The Forgotten War

Saddam is dead, Bush is out of office, the war is over and now no one wants to hear any more about Iraq. But the United States bears responsibility for that country’s future.

Michele Bachmann, one of the Republican candidates for the U.S. presidency, has a bewildering idea: Now, as the last U.S. soldiers leave Iraq, it’s time to bill the country for the costs incurred in waging that war. According to Bachmann, Iraqis should pay the costs of having their nation liberated, now reckoned to be $800 billion for eight years of war and occupation. A mere drop in the bucket for such an oil-rich nation, right?

Bachmann’s proposal may sound familiar because of its ignorance and arrogance: it’s a delayed echo from the Bush era, that age when American neoconservatives wanted to finance their wars against hostile Islamic regimes by charging them a fee for their own liberation. Nevertheless, Bachmann’s idea does have one positive aspect: She noted that the withdrawal of the last U.S. soldier from Iraq would mark the end of a long, bloody and highly controversial campaign.

In 2008, candidate Barack Obama promised to make the Iraq war a theme of his presidential campaign. Now, his announcement that the remaining 39,000 troops would be home by Christmas was worth exactly six minutes of air time. Americans reacted by shrugging their shoulders and the rest of the world ignored this milestone as well. What a strange phenomenon that a war that divided the world so dramatically should end with such a hollow plop! Over 4,400 American soldiers lost their lives and another 32,000 were wounded. Nobody counted the number of Iraqi civilians killed but serious estimates put the figure at over 100,000.

It’s Easier to Destroy than to Rebuild

So what’s the bottom line? What did the United States, with all its weapons, troops and dollars, accomplish in eight years there? A dictator is gone and his brutal reign over. That’s something even critics of the war shouldn’t forget. But it’s easier to destroy than to rebuild — or in the words of U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, ““Any [expletive] can burn down a barn; it takes a leader to build one.” Iraq is far from being a stable, secure or even democratic nation. The conflicts between Shiites and Sunnis, Islamists and nationalists, Kurds and Arabs all remain unresolved. Over 2,600 civilians died in this supposedly pacified nation last year alone. That’s more than died in Afghanistan, where even German government officials no longer shy away from using the word “war.”

Turkey has sent troops into northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish freedom fighters; Iranian agents compete for influence in southern Iraq. Iraq’s army has all of 70 tanks and no air defenses at all — that’s why the Americans were there, and they provided great service as peacekeepers and aid workers. After their withdrawal, the probability is extremely great that the country will fall apart. The 1,000 diplomats who, with the assistance of numerous helpers, will remain in Iraq will be no substitute for the missing soldiers.

Obama’s Shabby Behavior

The U.S. military also recommended maintaining a presence in Iraq and the Iraqi government was basically in agreement, but the negotiations broke down when the United States insisted its troops be granted immunity from the Iraqi justice system, a condition Iraqi politicians were unwilling to accept. Public anger over the torture that went on in the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib is still too great.

Both sides might have come to an agreement if Iraq’s president Maliki had had the will to put together a majority in his fractured parliament and if President Obama had made a bigger effort. But Obama had little inclination to do so — Iraq was, after all, Bush’s war and not his. Obama ignored the fact that the United States assumed responsibility for Iraq’s future when it invaded the country in 2003. That was pretty shabby of him, but he gets cover from the indifference of his countrymen and the rest of the world. Saddam is dead, Bush is out of the White House, the war has been declared over and now nobody wants to hear anything more about Iraq.

Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya: America and its European allies always want to show the world they are willing and more than able to topple tyrants. In the first case, it was all about revenge for 9/11; in the other two nations, their oil reserves may have played a role but the fate of their oppressed citizens was at least as important a motivating factor for the Americans and Europeans.

Compassion is a noble motive, but good only comes out of it after the destruction is followed by successful rebuilding, and there’s not enough patience for that in Iraq.