This House Regrets Western Intervention in the Middle East

The real question is not whether we regret these wars—it’s whether we are willing to end them.

Ann Wright gave the following speech as a part of the Cambridge University Debates on May 15, 2025.

The motion of today’s debate, “This House Regrets Western Intervention in the Middle East,” is very timely considering the events of the past months and years. The interventions—better called wars—are all about oil and wealth for Western countries, especially my country, the United States.

Wars for Profit and Domination, Cloaked in the Language of Democracy

Let’s call it what it is: war for profit, cloaked in the language of democracy. Western intervention in the Middle East has never been about freedom — it’s been about oil, control, and strategic dominance.

I will argue that the interventions in the Middle East by the United States and other Western nations for access to the huge oil reserves in the region have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands, injuries in the millions, imprisonment and torture of tens of thousands, and the destruction of infrastructure and cultural institutions on a massive scale. Western wars for oil and profit have included war crimes, violations of the Geneva Conventions, and crimes against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

I would hope that this House will overwhelmingly say that it not only regrets but condemns Western intervention in the Middle East.

I say this with an extensive background in military strategy and international affairs. I served 29 years in the U.S. Army and retired as a Colonel. I was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. I was on the small team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December 2001.

Bush Administration Lies the Country into the War on Iraq

I ended my career in the U.S. government with my resignation in March 2003 in opposition to the decision of the Bush administration to wage war on Iraq under the guise of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction — which the administration knew was a lie. I was one of only three who initially resigned from the Bush administration’s decision to wage war on Iraq, while in the U.K. you had over a dozen government employees who resigned.

And I will add that the U.K.’s Blair administration went along with the lie and joined Bush’s war on Iraq. The Chilcot Report later confirmed this war was launched before peaceful options had been exhausted.

Deaths, Injuries and Displacement of Millions

In the past 25 years we have seen an incredible number of Western interventions — wars — in the Middle East and the resulting deaths, injuries, and displacement of millions of people — innocent civilians.

According to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs of Brown University in the United States, at least 940,000 people have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. In Iraq alone, an estimated 500,000 excess deaths occurred due to war-related causes.

That figure does not include the more than 60,000 Palestinians — including over 14,000 children — killed in the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. Over 100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces just today alone.

Just yesterday, Israeli military forces again went into hospitals in Gaza to complete their destruction and kill patients in their beds. The United States continues to provide all types of weaponry to the Israeli government as the slaughter of innocent civilians escalates. This slaughter is not only revenge and retaliation for the events of October 7, 2023 but reflects the Israeli government’s stated goal of depopulating or permanently displacing Palestinians from Gaza.

The number of people who have been wounded or have fallen ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who have died indirectly from the destruction of hospitals, infrastructure, and environmental contamination.

Thousands of military members have died in combat in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as have thousands of civilian contractors. Many have died later from injuries and illnesses sustained in the war zones. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and contractors have been wounded and are living with disabilities and war-related illnesses, including post-traumatic stress — which results in domestic violence and suicides. These are the fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters of your generation.

Millions have been displaced. According to the Costs of War project, the U.S. post-9/11 wars have forcibly displaced at least 38 million people in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and Gaza — more than any conflict since World War II.

The U.S. could have pursued nonmilitary alternatives to holding accountable those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. These alternatives would have been far less costly in human lives.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq turned the country into a laboratory in which militant groups such as Islamic State have been able to perfect their techniques of recruitment and violence. The formation of Islamist militant groups spreading throughout the region counts among the many human costs of that war.

In the same manner, the Israeli attacks on Gaza have provided the laboratory for testing of many types of weapons and weapons systems including drone warfare in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian territories.

The incalculable human toll of the Iraq war continues to grow. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, environmental devastation, chronic, generational medical conditions, countless people tortured, traumatized, or otherwise harmed in ways unseen, and an entire generation raised with endless war.

Imprisonment, Torture and Rendition—War Crimes

Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, the Bush administration declared a global “War on Terror.” This deliberate manufacturing of a foreign enemy who holds ‘dangerous’ ideological beliefs led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, a massive increase in anti-Arab, anti-Muslim hatred, and a variety of discriminatory policies and practices targeting African, Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities at home and abroad. It was also used to justify increased U.S. militarism across the globe, beginning with the invasion of Afghanistan, and, later, Iraq.

This manufactured war created a global enemy, resulting in systemic Islamophobia and the weaponization of fear.

In January 2002, the U.S. opened the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — where many were detained on the basis of bounties, not evidence.

As of January 2025, 780 people from 48 countries have been detained in the Guantanamo prison. 756 have been released, 9 died in custody and 15 remain — over two decades later.

Of the 15 who remain, 3 are eligible for transfer, 3 are eligible for the Periodic Review Board, 7 are involved in the military commissions process, 7 have been convicted and sentenced by U.S. military commissions, not by civilian courts.

The CIA’s rendition program flew people to other US-run prisons, including clandestine CIA operated detention facilities known as “black sites” around the world. These secret centers have been reported in Afghanistan, the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia, Syria, Jordan, Pakistan, Thailand and countries in Eastern Europe. President Bush confirmed the existence of the secret program in September 2006.

