Women Pay the Highest Price for U.S. ‘Wars of Liberation’

Within days, I was forced into exile again, this time to the United States, fleeing a war my new country had sold to the American people as necessary to ​“liberate Kuwait” and ​“uphold international law.” But liberation was never the goal. The real objective was to secure a permanent U.S. military presence in the Gulf, protect access to oil, and establish strategic bases to project American power. 

Within months, the U.S. had built the infrastructure for decades of intervention — the same bases that would later help launch the 2003 invasion of Iraq, under the twin pretexts of weapons of mass destruction that were never found and the ​‘liberation of Iraqi women.’ The ​“liberation of Kuwait” laid the groundwork not for stability, but for 30 years of war. 

The 2003 invasion of Iraq did not find weapons of mass destruction because they never existed. What it found was Iraq itself — and it proceeded to destroy it: perhaps a million dead, millions more displaced, buildings bombed and museums looted, a society torn apart along sectarian lines.

Two decades later, Iraq still hasn’t recovered — and Iraq’s women have certainly not been ​“liberated.” As the recently slain women’s rights activist Yanar Mohammad said, ​“The war in Iraq is not over yet. We are living it over and over again.” Her murder proves her point more devastatingly than any words could. 

Mohammed, who was murdered outside her home in Baghdad on March 2 by unknown gunmen, was a founder of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. She was a defender of women survivors of violence who created shelters and never faltered despite repeated threats. 

Her assassination is a direct attack on the feminist struggle, and it is the continuation of a decades-long pattern: U.S. interventions in the region have rained down occupation, sanctions, and state collapse — all dressed up as rescue, always justified by the language of saving us. 

With civilians dying in Iran and no compelling evidence that Iran has — or is currently developing—nuclear weapons, this war already looks like another chapter in an all too familiar story.

We are told these wars are fought for our freedom, yet women on the ground pay the heaviest price for every U.S. intervention. The bombs falling on Iran today will not liberate anyone. The bombs will only churn out more refugees, more orphans, more women like Yanar whose murder becomes just another footnote in a story told by the powerful.

We have watched this cycle repeat across generations. The question is whether we will keep watching in silence while our tax dollars fund these bombs — money that could be funding schools, healthcare, housing, and the things that actually keep communities safe. Silence is not neutrality. It is consent.