The last-ditch American drive to win the war in Iraq -- the "surge" policy -- finally took full effect on June 15 of last year. By the end of the year, Iraqi civilian deaths were a quarter of the body count 12 months earlier. Between May and September, U.S. military deaths were halved; By year's end, the death toll had been cut by another two-thirds, to the lowest monthly losses in nearly four years and the second-lowest of the entire war.
American military and civilian leaders have thus far declined to declare even a limited victory, having learned the hard way how fragile victory in the Middle East can be. But the numbers speak for themselves.
No war supporter will deny that the war has taken too long and cost too much, that implanting democracy in the wreck of a Mideastern nightmare tyranny was not exactly like shooting fish in a barrel, or that the desire of all sides for an early draw-down of Western troops in fact enabled the insurgency. But if we war supporters had to re-think the war, some of the anti-war side's assumptions of the past several years are not above re-thinking, as well.
The leaders who are blamed for everything that ever went wrong in Iraq have gotten no credit for the quick and clean invasion or the eleventh-hour pacification, but what about the Congressmen and Senators who authorized and supported the war when it was popular, then opposed and undermined it once that became the popular thing? How should history remember the sort of politicians who do whatever is most convenient at any given time?
The Weapons of Mass Destruction rationale for the war was no "lie." If it was, then the Clinton Administration were liars, too; anti-war foreign leaders like former French President Jacques Chirac were liars, too; and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Al Gore were liars, too. They all said the same things about Saddam Hussein's WMD threat that the Bush Administration did. The Hussein government actually used WMDs on ten known occasions, after all.
And there were many other grounds for the war named in the joint resolution of the U.S. Congress that authorized the use of force in Iraq. The failure to find WMD stockpiles does nothing to diminish the numerous other justifications for the war. Saddam Hussein ensured that no-one would ever want for good reasons to dismantle his dictatorship.
The United States has not grabbed Iraq's oil. If former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan wrote recently that the war was "largely about oil," he was referring to his own idiosyncratic view, as he explained: "I was not saying that that's the Administration's motive. ... I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential. ... I have never heard [Bush and Cheney] basically say, 'We've got to protect the oil supplies of the world,' but that would have been my motive."
Hysterical figures like 655,000 or 1.2 million civilian dead are impossibly high and based on spurious polling and methodology. The most widely-accepted tally has been by Iraq Body Count, which is an anti-war outfit with no interest in diminishing the numbers. That puts the total civilian deaths since March of 2003 at 80,000-88,000. Saddam Hussein's enforcers killed more Iraqi Kurds in a single "Anfal" campaign.
The worst killer of Iraqi civilians remains Saddam Hussein. By far. Human Rights Watch has concluded that Hussein had 100,000 Kurds killed in 1988 alone, and that 290,000 Iraqi civilians in all "disappeared" during Hussein's 23-year tyranny. Which does not include hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed in the pointless 8-year Iran-Iraq War, launched by Saddam Hussein.
So concern for Iraqi civilians can as easily argue in favour of the war to end the Saddam Hussein nightmare, and in favour of the continuing surge against the jihadists and death squads which target civilians.
The Iraqi-al Qaeda connection cited as cause for war in Congress' Iraq resolution has been branded another "lie," but again, even the Clinton Administration was convinced half a decade before the war that al Qaeda and the Hussein government were allied. The Clinton Justice Department's 1998 indictment against Osama bin Laden found that al Qaeda had agreed to "work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq...on particular projects, specifically including weapons development."
And if the pre-war relationship was not extensive enough, no less an al Qaeda authority than Osama bin Laden later called Baghdad the "epicentre of jihad" and "capital of the Caliphate." A more recent Iraq assessment by bin Laden, however, is that "the darkness has become pitch black." Al Qaeda is being routed on its self-described central front in the global war. Pounded and harassed militarily, and repudiated by practically every sect and tribe of the Iraqi people.
As for the surge's skeptics, the policy has largely separated the insurgency from the Iraqi people, decimated the insurgents, and secured the population. It has taken more American troops, more time and money, riskier tactics, and a final revulsion of the Iraqi people against the jihadists and militants. But a miracle was worked in a matter of months.
