PETER HITCHENS: I saw for myself the savage aftermath of the Iraq war. We are in the hands of foolish children… this will impoverish the world for years

We are in the hands of stupid children. They may look like adults, but President Trump and his crew of minions think the planet is a toy and are playing with it. Look at the name he gave to his war, ‘Operation Epic Rage’. It resembles an extremely violent video game or a bad movie; It’s not a serious action that could kill many people or be driven from their homes, and if things go wrong it could impoverish much of the world for years.

This comes as Mr. Trump moves a few steps closer to becoming a full-blown megalomaniac. Government buildings in Washington, D.C. now bear huge banners depicting the President’s likeness. He recently attacked the Supreme Court justices who ruled against him, calling them ‘idiots and lapdogs’, ‘very unpatriotic’ and ‘disloyal to the Constitution’.

He baselessly said that America’s highest court was manipulated by foreign interests. I suspect that this behavior does not comply with his oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’

He wants his face on the money. His final State of the Union address lasted nearly 108 boastful minutes, during which he attempted to order members of Congress to stand. They didn’t.

But of course, when the highly disciplined US military enters a room, they stand up without being asked. He hails him as the lawful Commander-in-Chief and obeys him in a way that judges and members of Congress do not. So we have to wonder if this extremely dangerous war with no end in sight is a way of making up for the fact that not everyone is doing what they say they are. I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

In 2015, Iran agreed to impose severe restrictions on its nuclear research in exchange for relief from heavy Western sanctions. If Iran is ever to emerge from the corrupt, cruel, and narrow-minded rule of the Ayatollahs, then it must develop a prosperous and thriving civil society. In my direct experience, the mullahs thrive on hostility towards the West and like to make the situation worse. This helps them sway the patriotism of their people to their side, as they will try to do now.

Smoke rises from the explosion in Tehran this morning

Twenty years ago, US planes were dropping leaflets in Iraq urging soldiers and civilians to ‘fill the streets and avenues and overthrow Saddam Hussein and his henchmen’. Peter Hitchens writes that a major rebellion followed and was brutally suppressed.

I believe the 2015 agreement can bring Iran back to the civilized world. It was being closely monitored, and as far as I understand, Iran was doing as promised. But in 2018, President Donald Trump set out to ruin it. I don’t know why he was so willing to do it, but he did it and here we are.

There was a possible path to peace, and it was Mr. Trump who chose to walk away from it. He has since ordered and carried out the assassination of a top Iranian general (imagine the opposite). Iran only made a token retaliation. Last year, he ordered the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran once again responded with a limited missile attack on the US base in Qatar.

Will this end this easily? Let’s hope so, but can we be sure? Iran knows that the United States can destroy it. So what will this achieve? Mr. Trump, who gets along well with other murderous regimes in the Middle East, particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia, claims to be particularly outraged by the Revolutionary Guard’s mass murder of protesters.

Still, he calls on the Iranian people to take to the streets and fight them again. It was a strange moment. The president was filmed in semi-darkness, flanked by flags, wearing a baseball cap bearing the letters US melodramatically shadowing the upper part of his face. He gave the Iranians this rather surprising advice; This advice is basically telling them that now is their chance, and if they don’t take it, it’s their own fault.

The words are astonishing: ‘Bombs will fall everywhere. When we’re done, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will probably be your only chance for generations. You asked for America’s help for years but never got it. No President was willing to do what I wanted to do tonight. Now you have a President who gives you what you want. So let’s see how you react. America supports you with overwhelming force and destructive power. Now is the time to take control of your destiny and unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is within your reach. This is the time to take action. Don’t let it pass.’

I’m afraid this is reminiscent of the actions of another US President, the late George Bush, on 15 February 1991 (who had expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait) ‘calling on the Iraqi army and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force dictator Saddam Hussein to step aside’.

As Bush’s message was conveyed to Iraq via radio and television, planes dropped leaflets calling on soldiers and civilians to ‘fill the streets and alleys and overthrow Saddam Hussein and his henchmen’. In fact, a major rebellion followed. He was brutally crushed. There’s a specific reason I remember this. In May 2003, while on tour in post-invasion Iraq, I visited a newly opened mass grave at Munahil, near the ancient city of Babylon. That’s where most of those who followed President Bush’s advice ended up.

I wrote: ‘The wasteland lay the remains of what were once hundreds of people: brown bones, tufts of hair, skulls half-covered in soil, and scraps of fabric packed into shockingly small plastic bags.

‘They were the Shiites who followed the West’s calls to rise up against Saddam in 1991, were abandoned by us, were massacred by Saddam, blindfolded and thrown into pits.’

At the time, a man named Anthony Blair clearly hoped that such horrific scenes would get people to support the invasion of Iraq. That wasn’t the effect it had on me. I still remember. I hope you will forgive me if I look at today’s developments without much excitement.