A Humiliating End to a Misadventure

Seven years ago, from the deck of an aircraft carrier anchored in the calm bay of San Diego, and displaying a banner proclaiming “mission accomplished,” George W. Bush donned his fighter pilot jacket and declared the end of hostilities in Iraq. Total victory, Bush suggested in his speech, was near.

This week, after seven years of intense combat, Barack Obama has finally ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. combat units in Iraq, but without being able to declare victory.

The official declaration of the cessation of military operations signifies neither that the U.S. intervention in Iraq has ended nor that the conflict has been resolved. Some 50,000 Americans, including advisers and soldiers, will remain in the country until at least the end of 2011. What has been made clear is the useless sacrifice of the 4,400 Americans and over 100,000 Iraqis killed in an unjustified and unjustifiable war. What will remain are a devastated country and a demoralized and divided society.

And if the cost in lives has been immense, the waste has been no less striking. An initial budget of $50 billion has now surpassed roughly $750 billion. And it is estimated that of the $53 billion allocated for the reconstruction of the country, more than half has been wasted on projects that were never completed, poorly planned, or badly managed. In addition, the government estimates that it will need at least another $750 billion to treat the physical and psychological wounds of the veterans of this war.

Another of the undesirable legacies of the war has been an astonishing loss of U.S. prestige in the world. After seven years of occupation, the United States has not been able to restore the minimum level of security required to stabilize Iraq.

Worse still, the U.S. seems to have learned nothing from past military failures that should have left a profound mark on the government and American society.

In Korea, for example, not only should the human toll of the war have been counted — 33,629 Americans killed and 103,284 soldiers wounded — but the consequences of the conflict also should have been considered.

In his indispensable book, “The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950-1953,” Clay Blair wrote that the Korean War “gave root to the notion that the ‘spread of communism’ in the Far East could be contained by ‘limited’ American military power, which led to American military intervention in Vietnam.” And another war that ended in a spectacular political and military failure that cost the lives of some 58,000 Americans and left more than 300,000 wounded.

The exact number of Vietnamese killed in that conflict is difficult to determine, but it is thought to be between two and four million people, including combatants and civilians.

In his 1983 book “Vietnam: A History,” Stanley Karnow wrote that Vietnam marked in the consciousness of Americans “the end of its absolute confidence in its moral exclusivity, of military invincibility, its manifest destiny.” What is terrible and incomprehensible is that, 20 years after these revealing experiences, Americans have forgotten the lesson of history by embarking on two military adventures that cannot end well.

Although it was a positive step to get rid of Saddam Hussein, whose exceptional history of horrors — victimizing his fellow citizens and neighbors alike — went on for decades, nothing justifies the killing or the strategic and political errors that were committed nor the lies that were told to justify the intervention. Not even the budding signs of democratic progress that have taken place, often at great risk and in defiance of ancestral customs and traditions, justify it.

Let us have no illusions. Democracy is not a product that can be exported, nor has it taken root in Iraq.