Perspective on the War in Iraq

First of all, a little mood music. Just hit play, then continue the read:


I've been bouncing this post around in my head for a while. But, with the official end to combat operations in Iraq and a presidential address about something that, while important, hasn't been in the national spotlight for over a year and a half, I'm not getting upstaged by a POTUS speech that will most likely take credit for ending the war.

Just a note, I'm going at this from the perspective of the average person, not the political fanatics that too many of us in the blogosphere are. So I'm also going to cover much of this from memory. Thankfully, this is an area where my memory is not as faulty as a government program.

First of all, for quick history checks, here's the Wiki link.

Snacky Smores presents... The March to War
(wish I could have found an accompanying pic)

The prelude to the invasion of Saddam's Iraq was in the rush to strike back in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.  We had already moved to take out Al Qaeda and their Taliban enablers in Afghanistan.  We were in the process of expanding the government with a new cabinet position and department.  And with the optimism that we weren't going to end up in another Vietnam (especially after the 1990 Gulf War), the Bush administration set their sights on Iraq as part of the "Axis of Evil," which included Iran and south Korea as well.

(I do note that it has never included the source of more Islamic terrorists than any other country, our "friends" in Saudi Arabia, but I guess they act nicer.)

The evidence was presented to Congress and to us that 1. Saddam had WMDs, 2. he would use them (because he had) and 3. he might also give them to terrorists, making it easy to kill a city instead of just a couple of buildings.  This was bolstered by two things.  First, Saddam was gathering stockpiles of things that could build nuclear weapons.  And second, he was toying with UN inspectors over what WMDs he did have.
Plus, there was that shit from 1990, so we knew he was a bad mofo.

Obviously, some of the intel proved unreliable after we were already in there and were committed.  First of all, the WMDs were nowhere to be found.  There were traces, pieces, and remnants, but no massive stockpiles (which some had said was the case, but were dismissed because we had already started steering toward war.  And the Al Qaeda link proved to be tenuous at best, coincidental at worst.  So that brings me to the first questions:  Why did President Bush attack, and was he either mistaken or a liar?

First, I think he was convinced it was the right thing to do.  He didn't expect personal gain by doing this.  But he saw a threat that also dovetailed with a personal dislike, had enough evidence to justify the attack, enough assurances that it would be Gulf War II, and a good amount of popular support.  In most of this, he erred.  Severely.  It was the same mentality that got us into the mess that became Vietnam:  An inability to back down, to keep pushing the war machine forward.  And the cost has been significant.

But for those of you who like to fling out the label of "War Criminal," I doubt you'd find a president that didn't suffer as he watched our soldiers come back in body bags, or hear the reports of fields littered with bodies, or watch them bleed and die.  I can't think of a single one that was cavalier with lives, even as he took actions that ended many.  In this, Bush (and even Obama) is no exception.

Liberation/Occupation

So having committed to a fight that would prove to have been a waste had we known beforehand, we marched in and kicked ass.  No surprise there.  Unfortunately, the advantage of a dictatorship like Saddam had is that you suppress all opposition and internal politics by a good mix of killing, torture, rape, and paranoia.  We don't do that.  As a result, we popped the cork on a bottle of bad champagne that was strapped into a paint mixer.  Once we swept away the check that was Saddam's Ba'ath party, all the sectarian violence, the worst of human nature, and the anger of a country with foreign soldiers in the street could produce unleashed in what was part an attack on invaders, part civil war, and part riot.  And then the foreign terrorists, who were also few and far between due to Saddam, came pouring in.  So we had wiped out everything bad that maintaining order.

Of course, this didn't go over well, especially after the ill-conceived "mission accomplished speech.  But we did achieve our first goal of eliminating Saddam and Co.  We shot his sons, rounded up his command bitches, found his dumb ass in a hole, turned him over to the Iraqis, and watched him swing.

Ok, since we're now to the part where we've gotten rid of Saddam, let's give him a final tribute (and some more background music) courtesy of Gwar:


(yeah, totally unnecessary, but when else would I get to add that vid?)

