When Baghdad Fell
by Teodora Georgescu · 3 min read
Impulsivity exists in so many different forms. It can define our behaviour by affecting our decisions and our perspectives. Although at times, impulsivity can be a virtue, in the world of politics, impulsivity comes served in its own unique form. Laced with tunnel vision and, perhaps, a conflated sense of threat. In this article, I discuss how the devastating decision of the United States to invade Iraq in 2003 not only sent a debilitating ripple effect through the region, but also how that choice was, in its own way, politically impulsive.
In 2003, America set out on its journey to Iraq. American soldiers bolstered and bragged about their past successes in the region, with Afghanistan standing comatose in enlightened liberation, many believed that Iraq would be a battlefield similar to what some had already seen. The tales of great American liberation, passed around between soldiers, families, and in the ashes of 9/11, drove young people directly to the frontline of a war that would come to dismantle the region for the next 20 years. Americans were bulldozed by stories of the “necessity” of this invasion, emotion and hysteria were repurposed and revitalised in discussions of what it means to invade Iraq, of why the US must pervade the country.
I was not yet born in 2003, and even if I had been, I’d likely have a very limited imagination of what occurred, however, for many people in my family, that year aches and twinges on their tongues every time they come to speak of it. Two thousand and three rings out in history, shrouding itself in limelight at the very mention of “the Middle East”. And it does not just live in the memory of those who were alive to watch everything unravel, but it pinches at the work of historians and analysts who have spent years assessing this period of history, for many of whom the result made itself clear. The day that Baghdad fell at the hands of American terror, and the day that Saddam Hussein was killed along with his regime, was the moment that, in some ways, explains the cyclical nature of the region to fall into power vacuums, sectarian conflicts and bilateral proxy wars.
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