And what we’ll leave behind – Fouad Adjami is once again on point:
It is not easy to tell people of threats and dangers they have been spared. The war put on notice regimes and conspirators who had harbored dark thoughts about America and who, in the course of the 1990s, were led to believe that terrible deeds against America would go unpunished. A different lesson was taught in Iraq. Nowadays, the burden of the war, in blood and treasure, is easy to see, while the gains, subtle and real, are harder to demonstrate. Last month, American casualties in Iraq were at their lowest since 2003. The Sunnis also have broken with al Qaeda, and the Shiite-led government has taken the war to the Mahdi Army: Is it any wonder that the critics have returned to the origins of the war?
Five months from now, the American public will vote on this war, in the most dramatic and definitive of ways. There will be people who heed Ambassador Crocker’s admonition (“In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came”). And there will be others keen on retelling how we made our way to Iraq.
RTWT.
An outstanding essay by Mr. Adjami.
I do disagree with one point.
He says, “True, the goal of a democratic Iraq – and the broader agenda of the war as a spearhead of “reform” in Arab and Muslim lands – emerged a year or so after the onset of the war. ”
The democratic reform of Iraq was one of the 21 reasons given for going to war in Iraq. In fact, T.P.M. Barnett’s book, “The Pentagon’s New Map,” was a blueprint for just such democratic reform.
Doug Feith’s book, “War and Decision,” made clear that the post invasion planning was botched because DOD and State were wrangling over the plans as the invasion was happening. There was no clear vision about the best way to proceed.
Michael Yon described the way general Petraeus and the 10th Mountain Division “governed” Mosul immediately after the invasion. It was a model for what we are doing now and was quite successful until Petraeus left to train the Iraqi Army.
In retrospect, I’m not so sure but what the course the war has run was not needed for the Iraqis to find out where their real interests lie. Certainly they would not have rejected al Qaeda if al Qaeda hadn’t had a chance to show the extent of their fundamentalism and brutality. The Sunnis have also had a chance to understand that the days of the Baath Party and Sunni rule are over. Without the violence of the last five years they might still believe they could rule Iraq to suit themselves.
If we can leave behind a relatively stable country that can defend itself from interference by Iran, Syria, or any other ME country, this would be a major step in changing the way business is done in the Middle East. It would also be a major blow to the aims of the Islamists. (In Iraq they’re now calling them the Wahhabis.)