Why we should keep remembering the 2003 war against Iraq

The past month we wanted to give attention to the war against Iraq in 2003. This topic today is often discussed as an episodic historical event and in abstract policy terms focusing on its ''illegality''. Within this context daily life under US occupation is not elaborated on.

As you have seen the US occupation was more than only a ''policy mistake'' it was a systematic colonial occupation with many massacres done by the US army,  house raids, bomb attacks, and heavy monitoring and policing.

It's problematic how all these issues have been reduced to isolated attention to Abu Ghraib, sort of hiding how Abu Graib was only one symptom of a fundamentally inhuman occupation. Then there were the insults, the racial slurs and the all round cultural desecration of Iraqis.

If we go one level higher, you'll see how our intellectuals, bureaucrats, institutions which preceded the Baath party and Iraqis, were eliminated. Economic self-sustenance was furthermore destroyed  introducing us to ''privatized'' alternatives.

Even water is a private enterprise in Iraq, just to show how dire this is. By decreasing economic resources and  organizing a normality based on monsterized conflict gave rise to monsters. The new political institutions as defined by the hastily written constitution created unrecoverable political hurdles for any significant political reform, something Iraqis still have to deal with today. Our institutions are highly sensitive for elite co-optation and  for commercial interest defined by foreign investors and NGOs.

Many Iraqis still sit with their wounds while that same occupational force still resides among us and reinforces the order they created in 2003. Yet in America it's not a concern, as video games are being produced to ''play'' this occupation for entertainment.

Iraq is not only a commodity for the game industry but also for think tanks, academia, lobbygroups, NGOs and many more. But always remember America is an empire in decline and hopefully it is Iraq that will throw the last scoop of mud on its grave.