Remembrance and Regret

Editor's Note: The following is a letter I received from a friend in regard to the Four Year Anniversay of the War in Iraq, which was yesterday.

On March 19, 2003, the United States and “The Coalition of the Willing” launched an attack, called “Shock and Awe”, against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq . On May 2, 2003 on the deck of the USS Lincoln, President Bush proudly proclaimed “ Mission accomplished”. Now, four years to the day after its start, we have been in the Iraq war longer than it took our allies and us to win World War II against the Germans, Japanese, and Italians (US entered the war on December 8, 1941; Germany surrendered May 2, 1945; Japan surrendered September 2, 1945).

What has been accomplished during the last four years?

• We found out that the reasons the Bush Administration used to mobilize our anger and galvanize our resolve were bogus. There were no weapons of mass destruction and there was no connection between Saddam and 9-11.

• There have been over 3,200 of our brave men and women killed and over 30,000 wounded, many with limbs lost and brains damaged. Many more have comeback with charred memories and broken personalities. On this day, we should all remember and acknowledge their sacrifice.

• There have been tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of innocent Iraqi women, children, grand fathers and grand mothers killed. Actually, no one knows how many for sure how many; we don’t keep records on the Iraqis that have been killed.

• For a war that was supposed to pay for itself with Iraqi oil revenues, we have now spent over $400 billion. Much of it has been through no-bid contracts to friends of the Bush Administration. Billions of that have been lost to corruption or have gone unaccounted for. Our grandchildren will still be paying for this war decades from now.

• Not even the Baghdad is secure (let alone the Sunni Triangle), outside the Green Zone, with daily bombings, mortar attacks, IED explosions, kidnappings, and assassinations.

• There is a duly-elected Iraqi government but it has failed to pull the country together, the police force is filled with death squads, and the country is embroiled in a civil war.

• The “reconstruction” has gone badly. After 4 years, Iraqis—even those in the capitol—are without reliable basic services, such as electricity, running water, and sewers—let alone adequate education and health care (but then, neither do we). Most Iraqis feel that they are worse off now than they were before the war started.

• Although there was no connection between Iraq and the 9-11 terrorists, the country is now a magnet for the World’s terrorists and a breeding ground for new ones and the World is now a more dangerous place.

• The war in Iraq has resulted in neglect of the war in Afghanistan . It has faltered and the Taliban and Al Qaeda have reemerged. For a mishandled reconstruction there, the country is now the World’s largest producer of heroin and it accounts for most of the country’s economy.

• While the Iraq War was supposed to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the War and— Israel ’s adventurism in Lebanon —has actually made the region more unstable and volatile.

• Rather than stem efforts of countries to acquire weapons of mass, our inability to win the War has emboldened Iran and they are on the verge of joining the nuclear (not “nucular” George) club.

• And finally and most regrettably, a world that was uniformly sympathetic with us and behind us after 9-11 now distrusts or even despises us.

This is what the Bush Administration has accomplished in the last four years.

The Iraq War has turned out to be the biggest foreign policy disaster of our life time, even worse than Viet Nam because the stakes are higher. And what angers me most is that the Bush Administration hides its failed policies behind the bodies of our dead GI’s. Anyone who challenges their blunders is said to be disloyal to our troops and those that sacrificed themselves for us. What could be more unpatriotic, cynical, and disloyal to America’s men and women in the service than to send them off to fight a war that was based on trumped up intelligence, has no exit strategy, and will leave (eventually) a country devastated, and a world that hates us.

This is a sad day for us all.