Dahr Jamail: The Destruction Of Iraq, Twenty Years On
Channel: Last Born in the Wilderness Podcast
Date: 2023-04-28

This is a segment of episode 345 of Last Born In The Wilderness, “Rumination On Truth: The Destruction Of Iraq, Twenty Years On w/ Dahr Jamail.” Listen to the full episode and read the transcript: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/dahr-jamail-3

Learn more about Dahr and his work: https://www.dahrjamail.net

Author and former climate journalist Dahr Jamail returns to the podcast to discuss the 20th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by United States-led coalition forces. Jamail began his journalistic career as an unembedded journalist documenting the war from the ground beginning in 2003, highlighting the countless war crimes committed by the occupying forces against the civilians of Iraq, superbly documented in his first book on the subject, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq published in 2007 by Haymarket Books. 

Dahr and I begin our discussion by reflecting on the atmosphere in the United States in the ramping up to the invasion of Iraq, 20 years on. In an effort to convince the population of the United States, and by extension the global population, the Bush Administration promulgated alleged concerns of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq and connections between Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaeda, and the infamous events on September 11, 2001. It was laden with propagandistic narratives founded on a web of lies.

Prominent media outlets played along, living up to Noam Chomsky’s observation that “[p]ropaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” From the outset, Dahr Jamail understood on an intuitive and intellectual level that the lead-up to the overt military incursion and occupation of Iraq was deeply unjust, and would lead to horrific outcomes, especially and primarily for the people of Iraq. In his restlessness to seek and share the truth on the matter, he leapt into the fire and cut his teeth as a reporter by becoming one of the few unembedded journalists to bring the day-to-day experiences and voices of Iraqis to the forefront for Western audiences. As his reports began to gather a wider readership, the conditions in Iraq swiftly deteriorated, and whatever patience or goodwill that was initially extended by Iraqi citizens toward the coalition forces inevitably curdled into widespread rage and insurrection. In Beyond the Green Zone, Jamail documents the horrific crimes committed by the occupiers and their corporate contractors as they arrogantly and recklessly destabilized Iraqi society in every imaginable way, waging vicious campaigns of collective punishment, torture, mass murder, and lasting environmental degradation.

It became commonly stated during the rise of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign that we’ve now entered into a “post-truth era,” that our collective sense of reality had become fractured and poisoned by cynical political actors intent on attaining autocratic power by compulsively lying about everything of consequence under the sun, repeating “alternative facts” ad nauseam until a desired result was achieved, often with disastrous consequences. But, as Dahr reflects on in this discussion, truth and facts are always the first casualties in war—no war can be achieved without lies and propaganda. And twenty years on from this invasion, many of those initial lies survive in various guises in U.S. media coverage. Rarely do the stenographers of Empire own up to their complicity in warmongering. In the last decade, George W. Bush received a PR makeover and now sells books of his shitty paintings and cozies up with Michelle Obama for photo-ops, while the decrepit Dick Cheney calls Trump a “coward,” saying, without a sense of irony, that “there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” Upwards of a million dead in Iraq as a result of the war. The largest expansion of domestic surveillance and erosion of civil liberties in a century. Given enough time, mass murderers can be reformed and granted legitimacy under the right circumstances in the United States.

Dahr Jamail is an award-winning author and journalist who formerly reported on climate disruption and environmental issues for Truthout. He is the author of multiple books, including The End Of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption published in 2019, and most recently, We Are the Middle of Forever, co-written and co-edited with Stan Rushworth and released April 2022 by The New Press.

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