Questioning American “Victory” After Seven Years in Iraq
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The Occidental Weekly
Jack Mulcaire
09/14/2010
On Aug. 19, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the official U.S. combat mission in Iraq, came to an end, according to President Obama in his speech at the end of last month. The 4th Stryker Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division crossed the border from Iraq into Kuwait, retracing the same route it followed during the initial invasion in March 2003. The story of what happened in between is not a pretty one: According to icasualties.org, 4,415 American soldiers lost their lives. By conservative estimates from the Iraq Body Count Project, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians died and the UN Human Refugee Agency reported that approximately 1.8 million have fled the country. The U.S. government spent, by a low estimate, about $750 billion on military operations and rebuilding projects, according to the National Priorities Project. And so, the question that needs to be posed is, "Did we win?"
With the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq, we need to ask this question because, in contrast to historical war endings with formal surrenders, the answer is anything but clear. Everything about the Iraq War was ambiguous and poorly defined. Firstly, the reasons for the war seemed to continually change. What started as a search for Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction and non-existent connections to Al-Qaeda became a nebulous commitment to human rights and UN resolutions. Secondly, the enemy changed faces multiple times. First it was Saddam Hussein and his regime, then a shadowy and shifting collection of terrorists and insurgents, some Sunni Muslims and some Shia. And finally, the outcome appears to be impossible to definitively pin down.
Certainly, withdrawing doesn't feel like victory. In victory, you gain control and leave only when the enemy no longer has the will to fight. Americans are apprehensive to declare that a war has been won based on the fact that our soldiers are returning home. However, because this war has never been defined in the traditional way, it is not appropriate to apply the traditional definition of victory. Rather than to achieve martial control, the war in Iraq was fought to achieve certain political goals in the country: to create an Iraq that was free of Saddam Hussein's despotic rule and to create stable conditions friendly to the United States and open to American investment and potential military-basing. By comparison, our enemy was bent on forcing American troops out of Iraq before those goals had been achieved. They sought to create an Iraq run by strict Sharia law, destroying the fledgling Iraqi state and breaking up the country amongst its religious and ethnic groups in the process. Looking at the ground situation, Iraq's government and news press are arguably some of the most free and democratic in the Middle East. Iraq's largest political party is made up of both Sunni and Shia politicians that create a united religious front. The Iraqi Army is responsible for security in all parts of the country, enhancing its self-sufficiency. The U.S. military presence made all of this possible.
Iraq is a long way from being a politically stable country, however. Insurgent attacks still take place daily, corruption is rampant, its economy is in shambles, large parts of the country have only intermittent electrical power and the parliament has not formed a governing coalition six months after the last election. And while Iraq may be moving at a leaps-and-bounds pace, it is hard to say it is a shining model of democracy to the rest of the Middle East. But when we ask, "Did we win?", we can't just say no, because a peaceful and prosperous Iraq was not our war goal. While we may have created the conditions for Iraq to move in that direction, a violence-free and prosperous Iraq is not something we can create. The U.S. can help, but only Iraqis themselves can complete the transformation.
So where do we go from here? Fifty thousand U.S. troops will remain in Iraq until 2011 to train and advise Iraqi forces. Thousands of U.S. diplomats and C.I.A. operatives will maintain a presence for years after that. Iraq's transition may follow Northern Ireland's example, with terrorist groups remaining active but slowly decreasing in power and relevance over time. However, ethnic and religious tension will still remain for decades to come. Though neither complete nor ideal, this victory in Iraq is certainly better than completely failing to accomplish anything.
