December 30 , 2011
Operation Iraqi Freedom Ends
After nine long years of war, 4500 dead American soldiers and anther 1000 or so contractors, over30,000 wounded, at least 100,000 dead Iraqis, and a trillion dollars, the Iraq War has finally ended for the US. It has been a quiet and uncertain end for an operation that began with high hopes of easy victory and a reshaped Middle East in a pro-American image.
I thought it would be interesting to look back at what I had written on the eve of the start of the war. My column written a few days before the invasion was launched missed a few things. Like most, I believed that Saddam Hussein was lying about WMD, and that Colin Powell had told the truth. I could not imagine to what extent the Bush administration cooked the books to justify the war. Even though I recognized that occupying Iraq was going to be expensive, I underestimated that greatly. But on the other hand, I did at least realize that the Bush administration was taking a great gamble, and likely to find Iraq hard to digest.
In part, I wrote:
“In the short term things will likely go well for President Bush. He will win an easy, and low cost, victory. The Iraqi people will cheer their liberators. Saddam’s crimes will be fully exposed, and his extensive weapons programs will be evidence enough to silence even the bleating of the French Foreign Minister. Bush will feel vindicated, and if not in the eyes of the world, at least among the American voters, his actions will appear justified in hindsight.
“That does not alter the basic fact that Bush is engaged in a gamble of historical proportions. The occupation of Iraq is no trivial thing. Just from a military standpoint it will strain the US Army. The US military is designed to win wars, not occupy countries. You cannot occupy a country with smart bombs, you need actual soldiers carrying rifles and walking around aimlessly for the next 10 years…The cost of occupation will also be mammoth, and the US will have to pick up a substantial part of that. Even if no money is given to Iraq’s rebuilding, the cost of maintaining security and garrisons in Iraq will run 10 billion or more per year.
“The real question is whether this war will have been good or bad for the US and the Middle East. The truth is that question will need 10 years or even longer to be answered. To judge based on the state of Iraq in July or in July 2004 will be grossly premature. We will have to see what George has wrought. The reshaping of the Middle East into democratic, capitalist, pro-American states is the hidden agenda of the neo-conservatives; it is not this nonsense about weapons of mass destruction. Frankly, I don’t mind if the Arab countries became more democratic and capitalist. Even if they only did so to the extent of Pakistan it would be a massive improvement. I’m just not sure if American guns are the way to do this. What happens three years from now when Iraqis want the Americans out, and are willing to use suicide bombers to force an American withdrawal? Bush will certainly have to eat crow, and the anti-war movement will have been proved right.”
I don’t have much to add to what I wrote almost nine years ago. Iraq turned out to be a disaster that weakened America, strengthened the position of Iran, and was the major recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda for several years. The lack of proper attention to and rebuilding of Afghanistan allowed the defeated Taliban to regroup, which is why we now have 100,000 soldiers still fighting there 10 years later, and it took Obama to find and kill Osama bin Laden.
In the larger scheme of things, the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may in fact be the last major wars this country ever fights, and may be the last major wars any nation on Earth fights. Wars have been decreasing rapidly over the last few decades, and almost all current wars are civil in nature, countries no longer attack each other. America has fought four major land wars in Asia, in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. None have ended satisfactorily and the price in blood and treasure has been very high. At this point, where would the US credibly ever go to war again? Iran? Absurd, after the recent experiences. China? We are each other’s largest trading partners. Besides, China is hemmed in by India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, and Australia. The US must only provide a counterweight. Russia? Over what? Anyway, both Russia and China have nuclear weapons. The US Army will never need to fight a war in Europe or South America, and Africa has no country that has any military capability at all, except South Africa. It is possible that after the US leaves Afghanistan in less than three years, America will not go to war again. Comments can reach me at Nali@socal.rr.com.
