Iraq war: success or failure?

Ask the families of those killed and wounded.

/looks at budget

At best, it was a Pyrrhic victory.

So many civilians died. Iraq was a stable sovereign nation. Did we have a right to invade them and topple their leadership? No.

Bush lied.

Uhhhh, have you been alive lately? You think all the Bush Admisnistration “bashing” was due to his horrible speaking?

Do I think we went into Iraq under faulty pretenses and with an incredibly poor plan? Yes on both counts.

Do I think the world is a better place for Saddam and his sons being removed, and an infant democratic nation being installed? Yes most definitely.

Will the Iraq war ultimately be seen as a success in the end? We won’t know the answer to that question for at least a few years.

What were the goals? What was achieved? What was the cost in Iraqi and American lives and money? Until you have a clear idea of that who can evaluate whether it had a successful outcome. Personally, I feel it was an unjust war entered into on false pretenses that did nearly irreparable damage to America financially and morally. As far as the outcome, time will tell. Certainly the Libyan model of limited support with other allies for a people’s rebellion seems more ethical and effective to me.

The Iraq war was one of the biggest political blunders in US history. It dwarfs the Spanish American War for the effrontery of its attempt at empire-building. (Few people remark on the parallels: there was a massive Philippine insurgency directed against us after that war during our occupation of that nation, 100-odd years ago.) At least the Spanish American War gained us territory in the Pacific Ocean that was later vital in winning WW II a half-century later. I had thought that if the Iraq War could be properly managed by civilians (before and after), that we would at least have forward bases for when Saudi Arabia goes through its own inevitable revolution. Apparently not.

This war was one of the most colossally ill-conceived and poorly-executed examples of civilian mismanagement of an incredibly effective military. The combined, concentrated and nowhere near ‘complete’ armed forced of the United States and United Kingdom (among very few others) toppled the Iraqi dictatorship within a month. And the Iraqi military had been considered not insignificant.

After that, it took eight-and-a-half miserable years (and counting) to admit that we couldn’t do any better than what we did in a single month. Bush and his advisors should be justifiably pilloried for this pitiful display of incompetence.

Mitigated failure. The Iraqi people were seemingly happy to see Saddam go, we are happy to have secured weapons/oil contracts and more beneficial political relations. But after overstaying our welcome for 7 or so years, nearly $2T spent, unknown hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, general increased misery (lack of food, water, fuel, medical care, economy), and a pretty hefty loss of whatever good will we had earned seems like more than a slight offset. Oh and let’s not forget we’re ostensibly leaving because the Iraqis essentially didn’t trust us enough to stay unsupervised.

@CWOTUS While I don’t disagree with your summary of how the Iraq war was handled…. I don’t think it’s remotely comparable to the Spanish-American war.

No war is ever a “success”. War is war, and there is nothing to glorify.

Failure.
Going to war and leaving without any sort of base or outpost means you should not have gone to war in the first place. If the intent is not to make the vanquished be more like your vision of how they should be, the job is best left to diplomats.
Nobody, not even George Bush’s Neo-Con buddies, could figure out a way to publicly “sell” the Iraq war as a means of establishing a presence near the oil and as a check against Iran, so the only legitimate purpose for being there got lost in obfuscation and political rhetoric.
The good news, in my opinion, is Americans are so disgusted with their government’s military adventurism and the government is so broke, that we won’t have much choice but to let the Middle East burn itself up, while we (eventually) develop the Bakken oil field in North Dakota, which some experts say can yield 24 billion barrels. That buys plenty of time to legitimately develop real alternative energy sources, and create royalty revenues in the trillions to pay off the debt. Always looking for the silver lining.

In some ways a success and in some ways a failure, it was definitely a much more important war geo-politically than the Afghan War but I had trouble supporting what we were doing there, one thing is for sure, the U.S. war machine kinda jumped the shark with the Iraq War.

@CWOTUS I found your comparison with the Spanish American War very interesting. I guess we’ve demonstrated the consistent power of our military and the weaknesses of politicians.

@Adirondackwannabe

It’s not just a weakness “of politicians”, I’m afraid. Don’t forget that there was a very widespread popular demand for the war, too. (Remember all the jokes about “the French”, because they didn’t sign on with us?)

There was a huge support of the Spanish American War, too, stirred by yellow journalism and a questionable event in Havana harbor used as a pretext to drum up that support, followed by a quick military takedown of a foe that had been presumed to be (or maybe just trumped-up to be) fairly powerful. And after that, lingering effects that lasted for decades – including a huge and deadly insurgency from “those ingrates we had freed”.

@CWOTUS Do you think the French had an inkling of what was going to happen? Although I have no clue why the Brits jumped in.

The scale of the disruption to Iraqi society caused by the war is immense and not properly understood by most people in the West. Hundreds of thousands of people were murdered in sectarian warfare and 4 million people fled their homes for safer areas both within Iraq and to neighbouring countries. That is almost one in six of the population. Many of these displaced people are from Iraq’s Christian community

That is what the war has accomplished and it should be borne in mind when considering and possible ‘success’.

Saddam was a brutal dictator who would have probably been deposed by his own people in this Arab Spring movement. There’s no earthly way removing him was woprth $1 trillion and 4,400 American military lives plus some 660 US civilians killed, hundreds of thousands of Americans wounded, some hideously; and 125,000 or more Iraqi citizens killed. Removing Saddam has put Shi’a in control of Iraq giving Iran a easy opening to expand its regional influence.

If we are very lucky, the reasonably corrupt Nuri Al Maliki Government will hold on. However it is far more likely that the Islamic firebrand Cleric and Iranian stooge, Muqtada al-Sadr will win the next election there, and that by taking out Saddam we will have made the region far less stable.

The right-wing argument that Obama withdrew too soon is absurd psycho-talk. We’ve been there 9 years. To stay longer when the Iraqis wanted us out and wanted to set their own destiny would have only prolonged the inevitable, and further run up the costs in blood and treasure. I am coming to realize that Republicans in general are ignoramuses on defense, skilled only at chest beating and boasting of their great powers; and that George W. Bush was chief among the bragging buffoon corp.

@ETpro Some people loved Bush’s cowboy personality. It showed he wouldn’t take any crap and was gung-ho or whatever. Well, that’s great and everything, while living your life as an individual, but not when you’re the leader of an entire country with a military at your disposal.

I think most people would’ve understood this isn’t a good leadership quality, but then came Perry. Even though he proved he just may be partially handicapped mentally, they fell in love with the gung-ho attitude again.

I just don’t think U.S. can afford this macho world leader stuff anymore. I can’t help but think about all the stuff we could have spent that war money on in the U.S. It reminds me of NSC 68, which suggested the government make cuts to certain programs in the U.S. to “sacrifice” and help in the fight against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.