Suddenly there are no longer any more litmus tests — remember the Democratic primary bickering in autumn 2007? — over who was, and was not, always against the war in Iraq. There are no more hearings in which a Sen. Obama or Clinton seek to outdo each other in grandstanding condemnations of the war effort.
We see no more discounted “General Betray-Us” ads in the New York Times. The protestors on our street corners have taken down the “No blood for oil!” signs and replaced them with “Hands off Iran!” placards. A Sen. Durbin or Rep. Murtha is quiet about supposed American war crimes and cruelty. That Barack Obama said he wanted all U.S. troops out by March 2008 is quietly forgotten.
In other words, it is now a good time to reflect back on the last five years of conventional wisdom about the war. When the histories of the Iraq War are written — in contrast to the dispatches published in mediis rebus by critical journalists and born-again antiwar critics — expect to see a much different narrative from the conventional ignorance that became the gospel these last five years.
The Good Versus Bad War?
For years now, we have been lectured that Iraq was the hopeless unilateral preemptive war — one that diverted attention from Afghanistan, the proper multilateral retaliation. But the truth is that both were singular wars with their own particular challenges. Afghanistan remains uniquely difficult because, unlike Iraq, it is a landlocked, hard-to-supply tribal land with a nuclear Islamic neighbor, Pakistan, that provides almost perpetual sanctuary for cross-border terrorists.
That NATO and later the UN were involved in Afghanistan only meant that a Germany or France would make an appearance there in a way they did not in Iraq — not that they would fight shoulder-to-shoulder with America in real numbers and without restrictions. That several countries were deployed to Afghanistan under the aegis of NATO was of not much more significance than that others went to Iraq as a coalition of the willing. Note that as Iraq quiets, Afghanistan, with its particular challenges, does not necessarily thereby get any easier. Expect new sloganeering to replace “took our eye off the ball.”
In that regard, the expertise acquired in Iraq more likely will help — than the wear and tear on the military hindered — the efforts in Afghanistan. Without defeating al Qaeda in Iraq, the only other option to have met and engaged such Islamic terrorists in real numbers the last five years would have been to invade Pakistan.
The Record of the U.S. Military
The performance of our military in Iraq was never suspect, and our soldiers were hardly the terrorists, criminals, and storm troopers as implied at various times in slanders voiced by Sens. Durbin, Kennedy, and Kerry or Rep. Murtha — and in a series of failed and reprehensible Hollywood movies. Instead, the U.S. military removed the genocidal Saddam Hussein, stayed on to fight a second war and defeat and humiliate Al Qaeda, and fostered democracy in the heart of the ancient caliphate. Both the quality of our troops and the generalship of Gen. Petraeus matched anything in American military history, and will be recognized as such once the significance of their achievement is recognized.
The story of the National Guard was not one of exhausted and demoralized reservists, but of skilled, often more senior soldiers whose civilian expertise enhanced reconstruction at every turn, as anyone can attest who has seem them at work in Iraq.
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