Kevin Tracy

I seem to be one of the few people out there willing to call Operation Iraqi Freedom a success. Therefore, for the sake of our troops that gave their lives in this conflict and their families, I feel it is important to explain why the Iraq War ended with an American victory.

Let’s start at the beginning. I’ve made it no secret that I believe the war was a good idea, even if there was no intelligence that Saddam Hussein was keeping weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The problems I’ve had with the war was that the WMD argument was the single, central argument made for attacking Iraq. Granted, WMDs are pretty dangerous and the threat of them should not be taken lightly. However, the fact that Saddam was a dictator actively slaughtering his own people without mercy was reason enough for us to take action. Yet, as critics will point out, this has nothing to do with the Global War on Terrorism. Tactically speaking, this criticism is correct. Strategically speaking, well, that’s a different story.

By now, you’ve probably heard the term “The Bush Doctrine.” If you haven’t heard of it, or if you’re not sure what the Bush Doctrine is, it’s pretty simple to understand. The Bush Doctrine was based on a theory that Democracy was contagious. In other words. If Country A and Country B are both dictatorships, it is a lot easier for the people to live passively under the dictatorship. However, if the people of Country A are given the right to vote, the people of Country B are going to want to start voting, too. “Why should the Aopians have better rights than we, the Bians?”

Applied to this scenario, the Bush Doctrine recognizes certain politically incorrect truths about terrorism. First, that most international terrorists are coming from dictatorships the United States supports for oil security and their past support for our Containment Policy of the Soviet Union during the Cold War (that’s a topic for another post). Beyond this, politically and economically speaking, it was impossible to invade Saudi Arabia or Egypt without turning the entire Arab world against us and destroying the global economy; which is entirely dependent on oil from this region. Luckily for us, Saddam Hussein was the pissy red-headed step child of the Arab world that nobody really liked. The United States, believing that democracy was contagious, could topple his regime fairly easily and give the people of the country the right to vote. In time, we’ve already begun to see this happen, other people across the Muslim world would want to have the same freedom.

Unfortunately for everybody (except the Democrats against the war and al-Qaida), things most certainly were botched after Saddam’s regime was toppled. Specifically, the coalition’s policy of De-Ba’athification. Simply put, it was a witch-hunt for anybody with ties to Saddam’s Ba’ath party; which meant dismantling the entire Iraqi government, police force, and military. At face value, this seems like a good idea, but only a small minority of these people were at all responsible for the atrocities under the regime. In other words, we kicked competent leaders and skilled gunmen out of their paid positions and tried to fill their places with incompetent and untrained police and soldiers. And guess what those former leaders and soldiers did? That’s right, they tore the country to hell and made it impossible for the coalition to detect the infiltration of international terrorists from al-Qaida and Iran. This war might have been a lot shorter if we approached the post-war era of Iraq the same way as post World War II Germany, in which members of the Nazi Party who were not directly responsible for atrocities were able to keep their positions in a new anti-Communist Party led by several imprisoned political voices during the Nazi regime; the Christlich Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Union) is still around and thriving today with Chancellor Angela Merkel as its chairwoman. What we failed to realize was that members of Saddam’s army and police forces were simply looking for work and a way to feed their families. Even those who did some pretty horrible things were simply following orders and afraid of what his superiors would do to his family if he didn’t follow those orders. A lot more soldiers were never even given overly controversial orders. The same is true with the police force and political leaders outside of Saddam’s inner-circle.

Law and order could have been maintained during the transition. Instead, we scrapped it for ideological purity; and instead of writing this post about success in 2005, I’m writing it just before the 2012 New Year.

Iraq was still ultimately successful, however. Two of Iraq’s neighbors have already experienced democratic revolutions, one in Iran and the other ongoing in Syria. Democratic revolutions have also taken place in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Bahrain. I’m not sure what to call the uprising in Yemen. Furthermore, political protests seem to keep popping up in Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. Now, as some Republican critics at this point will point out, the governments being elected aren’t exactly the most western-friendly we’ve seen. But the point is that they are being elected. We shouldn’t make the mistake of expecting too much too soon from emerging democracies. The United States certainly wasn’t born as a utopian democratic society, it took us a long time to get where we are.

The measure of success in Iraq is more than just what happens outside of Iraq, but what has already happened inside of Iraq. The democratic seed we planted in 2003 has sprouted into a thriving government strong enough to tell the United States military, “We don’t need you here anymore.” Upon the government telling us that, President Obama pulled our troops out and a lot of them were home in time for Christmas 2011. Republicans are calling that “defeat.” I’m calling that “Victory” with a capital “V.” From the outside, it looks like the government is a complete mess. It might even look like that from the inside. However, democratic republics are rarely a perfectly functioning entity. They have a hard time getting anything done and they tend to make problems a lot worse. Does that sound familiar? It should, because the Iraqi government is functioning about as well as the United States government is right now.

Is there still sectarian violence in Iraq? Yes. Is the United States the cause of it? No. That conflict has been waiting to happen for a very long time (ever since the French and British made up the most foolish borders possible in the region); and it’s just a matter of time before Iraq’s economy becomes strong enough to give people something else to do besides killing each other, or the military becomes strong enough to stop them from doing it. And if that fails, the Arab League will step in before the sectarian violence boils over Iraq’s borders, or before the Iranians try the same thing.

It’s probably like the first time someone changes a diaper on a newborn baby. Did you get poop on yourself, your stuff, and spread it around a bit more than you wanted to on your baby? Yes, probably. Do you feel like you did the best you could have done? No, probably not. But does that mean you’re unsuccessful when your child grows up and moves away from you? Of course not! Ultimately, that baby is better because it has a new diaper. You’re better because you hopefully learned from your mistakes; and the next time you change an shit-filled diaper like Saddam Hussein, it’s a lot cleaner. And the world is a lot better because they have one less shit-filled diaper to worry about smelling.

Why am I the only one saying this? That’s the easiest part of all of this. Republicans don’t want to give credit to Barack Obama for winning the Iraq War, and Democrats don’t want to give credit to George W. Bush for starting a winnable war. Democrats were only interested in retreat and defeat since the first day of the war. Republicans wanted to pull troops out under a Republican President… in truth, however, keeping troops there against the will of the Iraqi Government would have put our soldiers in CONSIDERABLE danger of arrest, imprisonment, and death-by-hanging at the hands of the legitimate government there.

In fact, I think this is the first time a war started by a Republican president has ended under a Democrat president.

The problem is that both sides are letting domestic politics dictate their definitions of a foreign war. As a result, both parties are selling short the incredible work that has been done by our Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, and Sailors. They won this war, even if politicians in Washington won’t recognize their victory, they won. They did everything they set out to accomplish and more with honor and distinction. When our politicians made mistake after mistake, they coped and relentlessly moved towards victory. The United States won this war and the war is better off because of the incredible sacrifices made by the men and women who accomplished incredible feats in Iraq.

Mission Accomplished. Finally. Congratulations.