So It's Victory in Iraq

It's been the Neocons who have been, through a constant refinement of the goals and measures, suggesting that we've won the seven-year war in Iraq. Now, only slightly more judiciously, the anti-war president and his ever-voluble vice president are suggesting this, too.

Well, people will say anything if it suits.

David Brooks, ever trying to sugarcoat the basic Neocon position, weighs in with an assessment of Iraq in which, all things considered, he finds the seven-year effort admirable and worth it. It cost us nearly 5,000 lives and, he says, choosing the lowest possible figure, $53 billion (for "reconstruction"), but damn if we haven't built a nation, however fragile.

This is going to be the talking point, not just that we've won, but that we've done something good: Government, infrastructure, police, incipient democracy, oil business, all up and running because of our dogged persistence.

In this, I'm afraid, the resurgent Neocons are about to score a considerable PR coup. If we're out of this mess -- or that is, if there are no longer any bodies being produced from it -- then we're happy to think the best of ourselves. It's nice to believe it wasn't for naught. Even many of the people who came to believe it was for naught while we were fighting it will now come to believe it was reasonably productive after all. We're going to be left with a model for going to war: a tough slog, but, in the end, a successful one.

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Comments

[antiplutocrat]

01:11 AM on 09/06/2010

The 2009 ExxonMobil $50 Billion dollar contract with Iraq is the only real victory that can be declared. The reason why anything else anybody tries to say about the USA adventure in Iraq sounds like it's BS is because it is BS. In 2001-02 Sadam had excluded ExxonMobil (and BP) from oil contract negotiations. We had to get rid of Sadam to get ExxonMobil back to the bargaining table. But nobody is stupid enough to declare the true victory publicly.

[tacevad]

10:05 AM on 09/03/2010

Iraq will continue to rely on US help to modernise its military and train them to use all the very expensive weapons systems - M1 Abrams tanks, F-16s and the like - that Iraq is buying from the US with the its renewed oil revenues.

US oil companies may not have got all the spoils they'd hoped from the US takeover of Iraq, but the US defence industry has never had it better.

[truthglow]

07:07 PM on 09/02/2010

I wish he were the "anti-war president," but he's far from it. It seems that columnists like Michael Wolff will say anything "if it suits," too.

[moderndaywarrior]

06:04 PM on 09/03/2010

He used the term 'anti-war president' sacrastically. Pay attention.

[truthglow]

06:43 PM on 09/03/2010

I don't "pay attention" to "warriors," modern day or not.

[twowrongs]

06:43 PM on 09/02/2010

We put off the inevitable. You can even call it "cut and run" which was always our only viable option for leaving. "Destablilize and Leave". "Fail and Forget". Blood and Treasure squandered for having something worse than what we started with. Yeah OK we kill Saddam H. If no-one as ruthless takes his place that country will remain unstable. Thanks for nothing GWB.

PS to troops put in this position. Your service to our country, and your many sacrifices do not go unappreciated. George McGovern said early on: "Honor our troops by bringing them home."

[ralle]

05:58 PM on 09/02/2010

"OUR COMBAT MISSION IN IRAQ IS OVER" . I haven't heard the president or anybody else say we won.

[ydrittmann]

10:39 AM on 09/07/2010

Hoist the banner.

[Electrum 01]

05:41 PM on 09/02/2010

I didn't get the feeling from Obama that he felt we had won, but rather that it was over, and we are proud of our fighting men and women.

It remains to be seen where Iraq is going from here; how long our imposed democracy will survive. The only sure winners were the fracking profiteers who enriched themselves mightily on the back of this conflict. Oh, and of course Iran.

[ydrittmann]

10:40 AM on 09/07/2010

Thank you. Keep hammering home the Iran connection. The only winner is Iran.

[Larry Motuz]

12:52 PM on 09/02/2010

As Jefferson said: "War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses."

I am sure the Iraqi people, in a choice between two evils, would have stayed with the one they had rather than the one brought to them.

The war was about oil, and only about oil.

[Electrum 01]

05:43 PM on 09/02/2010

I wouldn't say that, the privateers made a bundle on it too.

[Larry Motuz]

07:37 PM on 09/02/2010

Oh what a wonderful war for them!

[truthglow]

07:10 PM on 09/02/2010

And Georgie's pride.

[Larry Motuz]

07:37 PM on 09/02/2010

True.