Will the history books say we won or lost the War in Iraq?

Great Debates
1

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama stated he was going to start withdrawing American troops from Iraq, having most of them out by August of this year. Supposing that all goes to plan and we finally end our participation in that country, who will history say won?

On one hand, the United States removed a dictator from power, gave him a (somewhat fair) trial, and attempted to install a democratic government. Supposedly these were the major goals by George W. Bush’s White House.

On the other hand, the new democratic government is shaky, piecemeal, and prone to corruption. We never quite defeated the insurgency. American soldiers still die every day from guerrilla tactics we can’t seem to successfully combat. We never found WMD.

I know no one here has a crystal ball, but how do you predict the outcome of this war will be written 25, 50, and 100 years from now?

2

Probably it will be ignored as much as possible, unless Iraqis are taking revenge by blowing things up. It was a war of aggression, built on lies and one that did a great deal of damage to this country; that of course will all be conveniently forgotten and replaced with nonsense about how it was for freedom and democracy, and the Iraqi casualties won’t even be mentioned. And, to the extent that it is regarded a failure, the failure will be blamed of the Left, the media, and on insufficient brutality, as it always is.

3

It depends on what the objectives were. No WMDs found, so first objective - fail. Then the focus changed to removing Sadaam and installing democracy - Sadaam is gone, but how long will the democracy last? I think across most of the world, history books will vilify the US for invading illegally, staying far too long and possibly leaving the country in a worse state than before. US history books, I imagine, will gloss over these items, and talk of successfully spreading democracy and removing an evil tyrant, leaving as heroes.

4

I’ve a less rosy view than previous posts. Ultimately though, there is no getting away from ‘said X, did Y’ on the part of the US.

5

Got a cite for that?

It’s way too early to know whether history books will say we won or lost. It all depends on how Iraq looks in the future relative to what it was under SH. If it’s a somewhat stable democracy, then it will be viewed as a success. If it ends up under another SH, then a loss.

6

Cite.

Okay, the deaths aren’t occuring every day, but my point was that they’re still occuring. I was trying to make my OP as neutral as possible.

7

My prediction is that future analysts will say that the war was lost long before a single American soldier set foot on Iraqi soil. The real problem wasn’t the execution of the war, but its initial conception. The intentions and planning for the war were filled with so much bad faith and willful blindness that the following seven-year quagmire is almost indistinguishable from an intentional failure.

8

Of course you won the war - you won it in under a week.

The question is, did you win the occupation?

9

Look at the hostile fire deaths. There have been 10 in the last four months.

Knowing that the reasons were going to war were stupid, and it was a completely unnecessary war, I think how Iraq turns out in another 5 years or so after we finally withdraw troops will be the best barometer of success. If Iraq doesn’t fall into being an outright dictatorship, history may judge it with more lenience than we do today.

At this time, I would say history will probably judge it to be in the same category as the Korean War, which is usually considered to be a mixed outcome – just as the OP described.

It may also be held up to some ridicule as the Spanish-American War – again, a war that really shouldn’t have been fought.

10

Defines entirely on who is doing the writing and how they define “won.”

We replaced the existing government, so that can certainly be described as a win. Of course, it is too early to see whether it will be replaced by anything too terribly better. And we certainly failed miserably at our stated goal wrt WMDs.

Another wrinkle will be whether whatever goals were achieved were worth the price paid in $, lives, international respect, missed opportunities, and the effect on US self image.

11

Many wars were started for stupid reasons in the past. I don’t believe that because the Iraq war was started under false (or mistake, depending on one’s spin) pretense is going to really matter in the end. What is going to matter is how it turns out. Does Iraq become a stable democracy (or a stable anything)? What happens after the US leaves? What kind of nation does Iraq become in the medium and long term?

THOSE are going to be the metrics by which history judges whether or not we (presumably the US/UK with a few friends) ‘won’ or ‘lost’ in Iraq. And it’s still way to early to tell which way that will go. If you want a WAG, though, I’d say that Iraq WILL become a relatively stable nation, and they WILL survive relatively intact after the US pulls out. Which will mean that, essentially we ‘won’.

-XT

12

Hardly. We didn’t invade because we wanted them to be a stable nation, we wanted to grab control of their oil and use them for a military base in a general conquest of the region. We’ve already lost at our original neocon objectives. And even ignoring that, “stable” doesn’t mean "friendly to the US; a stable nation that funds or is even just hospitable to anti-American terrorists isn’t a win either; and its highly unlikely that Iraq will ever again be anything but murderously hostile to us. And that’s before you get to all the damage we did to ourselves and our interests. There aren’t any realistic scenarios where the entire affair is anything but a massive net loss for us.

