Twenty years after the United States under the administration of George W. Bush invaded Iraq, it is undeniable that the war was one of the biggest blunders in the history of U.S. foreign policy. The war was entirely one of choice; Iraq was not posing any significant threat to the United States and U.S. interests. The costs were huge. Estimates by academic experts of the war’s long-term monetary cost to the United States — covering everything from bullets to medical care for disabled veterans — are on the order of two to three trillion dollars. The human costs have included more than 4,400 U.S. military personnel killed and another 32,000 wounded, many of them grievously. The human costs to innocent Iraqis were much higher, including an estimated 275,000-306,000 civilians killed as a direct result of war-related violence. These were some of the same Iraqis whose “liberation” was supposed to be an objective of the war. The Iraqis who survived did get rid of one dictator but were left with a devastated infrastructure and an unstable country wracked by civil war and insurgency.
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