Today we mark the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. March 19th, 2003 saw the inception of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Bush Administration expected to slice off an easy victory. It was to be a campaign of shock and awe, made necessary by the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a tyrant in league with America's terrorist enemies. Americans were assured the war would cost no more than 20 billion dollars, that it would be over in weeks not months, that our troops would be greeted with flowers as liberators, and that a free and democratic Iraq would spring up in the aftermath. Seldom in human history have a government's justifications, assurances and expectations been proven more utterly and absolutely wrong.
No weapons of mass destruction were found. No terror links existed. Including civilian contractors, 4,500 Americans are dead. 30,000 are wounded. No one knows how many Iraqis are dead: certainly 100,000, maybe 300,000. $700 billion is gone. Iraq's tribes are at each others' throats. Radical Islamist groups, previously unknown in the country, are there now. Iran and Turkey are beginning to intervene. America's allies have almost all left. The Afghan Taliban are resurgent. Osama Bin Laden lives. The effort has been, as the title of a popular book on the subject proclaims, a fiasco.
So, what do we do now? President Bush has succeeded in tying the hands of his successor to a great extent. If no jihadists were in Iraq before, they are there now, Bush argues, and cannot be allowed to gain a secure foothold. He says that progress is clearly being made due to the year-long "surge" of 30,000 extra troops under the improved strategic plan of Gen. David Petraeus. Violence levels are down from 1500 attacks a week on US forces to "only" 500. Iraqi civilian casualties appear to have dropped a similar 70%.
John McCain says to continue the war at full throttle. He believes the insurgents of all stripes can be defeated and the country pacified. He's basing his entire presidential campaign on this premise. 70% of the American people now feel the war was a mistake and want to end it. But over 40% now once again feel that a "victory" is possible. If conditions continue to improve he will be in a position to run as the only candidate to stand firm when prospects were bleakest and claim to be proved right by events.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaign on withdrawal, but not "precipitate" withdrawal. Obama says, "we must be as careful getting out as we were reckless getting in." Clinton suggests she would withdraw one brigade a month for 16 months. Neither wants to be blamed for ordering a rapid American exit if that results in a quick return to chaos and all-out civil war. In this sense, Bush and McCain have them in a dilemma.
The US presence is an accelerant of insurgency and Islamist attacks, but is also the cork in the bottle between Iraq's own contending factions. Once this is all over, all signs point to the Kurds wanting de facto independence in the north and all signs point to the Sunnis and Shias battling to the death for power in the center. The Sunnis complain that the Shiite-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki will not fund or arm them to police their areas. The U.S. has begun doing it instead. Al-Maliki views this with the gravest unease. He knows where those weapons will be trained once the Americans leave. Meanwhile the Shiite Mahdi Army of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr remains in a cease-fire, also until the Americans leave. The Sunnis know what to expect once the Americans leave, too. Just yesterday the meeting of the Iraqi legislature broke up when the Sunnis and the Sadrists all walked out. "Reconciliation" is but a grim jest among the parties in Iraq.
McCain may have been more right than most Americans realize. In order to keep the lid on this situation American forces might indeed have to stay for 100 years, but even that would be no guarantee of peace, democracy, or progress in the Iraqi people's standard of living. The question is whether the matter is of sufficient gravity to most Americans that they feel it is worth the continued costs in lives, treasure, international paralysis and opportunities lost at home. Whoever frames the answer to that question most convincingly will be the next President of the United States.
2 comments:
The words, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, could not be more apt here. One thinks only to Josef Tito and the former Yugoslavia to see parallels all over the place. Tito ruled with an iron fist, but kept his country together, much like Saddam Hussein did with his country. Each used their own means, and many would disagree with how they did it, but you have to admit, Hussein kept his country together.
What we have done in the past five years is broken the country of Iraq apart and we are now using the US military as the glue to keep it together. Eventually, the glue will wear out. Wouldn't it have been better to just let Hussein live out his natural life, and then see his country fall apart after his demise without the United States in the middle of it? Of course. What an absolute mess.
Very true. We opened Pandora's box.
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