Middle-East Arab News and Opinion - Asharq Al-Awsat is the world’s premier pan-Arab daily newspaper, printed simultaneously each day on four continents in 14 cities
The painful reality is that Washington’s hastily cobbled together ethno-sectarian political system for post-2003 Iraq ended up doing the opposite of what it intended. The regional domino effect was also the opposite of what the U.S. had hoped for, as Iraq became a cautionary tale that regimes could use to undermine the democratic desires of their own populations.
Editor's note: On March 20, 2003, the United States launched a military invasion of Iraq, the second time it fought a war in that country in a little more than 10 years. Now, two decades after war broke out, China Daily reviews how the US broke a unified state at the heart of the Arab world with falsehoods, opening a power vacuum and leaving oil-rich Iraq a wounded nation in the Middle East.