It has always been the case that ultimate failure in Iraq would color the entire enterprise as wrong and hopeless. But the other side of the coin is that a lasting fix would re-cast the war in a favourable light, as a worthy cause, and one for which the sacrifice was not in vain.
Andrew W. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
American military and civilian leaders have thus far declined to declare even a limited victory, having learned the hard way how fragile victory in the Middle East can be. But the numbers speak for themselves.
No war supporter will deny that the war has taken too long and cost too much, that implanting democracy in the wreck of a Mideastern nightmare tyranny was not exactly like shooting fish in a barrel, or that the desire of all sides for an early draw-down of Western troops in fact enabled the insurgency. But if we war supporters had to re-think the war, some of the anti-war side's assumptions of the past several years are not above re-thinking, as well.
The leaders who are blamed for everything that ever went wrong in Iraq have gotten no credit for the quick and clean invasion or the eleventh-hour pacification, but what about the Congressmen and Senators who authorized and supported the war when it was popular, then opposed and undermined it once that became the popular thing? How should history remember the sort of politicians who do whatever is most convenient at any given time?
The Weapons of Mass Destruction rationale for the war was no "lie." If it was, then the Clinton Administration were liars, too; anti-war foreign leaders like former French President Jacques Chirac were liars, too; and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Al Gore were liars, too. They all said the same things about Saddam Hussein's WMD threat that the Bush Administration did. The Hussein government actually used WMDs on ten known occasions, after all.
And there were many other grounds for the war named in the joint resolution of the U.S. Congress that authorized the use of force in Iraq. The failure to find WMD stockpiles does nothing to diminish the numerous other justifications for the war. Saddam Hussein ensured that no-one would ever want for good reasons to dismantle his dictatorship.
The United States has not grabbed Iraq's oil. If former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan wrote recently that the war was "largely about oil," he was referring to his own idiosyncratic view, as he explained: "I was not saying that that's the Administration's motive. ... I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential. ... I have never heard [Bush and Cheney] basically say, 'We've got to protect the oil supplies of the world,' but that would have been my motive."
Hysterical figures like 655,000 or 1.2 million civilian dead are impossibly high and based on spurious polling and methodology. The most widely-accepted tally has been by Iraq Body Count, which is an anti-war outfit with no interest in diminishing the numbers. That puts the total civilian deaths since March of 2003 at 80,000-88,000. Saddam Hussein's enforcers killed more Iraqi Kurds in a single "Anfal" campaign.
The worst killer of Iraqi civilians remains Saddam Hussein. By far. Human Rights Watch has concluded that Hussein had 100,000 Kurds killed in 1988 alone, and that 290,000 Iraqi civilians in all "disappeared" during Hussein's 23-year tyranny. Which does not include hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed in the pointless 8-year Iran-Iraq War, launched by Saddam Hussein.
So concern for Iraqi civilians can as easily argue in favour of the war to end the Saddam Hussein nightmare, and in favour of the continuing surge against the jihadists and death squads which target civilians.
The Iraqi-al Qaeda connection cited as cause for war in Congress' Iraq resolution has been branded another "lie," but again, even the Clinton Administration was convinced half a decade before the war that al Qaeda and the Hussein government were allied. The Clinton Justice Department's 1998 indictment against Osama bin Laden found that al Qaeda had agreed to "work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq...on particular projects, specifically including weapons development."
And if the pre-war relationship was not extensive enough, no less an al Qaeda authority than Osama bin Laden later called Baghdad the "epicentre of jihad" and "capital of the Caliphate." A more recent Iraq assessment by bin Laden, however, is that "the darkness has become pitch black." Al Qaeda is being routed on its self-described central front in the global war. Pounded and harassed militarily, and repudiated by practically every sect and tribe of the Iraqi people.
As for the surge's skeptics, the policy has largely separated the insurgency from the Iraqi people, decimated the insurgents, and secured the population. It has taken more American troops, more time and money, riskier tactics, and a final revulsion of the Iraqi people against the jihadists and militants. But a miracle was worked in a matter of months.
It has always been the case that ultimate failure in Iraq would color the entire enterprise as wrong and hopeless. But the other side of the coin is that a lasting fix would re-cast the war in a favourable light, as a worthy cause, and one for which the sacrifice was not in vain.
Andrew W. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
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