Iraq, five years and counting

 

As the Presidential election process continues on its unrelenting course, the politics of the Iraq war have taken a back seat to other concerns: the economy, health care, the falling dollar, the prices of food and gas, the collapse of the housing market and other domestic problems. For the most part, the media seem to have forgotten about the war, unless there is bad news that can be positioned above the fold or featured in editorials that continue to excoriate the president for leading or tricking us into a misguided and, in their view, failed war.

The questions most people now seem to be asking themselves include: Should we have gone to war in Iraq at all? What have we accomplished? Has it been worth it? How long are we going to stay there? Should we bring our troops home now? Is the cost in blood and treasure too great and how much longer can we sustain this effort?

 

Over time, it’s easy to lose sight of the reasons why we may have decided on a particular course of action. Our reasons for certain decisions often tend to get fuzzy. This is true of nations as well as individuals. We may forget or adjust our thinking as conditions change, and so it is with the situation in Iraq.

“The data on the war weren’t cooked: virtually every major foreign intelligence service, including those of France, Germany and the U.K., among others, believed Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear and biological weapons – weapons of mass destruction…” (IBDeditorials.com, March 19, 2008).

 

But, the naysayers counter, “We never found any weapons of mass destruction. And besides, the war has already failed.”

However, notwithstanding the steady diet of pessimism being fed to us by the media, the facts on the ground tell us otherwise. Here are a few specifics from the U.S. Department of State about the situation in Iraq today that exemplify the positive information that is not being reported:

• Before the war, only about 833,000 Iraqis had telephones. There are now 8.9 million, and the number of cell phones has increased from zero to over eight million.

• Today, there are more than 50 TV stations and 260 independent newspapers and magazines in Iraq. Prior to the war, all media was controlled by Saddam.

• An estimated 50,000 people died each year during Saddam’s regime, compared to 18,000 civilian deaths reported at the peak of the “surge” last year.

 

When it comes to military fatalities, the assertion that the Iraq war is the worst in America’s history is incorrect. American loss of troops in Iraq during 2007 was reported at 901. However, during the Clinton administration an average of 938 military died each year. The loss of 4,000 troops over five years is less than the number lost on a single day (D-Day) during WWII. “This is the most bloodless war in history.”

My experience has been that bad situations tend to have a life of their own, and resolving them is often more a matter of hunkering down and living through the process than it is finding a “magic bullet” that makes them disappear overnight. People invariably want instant results, but life just doesn’t work that way.

Our conclusions are often a function of perspective, and I submit that those who continuously decry America’s involvement in Iraq, the loss of life, the cost and the negative impact on our reputation do not have a balanced perspective that also recognizes the positive results that are being achieved.