US interventions invariably catastrophic: China Daily editorial

On March 20, 2003, having turned a deaf ear to the global opposition, the United States invaded Iraq claiming that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction, offering as proof what was later revealed to be a small tube of detergent. Iraq has endured endless chaos and instability ever since.

The US invasion led to the deaths of between 180,000 to 210,000 civilians, according to the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains the world's largest public database of violent civilian deaths in the country since the 2003 invasion. The instability and security vacuum caused by the toppling of the Iraqi government and the withdrawal of US forces in 2011 also led to the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group.

Hence, when US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin landed in Baghdad on Tuesday on an unannounced visit, his message that the US "will continue to strengthen and broaden our partnership in support of Iraqi security, stability, and sovereignty", was a hypocritical repudiation of US culpability.

After Iraq, the US has continued its military adventures, including in Libya and Syria. And it is not just the Middle East that has been plunged into turbulence and turmoil by the US' actions. Afghanistan is still roiling from the effects of the US invasion of the country in 2001 and subsequent military occupation and it is also the US' invisible hand that has turned Ukraine into a butcher's block.

To consolidate its global hegemony and play its zero-sum games, the US has no qualms about meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. Although it does so upholding the banners of democracy and human rights, these are just fig leaves for exercising of its might makes right.

Thanks to the US' always calamitous interventions in other countries' affairs, passages of peace and tranquility are rare in any part of the world as they always cause radiating shock waves of turmoil and turbulence.

As the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War draws near, the world should reflect on what has happened over the past two decades as a result and denounce the US' interventionist policies that continue to wreak havoc in many parts of the world. Not least in Ukraine, where, having gamed the support of its NATO allies, the US is constantly pouring oil on the conflict by providing Kyiv with ever more military aid.

Not content with this, the Joe Biden administration and the strategists in Washington are trying to extend the Ukraine crisis to the Asia-Pacific, as a means to create a hard buffer to halt China's development. On the anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, the rest of the international community should say a resolute "no more" to the US and its chauvinist allies.