The last of America’s combat forces are out of Iraq. So there are usual suspects lining up to congratulate the United States on its “victory” in Iraq.
There is only one problem with that line of thinking-the only winners in the Iraq war were China and Iran. China-because it got finance the whole undertaking by loaning money to the US, and by having a free hand to raise its diplomatic and economic profile in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia while it’s biggest competitor was distracted for seven plus years.
Iran because most of its current intransigence on the world stage can be directly traced to unintended consequences of the invasion and occupation-which created most of the pre-conditions for the rise to power of Ahmedwhathisname.
Don’t get me wrong-no one is happier than me to see us finally correcting this seven year old mistake and drawing down to 50,000 troops in that God forsaken country is a good start-but it is only a start. There will not be anything to celebrate for the US until the last America soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine is gone from that place.
Plus until then-its not the end of “combat operations”, the troops left behind still have fighting to do. To say they are not in a combatant role is a huge fiction, just the same as the “Mission Accomplished” fiction of 2003. Does anyone not think that the likelihood of continued combat operations is a reality? When casualties are taken by these “non-combat forces” will those casualties be characterized as “non-combat” as well? Does the public not understand that the secondary mission of our remaining forces is to be prepared to conduct combat operations either to defend themselves or to support Iraqi forces if requested?
We need to be honest with ourselves. The withdrawal is a long overdue development-but it is not the end for the US in Iraq.
Second, we need to be clear that the Iraqis themselves are still pretty screwed up, economically, politically and in about every other way too. Millions are still displaced in other countries or in Iraq. Do they even have a government yet-no. And since the stated purpose of the surge was to buy time for the Iraqis to effect political reconcilation, you can’t even put the “Surge Worked” stamp on the paper, cause it did not accomplish what it was supposed to do.
There is no agreement on how to share oil revenue, no resolution of the basic relationship between the country’s three major groups, and no decision on whether Iraq will have a strong central government or be a loose confederation.
And Iran is still a major thorn in both ours and Iraq’s sides. That hardly constitutes “victory”.
Saddam is dead.
the northern fly zone is dead
the southern fly zone is dead.
The Baathists are dead and gone
The WMD programs are dead and gone and you twits may argue that they never ever had WMD but they used it throughout the war with Iran and on the Kurds. That is 100% historically proven so don’t chime in that they had no WMD programs. Oh most murderously they did and used it.
Ok item one was accomplished fairly quickly. What did we spend the remaining years doing? Oh yea-staying in that Godforsaken country because the Iraqis were so screwed up they could not do anything for themselves.
Items 2 and 3 are irrelevant they were gone in 2003-that does not account for the remaining ten years we have to stay there.
And as for WMD-they were not threatening us with them-and they had not done anything to us. We invaded a soverign nation for the purpose of changing its government on a pretext. We got a changed government all right-and an Iran that is aquiring nuclear weapons in self defense because it feels threatened. When you throw in the cost in lives and treasure, it is just not a fair trade.
And the terrorists are now out in plenty of other countries -all thanks to the Iraq war.
Well if that floats your donut….
There’s not a smidgeon of doubt is there?
On this issue? No-the Iraq war will rank as the single biggest US foreign policy mistake for the last thirty years.
Andrew Bacevich summed it up well:
If any overarching conclusion emerges from the Afghan and Iraq Wars (and from their Israeli equivalents), it’s this: victory is a chimera. Counting on today’s enemy to yield in the face of superior force makes about as much sense as buying lottery tickets to pay the mortgage: you better be really lucky.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. economy went into a tailspin, Americans contemplated their equivalent of Israel’s “demographic bomb” — a “fiscal bomb.” Ingrained habits of profligacy, both individual and collective, held out the prospect of long-term stagnation: no growth, no jobs, no fun. Out-of-control spending on endless wars exacerbated that threat.
By 2007, the American officer corps itself gave up on victory, although without giving up on war. First in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, priorities shifted. High-ranking generals shelved their expectations of winning — at least as a Rabin or Schwarzkopf would have understood that term. They sought instead to not lose. In Washington as in U.S. military command posts, the avoidance of outright defeat emerged as the new gold standard of success.
No money.
No endless wars.
Mogadishu? Nicely drawn down combat force resulting in the obvious and only to be expected result.
But that’s kind of the point- cutting our losses on a worthless people who won’t help themselves. Same is true in Af or IRQ.
Get all the way out and not leave your dick in the meat grinder. It’s an all or nothing approach, time tested, historically proven. We didn’t leave cops in Japan and Germany. Not after Korea kicked off.