Iraq's Elections: The Empire's 'Democracy' Meets Iran's 'Influence'
The New Arab's analysis, 'Iraq's elections: A high-stakes vote amid the US-Iran tug of war,' frames Iraq as perpetually caught between two external powers. It’s almost as if they forgot roughly 4,700 American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and a trillion dollars were spent 'liberating' Iraq into its current state of geopolitical precarity (Source: Costs of War Project, Brown
University ). This isn't a 'tug of war'; it's a nation still reeling from an invasion and occupation explicitly designed to reshape its government and alliances, followed by the predictable emergence of regional counter-influences. When an empire deconstructs a nation, then complains about other neighbours filling the resulting power vacuum, one has to ask: exactly whose 'influence' is the primary
problem here? Perhaps Iran's 'meddling' looks a lot different when viewed through the rubble of an avoidable conflict sold on the premise of non-existent WMDs. It's truly a marvel how mainstream discourse consistently presents the aftermath of US foreign policy as an organic, self-generated 'problem' for local actors, rather than a direct consequence of intervention. The audacity of calling
subsequent regional alignment 'influence' after flattening a country is quite the narrative feat.