On March 20, 2003, the international coalition with Anglo-American troops supported by the Kurdish Peshmergas in the north began the invasion of iraq with a series of precision strikes by Tomahawk missiles and warplanes that knocked out Iraqi air defense capabilities and command and control systems in barely a week. Five weeks later, the allied troops entered Baghdad, and the war was considered over, which gave rise to the occupation, which is another long story.
The casualties in combat are estimated at around fifteen thousand, the vast majority, Saddam Hussein’s troops. Except for some tank battles and isolated resistances it was a military parade for the 300,000 troops of the Coalition.
The decision to invade Iraq was adopted by President Bush three months after taking possession of the White House, long before the attacks of September 11. It was intended, on the one hand, to finish the unfinished task of Bush senior; In a certain way, like all wars that start, the decision had something of messianism; on the other, to eliminate an enemy of many allies in the area, decisive for the strategy in the Middle East.
The certain facts are that after the 1991 war, the United Nations established, in exchange for avoiding the military occupation of the country:
- an airspace control mechanism to protect the Kurdish and Shiite minorities, massacred by the regime, something that Ukrainians would long for today, supervised by the British, Americans and French. The latter were the ones who pushed hardest to avoid the invasion in both conflicts due to their economic interests in the country.
- A control commission for the elimination of weapons of mass, chemical and biological destruction used against minorities, as well as the Scud-type missiles used against Israel in the first war. The commission had to leave the country in 1998, given the impossibility of carrying out its mission, which showed that the regime had something or a lot to hide.
In December 1998, the American Tornado and F-16 they bombed Baghdad and numerous military targets to ensure that the regime complied with the sanctions, but it has already proved impossible to verify compliance with the United Nations mandate. When the Republicans came to power they found that in ten years neither Iraqi military capacity had been reduced nor had Saddam Hussein’s regime been weakened.
Once the decision was made, the United States needed to build the legitimizing narrative. The obvious one, because it assumed the continuity of the precedents: the weapons of mass destruction that had not been able to be verified due to the abandonment of the Commission. Insufficient, no matter how much effort or exaggeration was put into the kitchen to justify the invasion.
In 2001, President Bush found himself in a difficult situation indeed. He had been president after a third world count. The inability to subdue the Baghdad regime had put the United States in a situation of international weakness and the pax globall Altered only by the conflicts in Kosovo and Bosnia, it lessened political weight in a world in which Russia was no longer a strategic player and the Chinese economy was light years away from the United States.
This whole situation changed brutally on September 11, 2001. Some crooks had not only enrolled in a pilot school in Florida, but also hijacked four planes that destroyed the twin towers, crashing another into the Pentagon and the last into the hairs did not leave the Capitol in ashes. The great power had shown great vulnerability. American society could not accept that such a coup had been carried out by terrorists, without further ado. Afghanistan, no matter how much support it gave to Al Qaeda, did not serve the purpose of restoring the lost prestige, and Iraq gathered all the ingredients to recover the lost honor and demonstrate to the world that the United States and its British ally would continue to dominate the world of the third millennium. .
The second question that I would like to comment on is why Spain participated in the war, although we did not do so in any single combat. This analysis also requires going back a few years.
In the year 2000, and somewhat surprisingly, José María Aznar won the elections by an absolute majority, which allowed him to free himself from certain ties, those of beginners and those of the nationalists. Spain had intervened militarily in Kosovo, with the first offensive military actions for decades, and had supported the allied coalition in the first Gulf war, but no one in Spain seemed concerned about the Iraq issue, nothing new.
The arrival of Bush to the White House, for reasons, some of them bizarre, generated an exceptional personal harmony between the two presidents that had not occurred in history, and that Bush surely did not have with any other leader of his time. We become the most faithful ally, the respected partner, and this was not just words. Our companies, including the defense ones, landed in the United States with very relevant industrial programs; we were included in the group of five reliable to receive American technology. This may not give a damn to a lot of people, but these are the things we are fed.
This atmosphere, dramatically accentuated with the attacks of September 11, led us to a situation of alliance similar to that of the Labor Party Blair. It was not about the political color, it is that we were there and we should not leave. Spain had sown too much to throw overboard in a war from which we could emerge unscathed with a little luck. When Morocco attacked Perejil, the United States supported the military operation against what is today its great ally, Morocco. Alliances like friendship are obligatory and in this case we had a lot to gain if we played our cards right and a lot to lose if we didn’t continue with a support that had much more noise than reality, another big mistake.
I honestly think that Spain could only say yes, taking into account the environment. Constitutionally Germany was not going to intervene and France, which surreptitiously supported the allies, was constrained by its economic interests and its alliances with a young Putin to exploit Iraq; Most surprising was Canada’s no, although Harper’s arrival the following year changed Canada’s approach to the conflict. We couldn’t stay alone again like don Tancredo.
But this very personal vision of Aznar was not shared by the entire executive: many of them referred to the president’s war in very derogatory terms, but there was a differentiating fact. Aznar was not going to run for re-election and was thinking about his international future and the role that Spain could play in the future as an ally of the great power, while all those around them would have to pass through the sieve of the elections. Aznar would go down in history, even if it meant the defeat of the PP. There was a great conviction in 2003 that the war, especially with the large and orchestrated campaign, very effective in the absence of a response, of “no to war”, whatever its outcome, would cost the elections. Many times I have wondered if this possible prediction would not condition the choice of the successor.
The military success of the operation was marred by the delay in the capture of Saddam Hussein, and by the beginning of the terrorist action that led to numerous human losses, among them some compatriots and colleagues of the Government Commissioner for the Reconstruction of Iraq and of our armed forces, whom we must remember on this anniversary for their service. After these attacks, the government was subjected to a hostile environment from which good economic progress would no longer save it. The attacks on March 11 and the dismal management of the following 48 hours ended the conservative government and the alliance with the United States, which to this day has not fully recovered.