The Iraq War Will Be Historical Footnote, but Its Lessons Are Vital

At 2:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, Dec. 18, the last American troops to leave Iraq — 500 troops in a 110-truck convoy — rolled out of Tallil Air Base, 10 miles southwest of the southern Iraq city of Nasiriyah.

Within the 13.6-mile perimeter fence of the base are the ruins of the Babylonian city of Ur, from which the Bible tells us Abraham, patriarch of three great world religions, left for Canaan. It's humbling to realize that in the long history of Mesopotamia-Sumeria-Babylon-Assyria-Iraq, the United States' excursion there will be just a footnote.

It only seems like a long time to us.

Judging from the polls, most Americans who didn't fight in Iraq or have a loved one killed or wounded there have moved on. Many of them didn't pay much attention even when the fighting was fiercest.

The American attention span is frightfully short. It's one reason we keep making the same mistakes.

The Iraq War lasted eight years and eight months. Counting the Bush administration's long walk-up to the war, it occupied this nation for more than nine years, from the "yellowcake" scare to scooting unannounced out of Ur in the middle of the night because we didn't trust the Iraqis not to ambush us.

From Marine Lt. Shane Childers, killed on March 21, 2003, to Army Spc. David Emanuel Hickman of the 82nd Airborne Division, who died Nov. 14, the war claimed the lives of 4,484 American troops and 293 from the other countries in what President George W. Bush was pleased to call the "coalition of the willing."

The war claimed an estimated 110,000 Iraqi lives. It left 32,200 Americans physically wounded and hundreds of thousands of others suffering from various degrees of combat-related stress.

Officially, it cost U.S. taxpayers at least $823 billion, a figure that according to some economists, will double or even triple as years go by and the costs of caring for the wounded continue.

Was it worth it?

Almost from the outset of the war, the Brookings Institution has published its "Iraq Index," quantifying the financial and human costs of the war and measuring political and economic progress. Most economic metrics have improved dramatically over 2002, the last full of year of Saddam Hussein's rule.

Oil production and exports have just about reached pre-war levels. Gross domestic product has sextupled. Fifty percent more electricity is being generated. There are 25 times more telephones. More kids are enrolled in schools. There are about half the number of doctors; most of those who could leave did so, and few of them have returned.

Foreign investment exceeds $100 million a month. The Financial Times reported last week that in most business sectors, the spoils of war have gone to firms in countries that didn't get their hands dirty, including Turkey, China, South Korea and Italy.

However, U.S. and British firms are heavily invested in the Iraqi oil business. This should come as no surprise.

Financially, the Iraqi people overall are better off than they were during Saddam's reign. Are they better off politically?

That depends in large part on whether, and how strongly, they believe that back in the seventh century, the prophet Mohammed meant for his successor to be one of his close associates or a member of his family. The former belief characterizes Sunni Muslims, the latter Shiite Muslims. In Iraq, combined with the usual venality of politicians, that can make all the difference.

The dust from that convoy that left Ur last Sunday morning barely had settled before the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, ordered the arrest of Tariq al-Hashimi, the country's vice president. He is the highest-ranking Sunni Muslim in what is supposed to be a unity government.

Hashimi, who has been accused of sponsoring Sunni death squads, has taken refuge in Kurdish northern Iraq. The Kurds are largely Sunni, but their allegiances tend to be more tribal than sectarian.

In the days that followed the arrest order, Maliki threatened to dissolve the unity government. On Thursday, a series of bombings racked Baghdad, killing at least 63 people and wounding 185. The bombings appeared to be the work of Sunni insurgents calling themselves al-Qaida in Iraq.

There always was the chance that Iraq would come apart when U.S. forces left. Few people thought it would happen so quickly.

Maliki's Shiite coalition has the numbers on its side: 62 percent of the Iraqi population calls itself Shiite, but there are sects within sects. Some of them, too, have long memories: Saddam was nominally a Sunni Muslim and the Shia suffered cruelly under his tyranny. Without the stabilizing presence of U.S. forces, it may be payback time.

Some U.S. military commanders and Iraq experts had advocated leaving a combat brigade or two in-country for a few more years. President Barack Obama, sensing little popular or political support for that, demurred — particularly after Maliki's government insisted that any remaining U.S. troops would be subject to Iraqi law.

The U.S. troop 'surge" that pacified Iraq after the 2006 off-year U.S. elections repudiated Bush's Iraq strategy was designed by Gen. David H. Petraeus to give Iraqi politicians the "breathing room" they needed to get their act together.

Would two more years have been enough breathing room? Would 20 more? After 1,300 years of sectarian strife, probably not. And besides, the political climate in the United States has changed since 2003. There is little stomach now — and fewer dollars — available for international adventuring.

The United States went arrogantly into Babylon unprepared for what it would find in a place it did not understand. A lot of brave men and women were sacrificed in this uncertain cause for results that now appear ambiguous at best.

We had made this same mistake in another part of the world between 1965 and 1973 and learned nothing from it. We are making the same mistake now in Afghanistan.

We must never forget Iraq. We must never do this again.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

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