On 20 March 2003, the US and UK invaded Iraq. “Shock and awe” lit up the skies over Baghdad; the most powerful military alliance in history descended on a battered state on the pretext of a lie. Twenty-two years later, the war’s architects walk free, the dead are uncounted, and the wreckage spreads from Fallujah to Rafah.
I was one of the millions who marched against it. London, 15 February: bitter cold, shoulder to shoulder, a crowd so vast it spilled down every street. We chanted, we pleaded, we believed. If the size of a march meant anything, we told ourselves, this war could still be stopped. But it wasn’t. Blair heard us and went ahead anyway. Parliament cheered. And something broke.
For me, that was the moment I understood the limits of marching. Not that it is useless—collective protest is vital—but it does not cut through to the political class when the interests at stake are imperial. A million people can say no, but if Washington says yes, Westminster follows. The war on Iraq was not a “mistake”; it was a decision, carefully taken, to reorder the Middle East by force.
Some in Parliament stood against it, Tony Benn, in the final great speech of a long life; Robin Cook, who resigned with dignity; Clare Short, whose dissent came late but loud. A scattering of principled backbenchers stood with them. But not enough. Not nearly enough. The whips were out, the press was onside, and New Labour had long since internalised the logic of war.
The consequences were immediate and lasting. Iraq was shattered. Its infrastructure, social fabric, and political institutions destroyed. The vacuum fed sectarianism, empowered warlords, and birthed new monsters. The wider region descended into chaos. The war gave us Abu Ghraib, Blackwater, ISIS. It was a masterclass in manufactured consent, and then a masterclass in forgetting.
What was learned? Not by those in power. Blair has rebranded as an elder statesman, and Bush paints portraits of the soldiers he sent to die. In Britain, the Chilcot Report offered a damning but toothless critique, while the machinery that enabled the war, compliant media, pliant parliament, permanent military-industrial consensus—remains firmly in place.
In Gaza today, the bombs fall with the same impunity. Civilian death is collateral once more; war crimes are rebranded as “precision”; protest is tolerated only so long as it can be ignored. The rhetoric has changed, the targets have shifted, but the logic is the same: the lives of others matter only insofar as they align with Western interests.
We were right in 2003. The war was wrong. It was illegal, immoral, and catastrophic. And yet the same political class, the same think tanks and newspapers, are still selling war under different names. Have we learned anything? Or is this just Iraq, again, only this time live-streamed, algorithmically filtered, and ever more brazen?
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