13

I’m with Alessan on this one. The actualy ‘war’ that was waged was against Sadam and his republican guard, of which was over in about two seconds. We didn’t go into Iraq to fight Insurgents–they came to wage some Jihad when the word got out there was some Americans in town that needed killing.

That of course brings us to the occupation, which is really an issue the will never be agreed upon. But look back at what the books say about Vietnam or Korea. I would say that just like those, it will come down to who’s telling the story as to whether the books justify it or not.

14

I feel like you’ve been watching too many movies. I know a fighter pilot who has been fighting in and around Iraq since 1990’s. He told us that we went to war with iraq, mainly because of the 12-13 UN resolutions that Sadam continued to break. He said that in 1999, when no one thought we were at war with Iraq, he would see the Sam missles flying up at him while he was flying over the UN-nuetralized area of Iraq. Bush tried to sell the war using the WMD story, which he believed because Sadam Hussien actively tried to make the Middle Eastern world believe that he did have WMD. My fighter pilot friend mentioned how angry he gets over the fact that us finding a minor aircraft fleet buried in the desert, as well as a couple thousand pounds of yellow-cake uranium, never gets mentioned by the media.

15

So what? Wars don’t always start for the reasons stated. The conditions of victory, however, have to do with how history views the results. And history is going to review the results of the war in Iraq through the lens of how it turns out.

Put another way, had we gone in there with the best motives in the world and the entire thing went tits up and we were driven out in complete defeat, then history would view that as a war ‘lost’. ETA: By the same token, had Germany won in WWII, then despite their motives, history would have chalked that up in the ‘win’ column.

I don’t believe that’s the case wrt all of the neocons objectives, but even if it is, again, so what?

Who said it did?

Well, then if Iraq becomes a haven for terrorist groups then that would legitimately be considered a loss.

I doubt it, but I suppose time will tell. Obviously if Iraq becomes murderously hostile towards the US then that would be a legitimate indication of a loss.

The level of damage we did to ourselves is still a matter for history to decide. A lot of the perceptions of damage are because we are all to near the events to be able to view them with any kind of historical perspective. Time will tell if the perceived damage is A) real, and B) short term or long term…or permanent. My guess is that if things play out well in Iraq then the ‘damage’ will be, at most, short term, and may not have any lasting long term negative effects (image wise) on the US at all…perhaps even the opposite, though that’s probably stretching things.

Sure there are. Things are ALREADY stabilizing in Iraq. If that trend continues then the US will continue our pull out. If that happens without the country going tits up, if they managed to continue to have elections and the violence stabilizes and continues to decrease, then there is a good chance that this entire fucked up event will only have a small net loss for the US…or even be a neutral event. Hell, it could even work out historically to be a small net gain for the US. It’s all going to depend on how things proceed in Iraq. If you are right, and the whole thing goes completely off the deep end, then it will certainly be considered a loss, and a massive loss at that. But that’s not the only way this could all play out.

-XT

16

CITE!!! This is complete bullshit! If that had happened John McCain would be president of the United States.

17

Iraqi Yellowcake (false): Yellowcake Uranium Removed from Iraq | Snopes.com

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/05/world/main4235028.shtml (Original story as misreported.)

Buried Iraqi aircraft (true): Sand Trap | Snopes.com

18

Most people today think this era is the most important era in the history of the United States, well, maybe not, but that’s the impression I get. Maybe it’s always the case that people think “now” is the most important time ever in the history of their country.

In truth, if we’re talking about history books written about 100 years from now I bet the current Iraq war will be talked about as much as our involvement in the Philippines under William McKinley, and probably judged about the same (in many ways they are similar.)

19

They found a few aircraft buried in the desert but so what? They’re not WMD and they’re not effective against the US airforce. There were several thousand pounds of uranium in Iraq but it was all under UN seal stored in a facility we knew all about. And yellowcake is just a raw material, it’s useless without massive refining which Iraq couldn’t do. And we had it under seal anyway so it’s irrelevant. Our no-fly zones were called “illegal” by the UN chief so Iraq had the right to shoot at us.

As far as Iraq goes, it depends on who’s writing the history books. But it’ll be hard for them to ignore the fact that Iran ate George Bush’s lunch over the whole thing. There’s no question that Iraq was a disaster for America, even the GOP don’t support having invaded anymore.

20

Cite. Oh, yellow cake WAS found! See 1:20 in. It’s wrapped up in a special CIA napkin, you can see it for yourself.