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Jewish World Review Dec 21, 2011 / 25 Kislev, 5772 More incompetence or purposely snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The Iraq war began at 5:46 a.m. on March 19, 2003. It ended Sunday (12/18) when the last convoy of U.S. troops leaving Iraq entered Kuwait. In the 8 1/2 years in between, 4,486 U.S. servicemen and women were killed, as were 316 Allied soldiers, and somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 Iraqis.
"I think the price has been worth it, to establish a stable government in a very important region of the world," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Saturday (12/17).
Mr. Panetta's comment is significant, because his boss, President Barack Obama, opposed the war. But it will be true only if we are in fact leaving a stable government behind us.
Hours after Mr. Panetta left Iraq Thursday, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, a Shia, arrested the bodyguards of the Sunni vice president, triggering a political crisis.
Many fear that by precipitously withdrawing all our troops, President Obama has removed the glue that held the fledgling Iraqi democracy together, and left it vulnerable to intimidation and subversion by Iran.
"The decision to abandon Iraq entirely will stand as one of the monumental strategic follies of the 21st Century," Frederick Kagan, an architect of the 2007 surge strategy which brought apparent victory, predicted Monday (12/19).
So we don't know yet whether going to war with Iraq was worth what it cost in blood and treasure. But we can put those costs into perspective.
Our 4,486 fatalities were just a few more than the 4,196 we suffered during the long forgotten Philippine Insurrection of 1898-1902, far below Korea (36,914) and Vietnam (58,169).
We spent $806 billion on the war in Iraq, according to the Congressional Research Service. Measured in dollars adjusted for inflation, that makes Iraq the second most expensive war in history, edging out Vietnam ($686 billion), but far behind World War II ($4 trillion).
The cost of the war is to blame for budget deficits, liberals say. Either they have difficulty with arithmetic, or difficulty telling the truth. Between the time the war began and the time it ended, the federal government spent $26.86 trillion. The cost of the war is less than 3 percent of that. The war in Iraq cost less than Mr. Obama's failed stimulus bill.
But 4,486 is too many dead, and $806 billion is too much money if you think we shouldn't have gone to war with Iraq in the first place.
Our reasons for doing so were spelled out in the resolution authorizing the use of military force. which Congress passed overwhelmingly on Oct. 2, 2002. They were Saddam Hussein's refusal to comply with UN resolutions requiring him to disclose his programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction; his use of WMD during the Iran-Iraq War and against the Kurds, and his sheltering of terrorists.
Saddam's regime was ousted with surprising speed and very little bloodshed. But it soon became clear Saddam's nuclear program was far less advanced, his WMD stockpile much smaller than the CIA had estimated.
This fact -- and the beginning of a guerrilla war -- caused many of the 29 Democrats in the Senate and 81 in the House to develop amnesia. They accused President George W. Bush of unilaterally plunging America into war -- though 38 nations (a larger alliance than we had in WWII) sent 50,000 troops to Iraq.
This politically motivated amnesia was the most shameful aspect of the Iraq war.
"Had Bill Clinton deposed Saddam Hussein, the left would have celebrated him as the greatest liberator since Abraham Lincoln," said retired Army LtCol. Ralph Peters. "Bush hatred was so rabid on the radical left -- Obama's left -- that even ridding the world of a Hitler clone was a 'war crime.'"
The guerrilla war was initiated by diehard Baathists, who were soon augmented by thousands of al Qaida terrorists who flocked to Iraq after Osama bin Laden declared it to be the most important battlefield in the fight against "the Crusader-Zionist coalition."
Nearly all were killed or captured. Al Qaida's attacks on civilians cost it most of its support among Muslims. "Iraq has proved to be the graveyard not just of many al Qaida operatives, but of the organization's reputation as a defender of Islam," said StrategyPage.
Al Qaida is near its end, intelligence officials think. The end began in Iraq, where al Qaida was bled dry. That's reason enough to think the war was worth the cost -- unless Mr. Obama -- in his hurry to "get us out of Iraq"-- has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2011, Jack Kelly |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
