United Kingdom

Bitter aftertaste of ‘freedom fries’

Published on 28 May 2014 at 10:35

Reporting on an audit of British military operations since the Cold War by the world’s oldest defence think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), both The Independent and The Daily Telegraph run headlines on the £30bn (€36.9bn) cost of the campaign in Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
According to the RUSI, “The underlying flaw in both of these operations was that US and UK leaders thought that their superior military power, along with large amounts of money, could shift foreign societies onto quite different paths of political development.”
The Independent notes that the audit is critical of the human cost of the US-led invasion of Iraq, which “caused many more civilian deaths than would have been the case if Saddam had remained in power”, while The Daily Telegraph highlights a quote on its long-term consequences: “Far from reducing international terrorism … the 2003 invasion [of Iraq] had the effect of promoting it.”

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