Stories and full-blown reportage of US-led war crimes during the invasion and the occupation of Iraq has always been a major discussion topic every March, commemorating decades ago when the US decided to invade bombed Iraq and destabilize the country. This year is the 20th commemoration of the start of the brutal invasion and occupation that killed more than a million Iraqis, and left millions displaced and continue to live with trauma. But, that part is unquestionable. Even most politically pro-West people will say that the invasion was illegitimate and shouldn’t have happened in the first place. One of the master planners behind the invasion, Tony Blair, even admitted that it was a mistake. Although up to this day not a single person is held accountable. But again, that part is unquestionable. The more contested topic is the discussion surrounding how, despites the illegitimacy, most western people will still hold the view of respecting the Veterans that went there. Especially in America, the culture of holding heroic views on Veterans is still big. This is contrary to the fact that most if not all the veterans, according to the rest of the world, were in fact part of one of the biggest war crimes in the century.
The discussion continues to whether the whole military recruiting system was the one to blame and most vets did not have a choice. During the war on terrorism period under the Bush Administration, there was no conscription, and it was fully voluntary. This was of course different compared to the Vietnam War when men who refused to serve would get sentenced and probably other consequences, and even then, people were still trying to find ways evading military draft. This alone made the statement of having no other choices invalid. But we also need to recognize the fact that the US military recruitment system is predatory, since it’s offering so many benefits. If you go to the US military official website, they list all the military benefits which include healthcare, which most Americans are struggling to get, housing, education, life insurance, job training after leaving the military, and retirement. Although this is also contested since we’ve encountered cases of homeless vets, this is obviously an interesting offer. By this point, you would think that this predatory system would make less fortunate kids from underprivileged households the majority serving the US foreign wars. But surveys show otherwise, most recruits have good education backgrounds and come from middle class households. But even if the majority of the recruits come from poor families, it would still prove the fact that the military recruitment system is predatory and sending poor people to die in wars on foreign land only to be paid for bare minimum rights such as education, healthcare and housing.
Now what about Iraq vets? Were they also the victims of this predatory system? The answer is yes and no. Most of them got recruited at young age, high school graduates and barely adults. But at the same time, framing this commemoration and the US military complex solely to focus and empathize with the vets would simply be misleading and unsympathetic to all the Iraqis, martyred or alive, that had to go through the horror of being bombarded, jailed, tortured, or lost their family members. To center the discussion around the vets who now realize that the war was a scam all along is not just ignorant, but also serves western superiority complex that it is until they speak up that the legitimacy of one issue is finally questionable. The uncovered full-blown stories of the horror these veterans committed during their times there is just the tip of the iceberg. Murdering people as sport, raping children and wiping out an entire family, massacring villages, inhuman treatment and severe torture towards Iraqis, the list goes on. Even those who were found guilty and admitting their sins were not persecuted according to their victims, most of them were presenting their case and confession in US military courts. It is an insult for all the Iraqis that these veterans somehow can whitewash what they were partaking in just because they were merely pawns.
Recognizing the predatory system of recruiting high school and university students is not an excuse to the crimes that have been committed and even further the culture of praising these abhorrent crimes. It is obviously based on good intentions for them to speak up against it. But it shouldn’t be to the point where their arguments and their regrets are the focus of how brutal and inhumane the invasion and occupation is. This question also applies in every war crimes and imperialism practiced by the US government abroad. So, yes, to their capacity they were responsible for the crimes, but them being merely pawns needs to be considered to see their positions and how they counter US imperialism propaganda.
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