Terrible memories, terrible crimes that are not forgotten

I can only say: at least the New York Times rightly situates its retrospective article on the United States' invasion of Iraq in a cemetery.

That war was a fraud and a crime from its outset. Iraqis died; Iraqis were made refugees in their own country and beyond; Iraqis are still physically insecure and impoverished by corruption in their own country where sectarian differences can still be deadly.

That war broke a generation of U.S. soldiers sent battle for incomprehensible, sometimes non-existent, ends.

That vicious, preposterous war of aggression ensures that much of the world disbelieves the United States and Europe when we decry Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Unsurprisingly, Americans are not popular:

“My opinion of the Americans is negative, because if someone comes and kills my family and I don’t have any power to fight them, it leaves a hatred,” [Waleed Dhahi, now 23,] said. “Of course life continues and we must start again. But I lost my family and that has affected me, and sometimes I wish I had died with them.”