On Balance, Was the Iraq War Worth It?

Ten years ago this week, the United States led an invasion of Iraq with the explicit purpose of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The preceding months had been filled with vehement protests against the impending war, expressed in editorials, in advertisements, and in rallies so vast that some of them made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. With so many people against the invasion, who supported it?

Well, if you were like the great majority of Americans – you did. In February and March 2003, Newsweek's polls showed 70 percent of the public in favor of military action against Iraq; Gallup and Pew Research Center surveys showed the same thing. Congress had authorized the invasion a few months earlier with strong bipartisan majorities; among the many Democrats voting for the war were Senators John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.

Though the Iraq War later became a favorite Democratic club for bashing George W. Bush, Republicans and Democrats alike had long understood that Saddam was a deadly menace who had to be forcibly eradicated. In 1998 President Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, making Saddam's removal from power a matter of US policy. "If the history of the last six years has taught us anything," Kerry had said two years earlier, "it is that Saddam Hussein does not understand diplomacy, he only understands power."

But bipartisan harmony was an early casualty of the war. Once it became clear that Saddam didn't have the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that were a major justification for the invasion, unity gave way to recrimination. It didn't matter that virtually everyone – Republicans and Democrats, CIA analysts and the UN Security Council, even Saddam's own military officers – had been sure the WMD would be found. Nor did it matter that Saddam had previously used WMD to exterminate thousands of men, women, and children. The temptation to spin an intelligence failure as a deliberate "lie" was politically irresistible.

When the relatively quick toppling of Saddam was followed by a long and bloody insurgency, opposition to the war intensified. For many it became an intractable article of faith that victory was not an option. The war to remove Saddam was not merely "Bush's folly," but – as Senate majority leader Harry Reid called it in 2007 -- "the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country."

But then came Bush's "surge," and the course of the war shifted dramatically for the better.

By the time Bush left office, the insurgency was crippled, violence was down 90 percent, and Iraqis were being governed by politicians they had voted for. It was far from perfect, but "something that looks an awful lot like democracy is beginning to take hold in Iraq," reported Newsweek in early 2010. On its cover the magazine proclaimed: "Victory at Last."

And so it might have been, if America's new commander-in-chief hadn't been so insistent on pulling the plug.

In October 2011, President Obama – overriding his military commanders, who had recommended keeping 18,000 troops on the ground – announced that all remaining US servicemen would be out of Iraq by the end of the year. Politically, it was a popular decision; most Americans were understandably weary of Iraq. But abandoning Iraqis and their frail, fledgling democracy was reckless.

"It freed Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to be more of a Shiite sectarian than he could have been with the US looking over his shoulder," military historian Max Boot observed this week. And with Maliki moving against his Sunni opponents, some of them "are making common cause once again with Al-Qaeda in Iraq, [which] has recovered from its near-death experience" during the surge. It is cold comfort that so many urgently warned of just such an outcome in 2011.

So was the Iraq war worth it? On that, Americans are a long way from a consensus. It is never clear in the immediate aftermath of any war what history's judgment will be. Two decades ago, the 1991 Gulf War was regarded as a triumph. In retrospect, the decision to leave Saddam in power – and to let him murderously crush an uprising we had encouraged – looks like a tragic blunder.

But this much we do know: The invasion of Iraq 10 years ago ended the reign of a genocidal tyrant, and ensured that his monstrous sons could never succeed him. It struck a shaft of fear into other dictators, leading Libya's Moammar Qaddafi, for example, to relinquish his WMD. It let Iraqis find out how much better their lives could be under democratic self-government. Like all wars, even wars of liberation, it took an awful toll. The status quo ante was worse.

Too many Washington rules tied the hands of our military.

You're entirely correct, b4its2late, and the problem you've identified goes hand in hand with the other huge mistake we made in the Viet Nam War: there's no way the United States could win a land war in Asia.

We haven't actually won a war since World War II, which—not at all coincidentally—was the last war we fought without political micro-management. In spite of his numerous failings, I believe Franklin Roosevelt came up with enough sense to let the generals and admirals take and remain in command of World War II. Since then, presidents and members of Congress have insisted on sticking their big, often profoundly ignorant noses into military concerns. The results have ranged between unhappy and disastrous.

