The Onion had the most accurate Iraq War Coverage & Predictions in 2003
15 years ago, to the day, this article was published by The Onion.
Not only was it accurate in the general sense — that the Iraq War’s consequences would be felt for generations — but it was also unnervingly accurate in its particulars as well, down to the specific years that effects would be felt. The fictional liberal, Nathan Eckert, provided the best assessment for the Pandora’s box that was about to be forcefully opened by the United States. But to fully appreciate just how right The Onion was, we need to look at how news coverage of the prospect of the Iraq War measured up to it.
Rewind the clock back to 2003. Still in shock from 9/11, Americans were very cognizant of the threat posed by dangerous weapons in the hands of terrorists. The media was blanketed with coverage of potential ways Sadaam Hussein could develop such weapons. Here are a few examples from, thankfully, archived pages.
We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud — Condoleezza Rice
Dr. Rice’s quote has not been forgotten, but it’s proper context is worth considering. Not only was the Iraq War justified on the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but it was presented to the American people as a race against time. Sadaam was “maybe six months from a crude nuclear device”. Even the New York Times published editorials arguing on behalf of a pre-emptive war to disarm Iraq of its dangerous weapons.
The opening salvos of the war, which began on March 20th, 2003, were decisive and led to the swift end to Sadaam Hussein’s Baathist regime in Iraq. 6 weeks later, then-president George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier in full military regalia and delivered his infamous “mission accomplished speech”.
The Onion
You know this history — but it is the Onion’s predictions 15 years ago that are remarkable today. Just looking at fictitional Eckert’s predictions, line by line, is an eery experience.
1. This war will not put an end to anti-Americanism; it will fan the flames of hatred even higher.
America has suffered a crash in support from the global community in the decades since the Iraq War began. Just look at this poll from Gallup:
You can see that, just before the War, 79% were statisfied with the position of the United States. In the following years, that number would plumit to a low of 30%, followed by a partial recovery. Except… this is among Americans. If we look at the rest of the world, the numbers are even more stark.
Identifying changes in anti-American views is difficult — there are other factors that can affect it (leadership changes from Bush to Obama to Trump) and the polling is not consistent. Still, America is underwater in most countries relatively consistently.
2. It will not end the threat of weapons of mass destruction; it will make possible their further proliferation.
On the eve of the Iraq War, there were three rogue governments with the potential and the intention to develop nuclear capabilities: Libya, Iran, and North Korea. Each country has had surpassingly different fates — Libya voluntarily eliminated its nuclear weapons program, and saw its government toppled in the Arab Spring. Iran voluntarily suspended its nuclear program following a deal with the EU and Obama administration, though the US involvement with that deal is politically tenouous.
And then, there is North Korea.
While the United States prepared to launch a pre-emptive attack against Iraq — again, supposedly because it had a nuclear weapons program — North Korea withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It successfully tested its first atomic bomb on October 3rd, 2006. By 2009, it had the capability to deploy weapons in a military setting. Today, it has the third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, after the US and Russia.
And, speaking of Russia, it is upgrading its nuclear capabilities, and even advertises the ability to hit the US.
So, if one was truly concerned about nuclear proliferation in 2003, they would have better headed The Onion and disregarded what they were reading on CNN and the New York Times.
3. And it will not lay the groundwork for the flourishing of democracy throughout the Mideast; it will harden the resolve of Arab states to drive out all Western (i.e. U.S.) influence.
One could be forgiven in the opening days of 2011 to believe that democracy was sweeping the Middle East. The Arab Spring saw protests erupting in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria. That optimisim gave way within the year, and by today, with the sole exception of Tunisia, all these states are much less stable. In the case of Syria the situation has deteriorated to the worst refugee crises the world has seen since World War II. In Yemen, the violence has persisted, creating the worst famine seen in decades. The cause of democracy in the Middle East has never been weaker, despite the efforts of the areas inhabitants.
4. If you thought Osama bin Laden was bad, just wait until the countless children who become orphaned by U.S. bombs in the coming weeks are all grown up. Do you think they will forget what country dropped the bombs that killed their parents? In 10 or 15 years, we will look back fondly on the days when there were only a few thousand Middle Easterners dedicated to destroying the U.S. and willing to die for the fundamentalist cause. From this war, a million bin Ladens will bloom.
