There is little debate that the U.S. just can't order its troops, contractors, OGA personnel (i.e., CIA-types), and others to immediately pack their bags and leave Iraq. We've created a huge mess, and the vacuum created by a quick exit – without a properly trained, equipped, and motivated indigenous force in place to replace our personnel – would spell disaster for the already suffering Iraqi population.
That said, a question that no one seems to ask or answer seems extremely relevant. For all those supporters of the invasion, including those in Congress and the American public who were behind the initial invasion, would they have voted for it if they knew some of what we know now:
- The primary justifications for military action, the threat of imminent use or creation of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), turned out to be wrong
- The human cost would be over 1,800 US soldiers dead (growing weekly) and over ten thousand wounded
- The financial cost would be hundreds of billions (Question: Whatever happened to Iraqi oil financing the invasion/reconstruction, Mr. Wolfowitz?)
Again, the question is not whether we believed – at the time – Secretary Powell and administration’s UN PowerPoint slides and talk of yellow cake uranium and aluminum tubes. But rather, are the costs outlined above, in terms of international credibility, human life, and dollars, worth the effort to rid the country of its murderous leader? Are they worth it to promote democracy in the region? The neoconservative movement, which believes that Israel's safety begins with a democratization of the region, would have voted for action without the WMD justification. But would the Congress and US public have supported to war knowing that the primary reasons to do so did not exist, and the cost would be so high?
I think it is obvious that a vote in Congress or a public opinion poll in early 2003 would not have supported this action if the WMD reasoning was not used. While this opinion certainly won't help us get out of Iraq, at least it helps redefine the reason we are there. We are really there for an ideal – the neocon view that Iraq needed a regime change – that Americans, both elected and ordinary, would not have supported.
Most Americans, except for a few extremist nut jobs, support our troops. It's a shitty job they have been tasked with, a job most of us can't even fathom. They "embrace the suck" of Iraq everyday, trying to do the right thing. Were there sacrifices – and not just of the dead, but the wounded, both physically and psychologically – worth it? This question seems to have taken center stage now. Nobody want to tell the family of a fallen or wounded soldier that what they did was not worth it.
But the answer is not something that can be wished for. Everyone wants the sacrifice to have been worth it. The sacrifice made by soldiers of any era, even for a misguided policy or mission, should never be belittled. Whether you supported the Vietnam War (at least initially), you would have to be inhuman when walking within the Vietnam Memorial in DC not to sense the incredible magnitude of sacrifice of the over 50,000 Americans who did what they were asked to do. That war may have, in hindsight, been a waste of human, material, and financial resources, but thankfully, in hindsight, the country no longer ignores the sacrifice made by those veterans.
Wrong wars (or police actions or excursions) don't negate sacrifice. Soldiers who died in the hills of Korea, during the failed Iran hostage mission, on the beaches of Grenada, and throughout Iraq deserve our utmost respect, particularly from those of us who like to talk about the use of force and sacrifice but have never been in uniform fighting our countries battles.
But those same soldiers, their families, and the country, need to know that we live in a country that can analyze our actions, understand when we have made mistakes, and learn from those mistakes. After a battle, the military takes pains to analyze what happened and learn from the actions of officers, soldiers, and the enemy. Americans, especially our leaders, need to assess all actions that involve our military. Did we fight for the right reason? Did we give the troops what they needed to win? What can we learn from this engagement to help us avoid repeating mistakes?
Learning from policy mistakes and saving the lives of current and future generations of soldiers should be a top priority as we figure out how to extract ourselves from Iraq. Calling fellow citizens traitors because they don’t support a misguided and mismanaged war is counterproductive at best, and against the very American ideal of free speech and public debate that our soldiers fight for at worst.