Ultimately, everyone concerned seems to have overlooked a fact that ought to be obvious to everyone: land wars in Asia are different from those in Europe. Europe is a small place with a limited number of people, most of whom aren't deeply suicidal. Distances are greater in Asia: in the first place, it's farther from the United States, and in the second, both the fields of battle and the participating countries themselves are larger and farther apart. I have a hunch the degree of difficulty is dependent not on the distances involved, but the square of the distances. Yes, we did beat imperial Japan, but we did so first at sea, then from the air with a grand total of two bombs; apart from bitterly and bloodily contested islands, we didn't beat Japan on land. Yes, the distances were considerably greater than those in Europe, but we had the advantages of both raw materials and manufacturing superiority, so we dealt with the distances problem more effectively than Japan.

The lesson we ought to have learned from the Korean War was simple as simple could be: there are an awful lot more Asians who are ready, willing, and able to die for their countries than Americans; further, they're fighting on their home ground rather than halfway around the world; still further, many of them have been nationalists as well as communists, which is to say: patriots fighting for their countries the same way we'd fight for ours. If you don't have uncounted millions of lives to sacrifice, it's probably a bad idea to try to fight land wars against countries that do. More than one or two land wars in Asia have been fought by guerrillas. No, the guerrillas don't necessarily win; they do, however, tend to have both strategic and tactical advantages from the outset, and many guerillas are fanatics of one kind or a dozen others, which gives them a psychological advantage.

If I'd been in George W. Bush's shoes on September 11, 2001, I'd have told the Air Force or the Navy I wanted Medina nuked within six hours. I'd have gone on television to issue an ultimatum to all the Islamic states known to support jihad: you've got 24 hours to sign and return the unconditional surrenders I've just faxed you, or Mecca is next. If even one jihad state fails to surrender, there won't be a Mecca any more. I'd have accepted surrenders, nuked Mecca as needed, and issued constitutions exactly as we issued them to Germany and Japan at the end of World War II. How much international trouble has either Germany or Japan caused since 1945? That's exactly how much trouble there'd be in the Middle East today if cranky old Standing Wolf had been in charge: none.

What we've seen instead has been a twelve-year military failure just like the Viet Nam War, except larger and longer and more expensive, though less expensive in terms of the number of American lives squandered for naught. People who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

In my opinion, the presence of US forces in a pincer-like posture around Iran has been worth it. This includes Afghanistan.

We eliminated Saddam Hussein, stopping a major financier of terrorism, we helped/helping reconstitute its armed forces as a defense against Iran, and have demonstrated resolve through the force of arms.

Nobody truly wins a war, due to the cost of lives and property. However, we changed the global battlefield.

Not only have we militarily stressed Iran, we have also been conducting operations against Pakistan. Though a titular ally, their government and ISI are well aware of our ability to strike with impunity.

In my opinion, our military presence gives pause to those in the region who would do us, or Israel harm. Our ability to project power and control territory are essential deterrents.

For the record, I lost 3 friends in Iraq, and another lost half an arm.

Short Answer: No.

Slightly longer answer: It was not a “war” in the declared sense, nor were any other expeditionary fiascos we took part in since the last declared war - WWII. We won WWII. We lost all the rest.

My solution to the “WOT”, posted here shortly after 9/11, was as follows: Tell the Muzzies to turn over Bin Laden within 24 hours or suffer the consequences; If they don’t, drop nukes on Tripoli and Jakarta, and tell them again; each day without turning in Bin Laden, another pair of nukes to the next Muzzie population centers to the west and east, converging on the final day on Mecca and Medina. WOT over within a week, either through establishing dominance, or through the collapse of their “civilization”.

Others modified this, saying to simply start with Mecca and Medina, then, perhaps move out from there.

Of course, this approach was lambasted, and the nation took another, wiser route - with predictably great success, I might add.

Federal War on Poverty.

Federal War on Drugs.

Federal War on Terror.

An amazing record. To be fair, though, we did win the Grenada conflict.

The Marxist Globalists pulling the strings in DC for fifty years have truly done a good job. We are now thoroughly cooked and ready to serve.

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