COLUMN: Five years later and what to show?
Today, March 19, marks the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. Remember that-the Iraq War? It’s been largely ignored by the media and the public the past few months.
A new Pew Foundation survey found that only six percent of Americans said they were closely following the war news. Millions of Americans are more concerned about their economic security. The media are fixated on petty election season politics. And, admittedly, the war is quieter than it has been in years. So it’s no wonder the war has faded from our national consciousness.
Had my father not left for Iraq just weeks ago, I too may have forgotten about the war. His leaving left me thinking about the war and all we have suffered because of it these past five years.
Truth is the first casualty in war. We invaded Iraq, pre-emptively and without provocation, under several false pretenses, foremost among them the Bush administration’s assertion that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program. This conclusion was made on the flimsiest intelligence, spun out of context by administration officials and then reported uncritically by the media.
United Nations weapons inspectors scoured Iraq for the alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” but they proved elusive. We now know Hussein had long since abandoned his nuclear ambitions. The CIA’s Duelfer Report found he had discontinued all weapons programs in 1994.
Another false pretense was the insinuation that Hussein bore responsibility, in part at least, for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. This was always known to be specious. On its face, the claim was highly improbable. Mutual distrust and animosity precluded Hussein and Osama bin Laden from forging a relationship.
In 2004, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission failed to uncover a “collaborative relationship” between the Iraq government and al-Qaida. Any lingering suspicions were put to rest last week. An exhaustive Pentagon-sponsored study of 600,000 captured Iraqi documents confirmed, again, that there were no operational links.
The Bush administration’s final selling point for the war was that it’d be a cakewalk. I don’t have to tell you how wrong they were. But I will.
Vice President Dick Cheney said we’d be “greeted as liberators.” Instead, we were greeted with rocket-propelled grenades. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld doubted the war would last more than six weeks. We’re now in its sixth year with no end in sight. And Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy and a principal architect of the war, put Iraq’s reconstruction cost at a mere $1.7 billion. The truth: Iraq’s reconstruction has been more expensive than Europe’s after World War II. In fact, the total costs of the war could top $3 trillion, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
That politicians’ lie should surprise no one. But the Bush administration’s lies led us into a ruinous war, one in which we have lost lives, resources and prestige.
The human cost of the war is staggering. About 4,000 American soldiers have died. An estimated 30,000 have been wounded. And the horrors of war aren’t left on the battlefield. Twenty percent of veterans return home with posttraumatic stress disorder.
Let’s not neglect the Iraqi casualties. The Iraqi death toll is estimated to be 200,000 or above-a number rivaling the death toll under 25 years of Hussein’s despotic rule. Also, the violence and dire humanitarian situation in Iraq has forced millions to flee the country since the invasion.
Military experts believe the U.S. military is weaker today than it was five years ago. The occupation has stretched the military thin and diverted forces from their critical mission in Afghanistan.
And America’s standing in the world, even among allies, has been tarnished. In circumventing the UN Security Council, a serious breach of law, this administration made the U.S. an international pariah. We had the world behind us after 9/11, but that goodwill was squandered with an unnecessary war.
In short, this war has been no cakewalk. And its repercussions will likely haunt us for decades.
Unfortunately, we can’t turn back the clocks and prevent the war. Many of you, I’m sure, find my criticisms of the Bush administration and the war tiresome. That’s old news-you want my plan to end the war.
Sorry, but I don’t have the solution. I doubt anyone does. That’s one of the greatest tragedies of this war: There isn’t a good exit strategy. The “winning” strategy is simply the one that mitigates how badly we lose.
The question, “What do we do now?” will have to be answered at the ballot box this November, after a rigorous public debate.
Obama plans to withdraw forces within 16 months of his term. Hillary Clinton’s goal is to have most troops out by the end of 2013. And if John McCain is president … well, suffice it to say that we’ll still be in Iraq come the war’s 100th anniversary.