In the month of March there was a celebration of sorts for the invasion by the United States of the country of Iraq twenty years earlier. Shown below is a chart for the moment (or one of the moments) when the invasion began but that is not the important thing. The invasion is one of a series of events that share the same long term transits and that set the context for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as well as the invasion of that other Asian country Afghanistan. First lets look at the chart for when explosions were first heard in Baghdad, the capital city of Iraq.

Invasion of Iraq

This invasion started in the early morning hours — as you can see the Sun conjunct Mercury had not risen — at about the Spring Solstice — Sun would be at 0 Aries in one day. The Moon was two or three days after Full and was high in the western sky. There was a Grand Trine (Moon, Venus, Saturn) which suggests that things flowed well, which was certainly true for the Americans if not so much for the Iraqis.

American were told that Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center less than a year and a half before and that the government of Iraq contained Weapons of Mass Destruction which could be used on America so that this was only a defensive action. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that the smoking gun would be a mushroom cloud if this invasion did not happen.

Many Americans at the time supported the invasion. Now twenty years later many who supported the war at the time no longer think it was a good idea; some who supported the war at the time claim that they had grave doubts about the war at the time; and a few who supported the war at the time still think it was a good thing.

But before we look at the chart for the invasion of Iraq we need to look at the chart for the attacks of September 11, 2001, not only because that attack was the putative reason for the invasion by the United States (and some allied countries) of Iraq but also there is a clear astrological connection between the two events, one that I did not realize until I did a chart for the invasion of Iraq.

9/11

Before 9/11 I seldom thought about a birth chart for the United States, but if I did it was the “Gemini Rising” chart which is set at two in the morning. Of course I read Dane Rudhyar’s book (The Astrology of America’s Destiny) that tries to rectify the Sibley chart made by an English astrologer — Ebenezer Sibley — for the time that he thought the country was “born” but set in England where he was. But on 9/11 I became convinced of the validity of the Sibly chart. If you were to pick a chart representing 9/11 for America you could best come up with that chart that really is. Hard Saturn Pluto aspects, as we’ve talked about before in this blog, are especially serious (Tarnas has a whole chapter about this). The last conjunction of those two planets was in January 2020 and we know what happened then. 9/11 was the previous opposition, and furthermore Pluto was on the Ascendant of the United States, and it isn’t just an expression that we were blasted by Pluto. I don’t think there has been such a clear attack on America’s homeland since the War of 1812. The whole outward expression of the United States (but not its essence) was transformed on that date.

Remember the Maine!

Clinching it further, the explosion of the battleship Maine in the Havana Harbor and thus the beginning of the Spanish-American War saw the same opposition of Saturn and Pluto on the US angles of the Sibly chart but this time Pluto is on Descendant and Saturn is on the Ascendant, just the opposite of 9/11. Instead of the explosion happening at home – on the Ascendant — it happened abroad – on the Descendant. The Spanish-American War marked the beginning of the American Empire (see for example the book Empire by Gore Vidal for a fictionalized account); I call these two events “bookends of the American Empire”. After 9/11 it was pretty clear (to those who were not captives of American propaganda) that the American Empire was over, and of course that is time time when an empire is at its most dangerous.

In the chart for the invasion of Iraq — Operation Desert Storm — we still have that the Saturn-Pluto opposition strong, but now this opposition is along the MC-IC axis of this event. Pluto on the Midheaven well describes this event: the Plutonian explosion is on their government, their public image.

The war in Iraq was intimately involved with 9/11 and not merely because George Bush and company used 9/11 as an excuse to go into Iraq, something that had been a big neocon agenda item ever since George Bush father had withdrawn from that country ten years earlier. And the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) was the outgrowth of neoconservative desire. At the time the neo-cons were mostly in the Republican Party, unlike now where they have taken much real estate in the Democratic Party, their original home.

Republic of Iraq

The chart for the Republic of Iraq, which was the nation before the invasion of that country by America — it now has a new birth chart — was for July 17, 1958, even though there was a coup in 1968 that saw Saddam Hussein put into power. A prominent feature of this chart is the Saturn opposition to the Moon-Venus conjunction with the Saturn opposite Venus being almost exact. It looks difficult for women in that country.

Iraq at time of Invasion

At the time of the American invasion of Iraq the Saturn Pluto opposition that was prominent in both the 9/11 chart and the event chart for the invasion was again important. In this case that opposition fell on the Moon-Venus opposite Saturn configuration of the Republic of Iraq with the transiting Pluto being also exactly opposite the Moon; surely this invasion was difficult but transformative (in one way or another) for the people of Iraq. Twenty year later they are still living with the results of that invasion and a new country (with a new chart) has been born.