisation.
According to the most recent poll, support for the invasion was heavily skewed by political affiliation, with 83% of Republicans favoring invasion versus 52% of Democrats. This schism persists two decades later, with a much smaller majority (58%) of Republicans still believing the US was justified in invading. Only 26% of Democrats believe it is still a good idea. According to an Ipsos poll conducted last week among 1,018 Americans over the age of 18, the majority of Americans (67%) do not believe the war in Iraq has made the United States any safer.
Americans want US to remain a “global leader”
However, roughly three-quarters of Americans want the United States to remain a “global leader,” and 54% believe that Washington’s overall “focus” on national defence and homeland security over the last two decades has made the country safer. Much of the initial support for the Iraq war was based on false claims made by then-US President George W. Bush’s administration and the media about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
While the Bush administration never explicitly stated that Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks, 57% of respondents in a 2003 Pew poll agreed. Approximately 44% of respondents are still unsure about who was ‘correct’ about the war. Today, Iraq is far from the democratic paradise promised to its people when Bush famously declared “Mission Accomplished” in 2003. According to the Iraq Body Count project, the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq resulted in the deaths of at least 210,000 civilians.
Plunged into instability, Iraq became a breeding ground for extremism, and much of the northern reaches of Iraq fell under the control of Islamic State terrorists following the partial United States pullout in 2011. Some 2,500 US troops are still stationed there almost three years after the Iraqi government ordered them to leave.
