Twenty-three years after the invasion of Iraq, Washington seems to have suddenly regained its senses — or worse, to be a detached observer of a catastrophe that it did not create. However, the record does not permit such lenient forgiveness. The United States is not an impartial bystander to Iraq’s political demise; it is the surgeon who performed the operation, then left the patient to bleed to death in the dark. What Washington is doing today is not state-building. It is the management of a decaying body — keeping a faint pulse, never attempting real resuscitation.

It is worth recalling that Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator of Iraq in 2003, was not a bureaucratic footnote, but rather the chief architect of the decision to dissolve the Iraqi army, dismantle state institutions and create a political and security vacuum that was quickly filled by Iran-aligned militias and parties. This was not a technical miscalculation, but a deliberate choice. The old state was destroyed without any viable replacement, merely handing power over to sectarian groups who viewed Iraq as spoils, not a nation. From that moment on, the question was no longer why Iraq had failed, but how any country designed in this way could possibly survive.

Then came General David Petraeus, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq from 2007 to 2008. He told Congress that Iranian influence had penetrated Iraqi state institutions ‘because the state itself was absent’. This is not just a passing remark; it is an admission that Washington turned a blind eye to Tehran’s infiltration of the country, treating it as an inevitable consequence of the occupation. During those years, Shia militias were used as tactical partners against al-Qaeda, only to evolve into a parallel authority stronger than the state itself.

READ: Iraq’s........

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