Across the country today, political polarization and unrelenting support for a lying president have made Americans vulnerable to government manipulation. Determining lies from facts has proved difficult as people in the U.S. become less and less critical of government deception.
In 2024, despite 34 felony counts, Donald Trump was reelected to the presidency by the American people. While this may have come as a shock for some, the reelection of dishonest presidents is not new to America.
Former President George W. Bush was reelected to office in 2004, after his first term of presidency, in which he drove America into a “Global War on Terror,” based on fabricated stories backed by misled intelligence.
On Oct. 7, 2001, the U.S. began its Invasion of Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attacks by the al-Qaida militant group. The goal of the invasion was to remove the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that fostered Osama bin Laden, the leader of the attacks, and the founder of al-Qaida.
Looking for links to the attacks, Bush brought attention to the country of Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein. Using false intelligence and ulterior motives, Bush claimed that Saddam had access to weapons of mass destruction and had somehow coordinated the attacks with bin Laden, making Iraq a threat to the U.S.
Though they had both expressed opposition to the U.S. prior to 9/11, bin Laden and Saddam’s conflicting ideological differences prevented the two from maintaining a cooperative relationship.
According to an article by Knight Ridder Newspapers, one of the few American media companies that challenged Bush’s claims about Iraq, U.S. officials had confirmed that Saddam did have the ambition of possessing WMD. However, he had been unsuccessful for about a decade. There were only two ways he would be able to obtain the materials for such weapons: “purchasing them from the black market or making them himself. U.S. officials and independent experts said he had had no luck at either.”
Though there was no evidence connecting Saddam to bin Laden or the possession of WMD, the Bush Administration persisted with this false narrative, sending American soldiers and innocent Iraqi people to their deaths.
On March 9, 2003, Bush announced the Invasion of Iraq. For many, 9/11 was a call to action, and American nationalism had increased. With little knowledge about the war they were signing up for, and even less about the country they planned to invade, American soldiers entered Iraq under orders that many later questioned.
The intense fear, as well as the desire for revenge, made Americans more susceptible to the Bush Administration’s falsehood. According to a Pew Research Center article, “The same month that Congress approved the use of force resolution against Iraq, 66% of the public said that ‘Saddam Hussein helped the terrorists in the September 11th attacks.’”
In 2011, the war ended, and the last U.S. troops departed from Iraq. With over 32 thousand American soldiers wounded in action, and approximately 200 thousand Iraqi citizens killed, zero weapons of mass destruction were found. The Pew Research article also finds that in 2019, “Majorities of Americans and U.S. military veterans said the Iraq War was ‘not worth fighting.’”
Bush took advantage of Americans’ susceptibility to lies to forward his own interest in regime change in Iraq, a country he had no authority over. In a speech regarding the U.S. occupation in Iraq, Bush claimed that although most of the intelligence he used to defend the invasion was false, the decision to remove Saddam was righteous to leave a “free and democratic Iraq in his place.” However, according to another Knight Ridder article, U.S. officials had not done any “real planning for postwar Iraq.”
“It’s a pity. We always wanted to get rid of Saddam,” said a communications engineer located in Baghdad, in an interview with the New York Times. “We know Iraq is rich, and we hoped it would get better. But we did not get what we were hoping for.”
According to the Brookings Institution, “Bush policies fostered a sectarian Iraq that has helped empower Iranian hardliners.” Because of U.S. influence, post-war Iraq has become more deeply divided and prone to influence from neighboring countries, such as Iran.
Innocent people suffered at the hands of the Bush Administration and American ignorance under the guise of patriotism. Learning from our past mistakes means questioning the government and holding those in power accountable.
Countries like Iraq and Afghanistan are foreign to regular American people; names like Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein aren’t common to us, which makes it even more important that we stay educated on issues that the government might expect us to overlook.
This isn’t just a government’s lies; these are real people, making decisions that affect American families, soldiers, and innocent people in other nations. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and advisors like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Scooter Libby all have blood on their hands.
In today’s America, ICE enforcement and Trump’s lies regarding the Epstein files are harming our neighbors, family and friends. It is important that we demand the truth and don’t fall for the same manipulation that we have in the past. Always question the government, always hold those in power accountable, and always speak up.