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Was America the evil one forcing its imperialistic will upon the peaceful citizens of Iraq resulting in millions of innocent deaths or was she at her best; toppling an evil and repressive dictator and securing freedom for the Iraqi people?
Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator and Iraqis were abused and oppressed under his regime, but we’re not at all sure it was worth the treasure and blood required to remove him.
As President Barack Obama prepares a speech to the nation this week on the future of Iraq, a brief history lesson is in order.
George W. Bush did not arbitrarily take the country to war. The authorization to use force was fully debated and voted on in Congress.
Major intelligence agencies all thought Saddam wanted weapons of mass destruction and would use them if he acquired them. His own actions against the United Nations inspection teams strengthened that belief.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s mistakes are now a litany of how not to run a war. Ignoring the Powell doctrine, allowing mass looting, creating thousands of insurgents with the wholesale disbanding of the Iraqi army, no plan to re-establish government and basic public services turned what could have been a swift and (in military terms) easy victory into years of pain with still no finite end in sight.
Both Rumsfeld (for his planning and execution failures) and President Bush (for his failure to remove Rumsfeld sooner) will forever have the blood of American soldiers on their hands. Politicians need a history lesson as well.
Harry Reid’s infamous “the war is lost” and Joe Biden’s “it will not happen in anybody’s lifetime here, including the pages” can’t be forgotten. The surge did work, thanks to Gen. David Petraeus. Yet, those same politicians who pontificated a losing strategy are taking credit for an “end” they themselves did not even negotiate.
We should all remember though that it is the American soldier and ONLY the American soldier who brought the fiasco from the brink of disaster and delivered the cautious victory now being celebrated.
Saddam Hussein successfully bluffed the greatest military power in the world into embarking upon an ill-conceived expedition, the full consequences thereof still not fully known.
Politicians now clamoring to take credit for Iraq should remember the terrible cost of calling that bluff: the souls of more than 4,400 of America’s best; the highest cost of all.
The credit for whatever success now claimed belongs to them and them alone.
