End Of Direct American Intervention In Iraq, And The Future

The United States should never have gotten involved in Iraq. We just didn't know enough about how the place worked to create a successful outcome. Saddam Hussein knew how Iraq worked, but of course we ignored his hard-won advice. Gary Kamiya:

With the possible exception of the Korean War, never in U.S. history has a major war concluded with so little fanfare.

...To truly honor those brave men and women in uniform – and, even more because there are more of them — the millions of Iraqis whose lives we destroyed, Americans need to look unflinchingly at this dreadful war.

They need to look at the ignorant, twisted and duplicitous men and women who started it, at the institutions that failed to stop it, and at their own complicity in it. Above all, they need to look at its terrible toll.

...We need to remember that this war was launched under false pretenses by an administration that used fake evidence to push it through. Americans need to remember their own understandable fear after 9/11, and how they allowed cunning and manipulative ideologues to exploit it.

We need to remember that the institutions that should have resisted the war – Congress and the media – completely failed to do so. Drugged by post-9/11 patriotism and groupthink, America’s representatives and their journalists abandoned their posts at the crucial hour.

We need to remember that the war was ruinously expensive. According to the Congressional Research Service, the United States has spent $823 billion through fiscal year 2013. Other analysts have estimated that its total cost, including veterans’ benefits and healthcare, will be $3 trillion.

We need to remember that the war was a total failure. According to the respected Center for Strategic and International Studies:

“[T]he US invasion now seems to be a de facto grand strategic failure in terms of its costs in dollars and blood, its post-conflict strategic outcome, and the value the US could have obtained from different uses of its political, military, and economic resources.”

The war destabilized the Middle East, led to widespread hatred of the U.S., and increased the threat of terrorism. Its real winner was Iran.

And what does the most "ignorant, twisted and duplicitous" man in the world thinks about the future? Martin Peretz:

Our very last troops in Iraq have left for home. And, of course, Iraq is no longer ruled by the Ba’athist tyrant who murdered so many people both within his own country and in Iran that he should be counted in the bloody second circle right behind Hitler and Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. History will record George Bush’s daring in confronting this aggressor-dictator (comparing this daring to the pusillanimity of his father whose secretary of state, James Baker, was actually a fan of Saddam Hussein). And it should also reward his foresight in grasping that Hussein’s downfall alone would not be enough to turn the country into a civilized place. Of course, dreadful errors were made in pursuing the war, some of them through vainglory, others in trying to meet the objections of the demagogic Democratic opposition at home. Much of this opposition was actually ugly, and there was a certain smug satisfaction in various American environs when the bloody habits of armed gangsters, both Shia and Sunni, took over the supposedly liberated streets and neighborhoods, mosques and marketplaces of the country.

...The Sunni-Shia break became ever more serious. Bloody it already always was. Iraq is, for all intents and purposes, now a Shia state, which connotes an anti-Sunni state. This means that it needs to resist the Sunni typhoon now gathering in Syria. ... Perhaps the most devastating and intrinsic evidence of how deeply Shia the rulers in Baghdad are is the fact that on the very morrow of the U.S. departure for Kuwait, Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki had Sunni Vice President Tariq Al Hashimi arrested and charged with all kinds of crimes, including murder.

Demagogic Democratic opposition my ass! Want to talk demagoguery? Two words: FOX News! No one celebrated Iraq's descent into anarchy, but the Bush Administration could have anticipated that descent. It didn't even conceive of it. Ignorance! And Saddam Hussein's death toll never came close to matching those of the other tyrants Marty mentions. Facts, anyone?

So, our good intentions were good, our good intentions were great, but the war's consequences are appalling. That's not good enough, Marty! Any fool could have told you that would happen, and many fools did!

Why the enthusiasm about destabilizing Iran? "Pottery Barn" rules, like Colin Powell says. If you don't want to buy it, don't break it. If you don't like Iran now, watch what happens AFTER we invade it! You'll REALLY hate what happens next! It's four times larger and has twice the population of Iraq!