This imprisonment and the torture which the persons received is a war crime, yet very few in the U.S government, military or civilian, have been held accountable.

Detainees were tortured by U.S. military, CIA operatives and contractors in all the open as well as clandestine sites.

Torture is not only a policy failure — it is a war crime.

Two years later, in 2003, soon after the occupation and the ensuing insurgency in Iraq, the U.S. began a mass round-up of Iraqi civilians — the vast majority of whom were never charged with any crime — and set up a prison system around the country.

Abu Ghraib, a notorious prison outside of Baghdad previously used by Saddam Hussein’s regime to torture Iraqi citizens, was opened as a key detention site for the United States to hold Iraqi men and women whom the U.S. felt opposed its occupation of Iraq.

The world finally heard of the abuses in Abu Ghraib when persons inside the prison finally revealed the horrors that the U.S. military was wrecking on Iraqi civilians.

The U.S. military operated Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became a symbol of U.S. hypocrisy and horror, with detainees subjected to beatings, sexual abuse, and psychological torment — the same prison once used by Saddam Hussein.

These actions of imprisonment, rendition and torture by the Bush administration are violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against Torture, and the Geneva Conventions.

Health Disasters from “Western Intervention”

According to the Brown University Costs of War project, based on biological, environmental, and anthropological research in Fallujah, Iraq, people who have returned to bombarded homes and neighborhoods face increased risk of negative health impacts from heavy metal exposure from exploded weapons, both for themselves and for future generations.

Research has shown that returnees to bombarded areas in other places such as Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, and Lebanon face negative long-term health impacts from heavy metal exposure.

The findings support prior research which has demonstrated that those who are first at the scenes of war-damaged areas are at a higher risk of reproductive health harms.

Fallujah, Iraq’s population faced a 17-fold increase in birth anomalies and myriad other health problems linked with bombardments from the 2003 U.S. invasion and later occupation by ISIS.

The bone sampling research detected uranium in the bones of 29% of study participants in Fallujah and lead was detected in 100% of participants’ bone samples.

The amount of lead detected in participants’ bones was 600% higher than averages from similarly aged populations in the U.S. The authors’ environmental sampling detected higher levels of heavy metals in the soils of more heavily bombarded neighborhoods, indicating the enduring distribution of heavy metals linked with military activity.

Additionally, the research found that in the process of being displaced, returning, and re-establishing households, nutritional gaps compound reproductive health risks for returnees.

These patterns have been found in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon, affecting reproductive health, fetal development, and long-term wellbeing.

The health and environment effects of “Western intervention” in the Middle East are environmental crimes that will endure across generations.

Destruction of Culture and Heritage

When the U.S. invaded Baghdad, Iraq, in 2003, U.S. forces failed to protect Iraq’s cultural heritage leading to thousands of priceless artifacts disappearing. While US forces did not directly destroy antiquities in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same way as militant groups like Daesh, their actions contributed to significant damage and looting of cultural heritage. This damage stemmed from factors like a lack of adequate protection for archaeological sites, the creation of markets for stolen artifacts, and the theft of cultural objects by US soldiers.

I know that U.S. officers are taught that protection of cultural properties must be factored into any military operation. I taught the Law of Land Warfare to U.S. Special Forces and the 82nd Airborne Division at the School of Special Warfare, Fort Bragg, North Carolina which included a large curriculum on protection of artifacts of countries in which the U.S. conducts war. Each war plan identifies the location of cultural properties and how many personnel must be deployed to protect those properties in Civil Affairs units that accompany infantry forces. These units were eliminated by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as unnecessary which resulted in the looting of the major archeological museums in Iraq.

Over 15,000 exhibits of cultural artifacts in Iraq went missing. Fewer than 6,000 of them have been recovered so far, and they are far from the most valuable items, judging by an exhibition held in 2021.

In 2015, more than 60 Iraqi cultural treasures illegally smuggled into the United States were returned to the Republic of Iraq. Following five separate investigations led by U.S. government agencies, cultural objects from Iraq were seized at the culmination of investigations in New York; Maryland; Texas; and Connecticut.

Cultural items were also destroyed, particularly during the rise of ISIL (ISIS) and other groups challenging the U.S. military in Iraq. Over 41 religious institutions were destroyed by ISIL in Mosul, Iraq alone.

While U.S. forces did not directly destroy heritage sites like ISIS did, it created the conditions for widespread looting, illicit trafficking, and irreparable loss.

In closing, I hope this description of the dangers of Western interference — or more accurately, wars — in the Middle East has shown that military action to resolve political issues unleashes chaos, war crimes, and devastation for innocent citizens.

These wars have undermined international law, normalized torture, and militarized diplomacy. And their legacy continues: in bodies, in trauma, and in the souls of displaced children.

The real question is not whether we regret these wars — it’s whether we are willing to end them. To dismantle the systems that fuel them. To replace impunity with accountability.

I call on you, the leaders of tomorrow, to remember this history — and to never let wars begin and end the current end wars now.

My presentation begins at minute 2:39 and goes until 14:16.