The Iraq War and the Mirror of Violence

Hindsight, they say, is twenty-twenty. If you are the U.S. and U.K. governments, you could perhaps make this point to counter any criticisms being directed your way for the decision to take your country into the war in Iraq of 2003. But, anybody who followed the build-up to the Iraq war in the media and policy circles will recall with some degree of clarity that there was a very strong sense of scepticism and doubt about the entire military campaign the U.S. and U.K. were about to embark upon. The United Nations’ weapons inspectors were frustrated that they were not being given enough time to finish their task of finding the ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ that both the U.S. and U.K. were convinced Iraq possessed. Neither were those who understood the history and affairs of the Iraqi nation buying into the links that were claimed to exist between Saddam Hussein’s secular Ba’athist regime and al-Qaeda to justify the war. The global public was suspicious of the official reasons being cited for the war and took to the streets in their tens of millions to pressure the U.S. and U.K. into not starting a war with Iraq. But, their cries of “stop the war” fell on ears that had already been deafened by the sound of beating war drums. This paper discusses two of the seen and unforeseen outcomes of the U.S.-led Iraq war: the emergence and amplification of Muslim militancy and the creation and implementation of the U.K.’s countering violent extremism policy ‘Prevent’