On January 2nd, 2014, almost 11 years after the start of the Iraq War, Al-Qaeda and a hitherto little-known terrorist group known in the west as ISIS took control of parts of Faluja, the first time the post-war Iraqi government lost territory. This was the opening salvo of a new civil war that would lead to some of the worst human rights crimes seen since World War II. ISIS would rapidly spread across Syria and Iraq over the course of the year, committing atrocities in its wake. In Tikrit, they executed almost 2,000 captured soldiers. That summer, the group’s leader announced the creation of a new caliphate. In their invasion of the north of Iraq, ISIS attempted a genocide of the minority Yazidi community, driving thousands into the mountains. Last-minute action by Kurdish forces managed to save hundreds of thousands. ISIS still managed to take thousands of Yazidi women as sex slaves, creating a human trafficking economy in their despotic state. Worldwide, ISIS managed to recruit thousands to their movement.
The horrors of ISIS not withstanding, terrorism rose sharply in the years following the Iraq War, with a strong uptick 10 years after it started — exactly as the non-existing Eckart predicted.
In the 15 years that have followed the Iraq War, both injuries and deaths related to terrorism have risen 4–5X their number in the early 2000’s. While the defeat of ISIS in 2017 has curtailed that terrorist movement, the generational affects of the Iraq War are still being felt.
5. And what exactly is our endgame here? Do we really believe that we can install Gen. Tommy Franks as the ruler of Iraq? Is our arrogance and hubris so great that we actually believe that a U.S. provisional military regime will be welcomed with open arms by the Iraqi people? Democracy cannot possibly thrive under coercion. To take over a country and impose one’s own system of government without regard for the people of that country is the very antithesis of democracy. And it is doomed to fail.
The US government fatefully botched the post-war rebuildling of the country. Two key decisions made in the aftermath of the collapse of Sadaam’s government doomed the Iraqi people to years of civil war. The Coalition Provisional Authority under the leadership of Paul Bremer issued the following orders:
CPA Order 1 (May 16th, 2003): De-Ba’athification — no one who served in the Ba’ath party can serve in the new government. Because Sadaam’s government was a totalitarian one, being in the Ba’ath party was a requirement from generals to schooleathers. This order sent the entire intellectual capital of Iraq into unemployment, leaving no local governing institutions.
CPA Order 2 (May 23rd, 2003): Dissolution of Entities — this extended the purge of Iraqi institutions from order one, and crucially, disbanded the Iraqi military before disarming them. This took away a disciplined force that could have kept order, and instead angered them while they still had military-grade weapons, fueling an insurgency that would erupt the following year. The Iraqi insurgency would kill thousands of Iraqis and coalition forces. The secretarian violence that followed would create localized ethnic cleansing events that would kill tens of thousands.
6. A war against Iraq is not only morally wrong, it will be an unmitigated disaster.
Eckert (who again, didn’t exist) assumed this would be the judgement of history over the long run, but it would become the dominant view in even the Republican Party of the United States in 2016 under it’s presidential nominee Donald Trump, who used prety much those exact words.
Counterpoint: No It Won’t
Eckert’s fictional opponent Bob Sheffer took the opposing view — that none of the bad things would happen. That view did not age nearly as well.
Fake News
Politically, the casualties of the Iraq War are overwhelming. Combined with the 2008 financial crisis, it contributed to the erosion of the public’s trust in both media and authority. We currently careen in dangerous waters, with Donald Trump oscillating between threatening North Korea with nuclear war on Twitter and offering unconditional meetings with its leader. Intentionally false news is shared more widely than actual news, raising disturbing questions about how social media undercuts fact-based reporting.
For my part, I blame the Iraq war. For a precious moment after the 9/11 attacks, America had the world’ support and the American government had regained the support it had lost after Watergate with the American people.
That moment was lost, and American’s faith in their government has fallen so low that reality TV stars are more successful in presidential campaigns than politicians with decades in service. The Iraq War was the crucial moment that broke faith in institutions. The failure was so complete that a satirical article by the Onion published within the first week of the war gave the American people, and the world, better insight into the following decades than most of the original reporting that credulously related the Bush Administration’s false pretenses, and false urgency, for war. While the predictions of the made-up Eckert only extended by about 15 years, the damage done by that fateful mistake will last decades longer both in the United States and in the world at large.
