ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

De-Ba'athification

De-ba'athification means getting rid of people who supported a political party called the Ba'ath Party in Iraq.

The Ba'ath Party was in power in Iraq for a long time, but some people didn't like how they ran things. After the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, the people who took charge wanted to make sure that the Ba'ath Party people weren't still in power, so they created a process to remove them from important jobs in the government, military, and police force.

Basically, de-ba'athification was like cleaning out a messy closet. The new government wanted to make sure that there were no leftover Ba'ath Party supporters who might try to mess things up, so they checked everyone's records to see if they had ever supported the Ba'ath Party. If they had, they were fired from their jobs.

But sometimes, the people who were fired weren't actually bad guys. Some of them were just regular people who needed a job to support their families, and they joined the Ba'ath Party because it was the only way to get ahead. Unfortunately, because of de-ba'athification, they lost their jobs.

So, de-ba'athification was like cleaning out a closet to get rid of things that weren't wanted anymore, but sometimes got rid of things that people actually needed.