Yes indeed:
“Iraq’s democratic and more importantly constitutional structures that were put in place as a result of 2003 and U.S. direct involvement have weathered 12 years, ISIS seizing one-third of the country, a simultaneous drop by 50% of its main economic driver oil, and conflict with Kurdistan,” points out James Jeffrey, a scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq.
But then he went a caveat too far:
He cautions, however, that none of that justifies the “huge cost” of ousting Saddam in 2003.
Really?
The Iraq War made sense and was no mistake.
That was clear a decade after OIF and before the rise of ISIL in Iraq in 2014.
Seriously, what would you have "chosen" not to achieve in that "war of choice?"
By casualties, the Iraq War cost was actually quite low--just look at the battle deaths in Syria if you want a real horror show (and this statement does not diminish the tragedy of each death, because it is a measure of costs to the nation relative to historical experience).
The direct costs basically matched what we spent at the stroke of a pen with the Obama Stimulus in 2009. And by GDP burden, the war was trivial, even with questionable definitions that include too many costs as solely war costs and which extend costs well into the future.
Seriously, get a little perspective, people, before flinging about the "catastrophe" charge.
And if none of what happened justified the "huge" sacrifice, why did President Obama validate our achievements--achievements he boasted about and which his vice president claimed would be one of the great achievements of the administration--by initiating Iraq War 2.0 to recover from the ISIL onslaught in 2014?
By that author's perspective on Iraq, the Korean War was not justified by the cost, which included over 36,000 American dead and veterans costs we still pay today. Shall we redeem our "mistake" by turning over free South Korea to North Korea and so not spend one more penny on that war?
We won the Iraq War. The cost did not invalidate the victory.
And it is our responsibility to build on the success so that in 50 years nobody will question Iraq as a win any more than anybody question Korea as a win today despite the cost.
Sometimes I feel like I have to keep blogging until the partisan warping of analysis on the Iraq War runs its course and an honest assessment of what we achieved can be made by the so-called professional analysts and historians.
May I live that long.
And Learning Curve is a useful cure for the equally dumb notion that the war was illegal.
