This week is the ten year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Though the war may have officially ended, it is far from behind us—the high human and monetary costs have left a stain on our history, which will no doubt influence foreign policy strategy for decades to come.
msnbc’s Rachel Maddow joined the NOW with Alex Wagner panel Monday to discuss the legacy of one of America’s bloodiest wars and the political salesmanship leading up to it.
“For me,” Maddow said, “the lesson that we’ve got to learn which I’m not sure we’ve learned yet is about how we got there. The case to go to war was full of holes, it was made up…[and] our political system, including the media, was not good enough.”
We may not be able to control the decisions of the past, but we can control the policies of our future—and that future involves a lot of veterans coming home to inadequate services, higher unemployment rates, and high suicide rates.
“We’ve now got 12 years of veterans that we created in this country that we’ve got to do right by,” Maddow said. “I do think that [the] public loves veterans and I think that we respect them for their service and consider them to be heroes…but that hasn’t necessarily been followed through with policy.”
The msnbc documentary, Hubris: Selling the Iraq War, re-airs on March 22nd at 9 pm EST.
Allison MacDonald