Mission:Accomplished?

In March of 2003, in the shadow of the attacks on New York and Washington, DC, the United States, and coalition countries invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq. In August of 2010, the last military troops, primarily belonging to the United States, left the once again sovereign nation of Iraq.

With the troop withdrawal, a number of questions remain. And while these questions are different from the questions that were asked when the coalition invaded in 2003, they are no less demanding of answers. Answers that, like the questions of 2003, are still lacking.

In 2003, shortly after the invasion, the entire invasion was questioned. What, exactly were the coalition forces doing in Iraq. The party line at the time was seeking weapons of mass destruction, although a number of people believed, and still believe, that it was because of Iraq's involvement with the September 11, 2001 attacks, despite evidence to the contrary. During the early days of the invasion, a number of us, including myself, kept asking "where are [the weapons]?" And the continuing answer was "They're there, we just have to uncover them." In fact I got into several arguments with those who know that if the weapons were there, they would be splattered all over the front page of the Washington Post. Especially at that time with an election coming and positive PR being in short supply for the Bush II administration. As we now know, there never were any weapons of mass destruction.

Failing to find justification...er...weapons, the Bush II administration said they were going after the Axis of Evil. For me, that never held water. Iraq was a brutal dictatorship, no question, but so is North Korea, and they actually have nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and an unstable enough leader to actually use them. For all that Saddam Hussein was, unstable he was not.

Now, as we enter the latter part of 2010, the question of why the United States was in Iraq is seldom asked. What is asked is what has been accomplished, now that the mission is concluded. Of course, calling it a mission begs the question, because a mission implies a goal, and clearly, there never was a goal. OK, the cynics, myself included, would say the goal was to secure the Iraqi oil, but even that seems to be a half-assed effort.

So what was accomplished? Democracy was brought to the Iraqis? OK, I can support that. Unfortunately many of the soldiers that rammed democracy down the throats of the local population are coming back to a nation less democratic than when they left and while Iraq may not, in 2003, have been terribly democratic, it had a governmental structure more stable and more secure than the one that is being left behind. And then there is the infrastructure, battered by over seven years of war and guerilla actions, to where now it is barely stable enough to keep the lights on. Who is going to stand up and take responsibility for at least restoring it to pre-war levels? The United States? Nope, their job is done.

Clearly the mission, undefined and unarticulated, was known only to those that started it, if anyone knows what it is. And several generations of both American and Iraqis will have to live, not only with the death and damage, but the clean up costs, both in terms of aid to Iraq as well as to the troops that have returned broken and unable to hold normal jobs. It is these hidden costs that ten, twenty, thirty years from now we will be debating and arguing over. When the shadow of history looks back at the Iraq war and wonders why it happened. The historians might be able to better formulate, what today is a mystery for many people: What exactly was the mission? And did it really get done?