Editorial: A bitter lesson

OPINION: The withdrawal of the last United States combat troops from Iraq this week may not be the end of America's involvement in the country but it is the end of a bitter lesson.

When the United States, and a few allies, invaded the country seven years ago they had several aims. The first, and the avowed reason for the assault, was to find and eliminate weapons of mass destruction that the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was allegedly amassing. The second was to get rid of Saddam himself and his brutally authoritarian Baathist regime and to install a democratically elected government that would be a beacon of stability and good government in the Islamic world. There was also the idea of advancing the so-called war on terror, to try to eliminate the capacity of al Qaeda to make random assaults on targets in the West.

Only one of those aims – the toppling of Saddam – has been unequivocally achieved. As to the rest, the United States more or less failed, and at stupendous cost. The financial burden alone has been estimated at US$1 trillion, money that a sadly deflated US economy could do with right now. Worse are the casualties – 4400 US dead and many more maimed and injured, and tens of thousands of Iraqis. In addition to that there is the battering America has taken to its prestige as a great power with the capacity and competence to achieve its goals. If access to oil was indeed the ulterior motive for the invasion, as some more cynical commentators have alleged, then it could have been bought on the open market at a fraction of the price.

The initial invasion itself, with its tactics of shock and awe, was brilliantly successful, so much so that President George W. Bush was induced rashly to declare "mission accomplished". This turned out to be far from the truth as the country degenerated into sectarian violence and the US was disastrously shown to have no plan to govern the country once Saddam and the Baathist apparatus had been ousted.

US moral authority was further undermined when the much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction turned out to be non-existent. For that Bush and his principal ally, the then British prime minister, Tony Blair, have rightly been castigated, particularly after it emerged that they had misused intelligence material to make a case beyond what the evidence supported. This manipulation was undoubtedly reprehensible, but it should be remembered that at the time the belief that Saddam was hiding threatening weaponry was universal, shared not just by the US and Britain but also by many who opposed the war, such as France and Russia.

President Barack Obama's withdrawal from Iraq is the fulfilment of an election campaign promise. He is able to do it partly because of the Bush "surge", which has brought some stability, however perilously weak it may be. Some within the country – notably the more or less autonomous Kurds in the north – are better off. Iraqis have shown a taste for democratic elections, even if they have not got the hang of democratic government. But the greatest gainer from the war is Iran. With the removal of the belligerent threat of Saddam on its western border, it has been free to pursue its ambition to become the dominant power in the region and its first Islamic nuclear power. That justifiably alarms many in the Middle East and elsewhere, and was definitely not what the war was intended to bring about.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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schu   #2   01:58 pm Sep 03 2010

I have just finished reading, and will be returning to the Canty Pub Lib tomorrow, Michael Gordon & Bernard Trainor (2007) 'Cobrah II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq' (London: Atlantic Books). The editorial is spot on and anyone who wants to frustrate themselves reading more about how the whole debacle unfolded might care to get this book out).

jo2lo   #1   01:54 pm Sep 03 2010

Surely Pakistan is the regions' first "Islamic" nuclear power? It has had nuclear weapons for some years now, or perhaps its purported friendliness towards the US dispels the same risks that you suggest we should fear from Iran?

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