What we accomplished in Iraq was (1) the extirpation of an expansionist threat toward oil supplies in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and its transport through the Gulf; and (2) the creation of a killing ground on which militant Islam found that the best it had to offer was, despite a hurricane of hot air, inadequate to the task of regional hegemony much less international conquest.
In my personal estimation it bought the West twenty years against a threat that was actively enabled by elements within its own culture who are spoiled, bored, and enamored of overthrow without the slightest notion that what might follow afterward would be no secular, socialist utopia, but a theocratic totalitarian state. One-third of that time has already passed. Militant Islam has suffered a major military defeat and an even more major psychological one. It has lost its momentum, it is struggling for relevance and fighting within itself for dominance among its constituent factions. In strategic terms that is a victory.
I have little patience for those who would represent it otherwise, who would call it a defeat because it suits their ideological agenda. It is nothing of the sort. We still can squander this victory away, but that does not make it less of a victory.
Well done, Bill.
Very well said! Let’s pray Iraq is strong enough to defeat the extremists.