So that left us with roughly three options in Iraq, because we were already ass-deep by this time. First, we could have cut and run.  Obviously, this would have meant a power struggle and a dictator who blamed all the problems on America.  Genocide would have ensued (especially if the new dictator was a big fan of the peaceful and serene religion of Islam).  The second, and other extreme would have been to reduce the country to a sheet of glass.  We have never done this.  The only time we've gone for big civilian casualties was in Japan, and ONLY to save a million American lives that would have been lost in the invasion.  So the only practical option, sadly, would cost billions of dollars and thousands of American lives (in addition to the inevitable civilian casualties (still less than the genocide options).  And that option was to help rebuild the political infrastructure and police, as well as a good chunk of the physical infrastructure that we blew up.  The goal of this was to give Iraq the time to create a democratically elected constitutional republic.

So the only question was how to proceed.  And Bush chose poorly, initially.  We went with the idea of just enough forces to maintain some degree of stability.  In other words, the country was being held together with barbed wire and duct tape.  And the democratic process, being the mess that it always is, led to little progress. for three years.

Surge Baby Surge!

Finally, with no end in sight in Iraq, the Bush administration finally changed its course and went with the surge strategy.  The plan was to flood enough troops in to give the local populations time to clean up their messes, establish governments, push out the terrorists, and get enough forces trained to take over so we could get the fuck out of Dodge (or, more accurately, Baghdad).

 I'll admit that even I was becoming disillusioned with the chances we could get out of Iraq with some degree of honor.  It didn't help that I had begun blogging and had to listen to a lot of crazed rantings about how evil Bush and Cheney were.  Plus, nothing had worked there yet, so I was preparing for a Cronkite-style "the war is lost" moment.

Thankfully, with the surge came an uprising of the people who were sick of constant fighting.  With the increased troops and the will of the Iraqi people, the violence fell off greatly.  And our evolved strategic goal (a stable, relatively free republic) was finally achieved.  So by the end of 2008, we were set to leave.  For managing to bring us to the point we could prepare to leave, President Bush gets credit, as well as his general in charge, David Petraeus, the architect of the surge.  And that brings us to this month, and the end of combat operations in Iraq.

In short, we achieved most of our mission goals and will likely leave behind a shaky but real ally in the Middle East.  Even shorter, we won.

What Barry Did

This brings us to the speech, which as I write this, is hours away.  A good leader would realize that he was wrong when he opposed the surge, that despite some of the mistakes, the strategy did work in the end,

Of course, Mr Obama opposed the war, Senator (and candidate) Obama opposed the surge, and he kept saying we should pull out, originally immediately, then in 18 months.  Which brings me to a point of fact.  Giving the same timeframe over and over until it becomes true doesn't make you "right."  It just means you finally got your shit to stick to the wall.  It was probably best that Bush ignored your ignorance.

But I'm magnamninousous (Yes I intentionally misspelled that. Try pronouncing it and find out.) enough to give President Obama a little credit.  Despite his political blather, he's had enough sense to NOT mess with the strategy in place and let the war wind down properly.  And he did have sense to try to rectify the Afghanistan mess with the same man President Bush tapped to bring victory in Iraq.

Of course, a real leader would know that you give credit where credit is due.  We'll see if the speech avoids the ridiculous use of the word "I"

Ok, end of my gallows humor, because while making jokes about Saddam's dead ass and Obama's dumb ass is fun, war has costs.

The Costs

We have yet to see whether the seed of freedom we have planted will continue to flourish. Until that is recorded, we will not know whether the costs we have paid were worth it.

Those costs include:

$700 billion to fight the war (according to the Congressional Budget Office, plus benefits for those who served, those who were injured, and the families of those killed.
Over 4,000 American soldiers killed.
Over 15,000 American soldiers wounded.
An approximate 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed since the beginning of the war.

Taken as a whole, when we have fought for freedom (ours or others'), and for the preservation of our Constitution, our wars have been justified.  When we have not, may have died with honor, but for a flawed cause.  And while our history says this may have been worth it, it was only a part of the greater war against Islamic terror, and that goes on....

Let me then conclude with a reminder of why we should always hesitate before we call upon our brave young men and women to go off and offer their lives in exchange for anything: