I am so glad to see some resemblance of normal life come back to these people after the horror they have been through. What this country, the U.S. caused there with the totally unjustified & evil invasion is hard to fathom. The fact that we would actually contemplate trying to do it again with Iran, a country nearly four times the size of Iraq, is sheer insanity. What this article doesn't state is who is responsible for helping bring Mosul back. Is it the Shite ( Iranian ) majority? Sunnis? the U.S.? A combination of any or all? We should be helping alot if they want it from us after we destroyed the country.
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Yeah it looks like things are improving for the MEN in Mosul. How nice that they can stroll the streets, sit at outdoor cafe tables in the evening breeze....
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Before the invasion by the United States women in Iraq had more freedom than today. Now they are almost nowhere in public. Same is true for other regime changes in the middle east, happened in the name of bringing Western values (democracy). Such a policy is just too cynical.
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This headline, and the underlying article, tend to minimize the horror and destruction that the people of Mosul have endured in the 15 years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq: an illegal and unnecessary invasion based on demonstrably false pretenses. That invasion and its aftermath have mostly destroyed Iraqi society, and lead to hundreds of thousands of death (by even conservative measures). ISIS was just one gruesome chapter in a much longer process.
It must also be remembered that the highly-influential NY Times itself played a central role in making a liberal-Democrat-leaning case for that US invasion. In this light, one wonders if the Times has an interest, unconscious or otherwise, in overstating the "life is returning to normal" narrative.
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While the NY Times may well have played a role in the making the case for invasion of Iraq, the US invasion was hardly the result of a "liberal-Democrat-leaning case". Judith Miller, then a reporter for the Times and now on staff at Fox News, was responsible for the reporting that misled the public, and her information was based on intel received from Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi politician with close ties to neoconservatives in the Bush administration and within the Pentagon.
A former CIA described the process this way in an article for Salon: "Chalabi is providing the Bush people with the information they need to support their political objectives with Iraq, and he is supplying the same material to Judy Miller. Chalabi tips her on something and then she goes to the White House, which has already heard the same thing from Chalabi, and she gets it corroborated by some insider she always describes as a 'senior administration official.' She also got the Pentagon to confirm things for her, which made sense, since they were working so closely with Chalabi."
The Times later discredited Miller's reports, and she was fired in 2005. So no, there was no "liberal-Democratic-leaning case" for the invasion, and you can put your concerns to rest - it does not seem likely that the Times has an interest in "overstating the "life is returning to normal" narrative."
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Chris Wildman** I think you are misreading the comment. They are saying along with the ultra-right wing the Times made the case from the 'liberal media' standpoint. Also Judith Miller got her information from Scooter Libby, whom I believe she was having an affair with at the time.
My impression from these photos. Life, returning to normal. Freedom, if you 're a man.
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So? Why don't we go back and bomb them again to liberate women and change their culture so we can finally see women in the photos. I hope we can accomplish our so-called freedom spreading this time. It's about time we leave people alone to live the way they prefer to live.
3
Ivor, in a classic rewrite of history, here you attempt to shift blame for the U.S. invasion of Iraq on ISIS.
ISIS didn’t invade Mosul until 2014. The city had been in a state of anarchy since 2003 when, as a direct result of our invasion, half of the city’s 1.8 million residents were either killed or forced to flee. The U.S.-backed Ninawa Campaign in 2008 laid to waste whatever social order was left:
“All these factors [post-2008] deprived the city of its historical, scientific, and intellectual foundations in the last 4 years, when many scientists, professors, academics, doctors, health professionals, engineers, lawyers, journalists, religious clergy (both Muslims and Christians), historians, as well as professionals and artists in all walks of life, were either killed or forced to leave the city under the threat of being shot, exactly as happened elsewhere in Iraq in the years following 2003.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul
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Thanks to Ivor Prickett for putting a human face on the situation in Mosul with the in-depth reporting and accompanying photographs -- Chapeau.
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A human face, certainly. Also an exclusively male one, which I find more more than a little disturbing (with the exception of the amusement park, where all concerned are coupled up)
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The only women in these pictures are conservatively dressed women at the amusement park.. No women in any of the other photos. Where are they?
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My question, exactly!
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And what's wrong with conservative dressed women? Do you want to see them in bikini before you accept they are free? I sick and tired of the West thinking always seeing the world through their own lenses. Please leave these people alone. We have destroyed their society with our so called freedom.
4
"Conservative dresses", serious?
The fact is, no one in the Middle East deserved to be abused killed by ISIS, and despite all the pain and suffering, brought upon them by outsiders, they will recover and prosper. Imported into Iraq and Syria by the so-called 'friends' of the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others, and well funded by them, ISIS had an evil mission. We really need to re-examine these relationships and see them for what they truly are, instead of coddling them and pretending that they're the 'good' guys. They, along with our help and guidance, as well as tax dollars, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and created waves of homeless refugees who streamed into Europe.
When do we take some responsibility for these crimes?
9
Agreed. I love the photo essays, but when will the NYT accept responsibility for helping to precipitate the tragedy of Mosul? The NYT has pushed this country into unprovoked war in the Middle East, from Iraq to Libya and now to Syria. It is beating the drums in support of Trump's plan to attack Iran. One has to wonder whether these photo essays garnering sympathy for the societies we destroyed are some type of atonement..
7
In reading this I can't help but think of how many US men and women have died for this. We are spending money we don't have and American lives for what?
4
In reading this, I can't help to think of the number of innocent Iraqis Americans have killed who had no role in 9/11 attacks.
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John Lusk *** not just Americans, but by some estimates over a million Iraqis. Plus 50,000 or so wounded soldiers that have to be cared for. And Four Trillion and counting.
3
I wish the best for the people of Mosul. You got a second chance in life, seize it.
9