Five Years Later, United States Still in Iraq

Photograph of soldiers in the 2nd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment studying a map during a house search in Baghdad by Anja Niedringhaus/AP

Five years ago today, the United States became involved with the Iraq War. While many Americans are unhappy with the war, per the Washington Post, "For the Bush administration, however, it is the first anniversary of an Iraq strategy that it believes has finally started to succeed." Today President Bush is expected to say, in a speech at the Pentagon, "Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight America can and must win." Almost 4,000 U.S. soldiers have died in the past five years, while almost 30,000 have been wounded. Here's a list of military casualties.

The NY Times' Baghdad Bureau blog is writing about the five years in Iraq. There are many acts of civil disobedience planned for today, with a event in Washington D.C. and many other around the country, including a procession and commemoration in NYC from St. Paul and St. Andrew's Church at West 86th Street and West End Avenue to Broadway and West 73rd Street today at 5:00 p.m. There are also many vigils in the city - you can find them here.

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By Jen Chung in News on March 19, 2008 8:02 AM

Comments [rss]

Bottomless Chips

Cowboys,

I think you're confusing what Civil disobedience is. Think Rosa Parks, Vietnam sit-ins, etc.

Saying the surge is working is a tool used by the hawks while the south is (being) lost. Then we'll have to surge there, then surge back to this place and that place.

Killing our way out of this problem is impractical, immoral, but most of all unsustainable for our military and our tax dollars.

matthew gannon

Is disobedience necessarily bad?

Pharmer

=/

With all the money spent on the war, why we can't come up with the same amount to spend on public health, medical care and so on.

thedroog

civil disobedience? this is still the united states, right? by law, we can peacefully protest that which we don't believe in or stand behind, yeah? the gothamist staff really needs to pull their collective heads out of their asses.

damir

I almost got used to the mainstream press talking about American war casualties as the only ones worth mentioning. It is very disappointing to see that there is actually much wider acceptance of this equivalence of "American life" and "human life".

Guest

"There are many acts of civil disobedience planned for today"

I'm hoping this is a misprint or just a complete fuckup. Disobedience implies that what these people are doing is illegal or in some way wrong. What the author should have said is "There are many civil protests planned for today".

cwbuecheler

Five Years of "Viet Nam: The Sequel" and counting. Fantastic.

bxbrian

this is probably just one of many comments that will appear which will be easy targets for scrutiny, but nevertheless, i just had a thought.

this surge business, could one argue that it's (possibly) working because it's placing the number of troops initially necessary to secure Iraq inside the country years after they should have arrived?

it seems insane to me to call this surge a success if you're simply sending over the initially required amount of soldiers to keep some semblance of order and sanity in the country.

seems to me that calling the surge a success is like driving on a flat tire for three years, getting it patched, and keeping along your merry way thinking of how genius you were in the first place.