 March 20th marked 20 years since the beginning of the brutal Iraq war. It has been 20 years since George Bush, Tony Blair and their allies launched a disastrous campaign based on lies and moralize. The war destabilized the region, led to the rise of the Islamic State and divided countries. Its impact continues to this day. It also exposed people across the world to the hypocrisy and imperialist approach of the United States. 20 years later, how has the war changed the U.S.? What impact did it have on its institutions? Eugene Puriar of Breakthrough News explains. You know, I think that 20 years on from the Iraq war, there are a lot of implications. I think the biggest implication, the biggest impact that the war had was really shaking the trust in the mainstream media. I mean, the role of the New York Times with its front page distortions, the Washington Post that ran, I think, 27, at least 27 editorials in favor of the war and by some counts, 140 front page headlines around the war. Maybe no one was really all that surprised that the Wall Street Journal would have joined into that. But MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, I mean, all of these sort of pillars of the traditional journalistic enterprise that have already become under assault because of the rise of the Internet and independent media. But it's pretty consistently cited by many people as why they don't really trust the media because they've seen what's happened in Iraq. And I think that we've seen for the U.S. government, it's had a huge impact on their war-making ability and the idea and the concept that we were lied into the war into Iraq overhangs almost every single other conflict that takes place. Whether the government ends up moving forward or not, it becomes a conversation inside of the populace and usually as opposition to these wars rise. The issue of the lies that are being told is the first thing that comes to the forefront. So I think that it has not only shaken the trust in sort of the mainstream ruling class elite opinion makers over the long term. But I think it's also hardened people's general skepticism about wars abroad, which has changed the way the government has operated. I mean, from the rise of drone wars to the rise of embedded journalists during the Iraq war, which has only continued since then, the attacks on independent media, people like Julian Assange. I mean, all of this has been a direct response to the fact that the impact of the Iraq war, I think on governing institutions, on media institutions and the broader approach to the ruling elite has been one that has shaken the confidence that people have that these individuals are leading the country with any form of integrity or in a way that may be right or correct, but that in fact, many of these people are liars. They're often dissembling and that they have their own agenda. And I think 20 years on, that is the big conversation in the United States. How this war was actually able to happen based on lies. And you have many of the people who are for the war now spending a lot of time trying to go back and rewrite history and say, well, they weren't lies, we just got it wrong. And that has been a big axis of discussion. And I think that alone speaks to the erosion of trust in so many key ruling class institutions in the country. And of course, you know, the Iraq war came at a time where the US economy had already been massively hollowed out from the point of view of deindustrialization, the so-called globalization of the economy. I think the impact of the war in terms of the people who were killed in terms of the money that flew to the military industrial complex has really also heightened people's awareness of how the war machine has really bled off the main needs of so many people here in this country over the same amount of time. We're spending trillions upon trillions of dollars for these endless wars that started with Afghanistan and where we had the apogee perhaps in Iraq. And in that time, we've seen the standard of living, the quality of infrastructure all decline. And this is to the point where Democrats, Republicans, independence, communists, libertarians, I mean, all across the political spectrum, this has actually kind of become sort of common sense. And the neo-conservative type forces who want these wars are constantly at pains to try to justify what they're doing from a financial sense because of people seeing clearly that impact. The US establishment did not learn from 2003. Less than a decade later, it encouraged and participated in similar wars in Syria and Libya, once again destabilizing the region. US military expenditures continued to soar. How did the military industrial complex in the US change its strategies after the Iraq war? How does it continue to wage war today in new forms? I think what we've seen from the ruling elite and the national security establishment section of it, that they have moved more to sanctions, more to proxy wars, you know, the advance of technology, which has opened up the possibility of drone wars. All these things are coming in the rise of, you know, more extensive special operations forces that kind of actually started there, you know, with General David Petraeus in Iraq. Because the basic point that I think that the ruling elites in America have recognized from Iraq, but also from Vietnam, is that the more American troops are put in harm's way, the more death that comes, the more maiming of people for life that happens, the mental injuries that people are also facing because of these conflicts. The more of that, the more it drives opposition to these wars because the carnage is right there and it's right at home. I mean, when something's happening thousands of miles away, it's a little bit more easy to hide the human toll, to to allied the human toll, to decontextualize it in a way where, you know, people become desensitized or at least aren't willing to take to the streets in huge numbers or whatever it may be. And so we've seen that there has been a concerted effort to try to avoid those kind of boots on the ground conflict. And if you listen to the past couple of presidents, you'll constantly hear them say as a concern various comments. Well, we're not sending US boots on the ground. I mean, that's been Joe Biden's key refrain as a concern in the issue of the war in Ukraine. Trump, Obama, same thing. You were constantly hearing this issue. We don't know US boots on the ground and they're moving towards forms of pressure and forms of warfare that are making it easier for them to insulate the reality. Now, a lot of times there are boots on the ground in many of these places. But, you know, you just don't hear it like that. I mean, obviously in a place like Somalia, there are boots on the ground. But I think the way it's presented is like, oh, it's just drones. And someone in Las Vegas is flying far away. And all the people really doing the fighting are people from over there. It's really a version of kind of Vietnamization as we saw during the Nixon administration, where the hand of the U.S. is very clear, but it's slightly hidden by the use of other people and other countries and nations forces to do most of the dying in the context of what's happening. And I think we're only going to see that happen even more. And we can see it in the evolution of US foreign forces, you know, in terms of their embrace of technology, in terms of the embrace of small group special operations forces, but also the huge explosion we've seen in sanctions regimes, which are obviously a form of coercion and a form of pressure that tend to lead up to wars. But the use of them has exploded in the last 20 or so years, specifically because I think the government, the U.S. ruling elite are looking to use anything they can to try to enforce their writ without having to put troops on the ground in a warlike scenario. And I think we're seeing in certain areas there's a shine away from putting boots on the ground because of understanding what's happening. I mean, you can even look at the issue of Black Hawk down, you know, in Somalia in 1993, which still comes up now before almost any conflict. Well, we don't want a Black Hawk down scenario. And so I think, you know, that that is the main switch is to try to create the perception in the U.S. population that this massive military industrial complex is that it exists. They're not trying to hide it exists, but that it's not driving wars that are going to kill Americans. Now, that's not necessarily true. And of course, they could lead to nuclear wars that could kill all of the Americans. But at the very least, you can see how the Iraq wars had a huge impact, just like the Vietnam War did on the willingness of the government to try to put U.S. forces on the ground where they can die in large numbers. Twenty years ago, as the U.S. establishment plotted the war, hundreds of thousands marched on the streets against it. This week, over 200 organizations took to the streets against war and military spending. The marches of extreme importance due to the current U.S. role in Ukraine. How does the anti-war movement see this moment when the U.S. is fueling conflict on a global scale again? I think the anti-war movement is looking at our current moment. Twenty years on from the Iraq war at something of a crossroads. I mean, on the one hand, you know, since we've had so much, you know, shadow games being played with wars, the rise of sanctions, the rise of proxy wars, we understand that our task, our educational task, our propagandistic tasks are higher than ever because some of it is actually helping people to understand the stakes of the conflict, because since thousands of people are dying, sometimes the stakes can actually seem lower when, in fact, they're actually higher in the context of great power confrontation and the potentiality for nuclear war with Russia, with China, and so on and so forth. And so I think we're recognizing that the anti-war movement has to really double down, you know, on its educational role. And, you know, some of that is street protest. I mean, street protests in a way and rallies are their own form of mass education. But I think in terms of the materials we produce, all of the different aspects of our work, that's a bigger factor, is combating the changes that have been made by the ruling elite. But on the same token, I think the anti-war movement is feeling very energized in the fact that the destruction that's being wrought by the military industrial complex is so palpable in terms of how it's starving communities, working class communities of funds here in this country, of how it's only driving more conflict in other countries, how it's behind and responsible for some of the many of the biggest political challenges America is facing from inflation to immigration. And that all of these different contradictions also create the basis by which a real strong opposition to the military industrial complex and the war machine in general can be made. I mean, typically we had the anti-Vietnam War movement, the anti-Iraq War movement, the movement against intervention in Central America and so on and so forth. Very particularistic movements around particularistic moments. But because the system itself isn't the thing that's being attacked, then, you know, they re-up and they come back and they do it again somewhere else. But I think many anti-war activists in the United States feel more than ever the possibility of building an opposition that connects all of these different points to the war machine in and of itself is at a high pitch. And I think that that is seen as an opportunity as much as there are many big challenges.