Finally stopping one more component of the Bush Era of Endless War. Twenty years is an insanely long time. The costs and damages done are incalculable. Just imagine instead if we had spent twenty years building schools? The first classes would now be graduated from college — an entire generation of scholars (and hence peace dividends) lost. So which is a better investment?
Good riddance to this longest air war in history.
The US Has Been Bombing Iraq Since 1991 Without Stopping–Until Now
by Nick Turse
In 1991, the United States unleashed a bombing campaign of staggering proportions against Iraq: 120,000 sorties were launched and 265,000 bombs dropped. From then on, the missions never stopped.
From 1991 to 2003, the U.S. and its allies conducted a low-level air war to enforce no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, while attacking Iraq’s air defenses and other targets. In February 2003, the U.S. would, again, conduct a blistering “shock and awe” campaign and, by mid-April, Iraq had been subjected to 41,000 sorties and 27,000 bombs dropped. The U.S. air war would continue on as, year after year, U.S. planes attacked targets, killing enemy fighters and civilians alike.
But at the end of this year, according to the top Air Force general in Iraq, two decades of American sorties and bombings — the longest air war in the history of the world — will finally come to end.
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By Jan. 1, 2012, if [Commander of the 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force-Iraq, Major General Russell] Handy is to be believed, Iraqis will know a new kind of freedom, some for the first times in their lives. While the U.S. now maintains it has the right to conduct an unmanned airstrikes in any country (or at least any country in the global south) and currently does so in nations like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, a palpable shift may indeed still occur in Iraq. On that first morning after the final American withdrawal, Iraqis will wake up and be able to look to skies free of foreign bombs, rockets and machine guns for the first time in 20 years.