Source: Spiegel

Polish special forces and US Navy Seals pose for pictures under a portrait of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the port of Umm-southern Iraq in March 23, 2003.

A decade on, polls suggest that a majority of Americans view the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a mistake. Right or wrong, the war has immensely influenced how America sees itself, is seen and conducts itself on the global stage.

The United States fought in Iraq for nine years. With the exception of the war in Afghanistan, it was America’s longest combat engagement ever: longer than the American Civil War, the two World Wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Any country that enters into a war emerges from it changed. It is inevitable that there is a before and an after. There are the dead, the wounded, the survivors.

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