The Big Question: Did the United States succeed in Iraq?

Some of the nation's top political commentators, legislators and intellectuals offer insight into the biggest questions burning up the blogosphere today.

Today's question:

Did the U.S. succeed in Iraq?

Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said:

Hell no!

This war has been a calamity on too many levels. It has devastated and decimated the Iraqi people (leaving an untold number killed and one-fifth of the population either refugees or internally displaced due to a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign). It traumatized the region emboldening extremist movements and Iran, setting back internal democratic reform efforts that had been underway in Jordan and several Gulf countries. It did severe damage to America's standing across the world, while demonstrating the limits of our power (the opposite of the very goal that the war's foolish architects sought to accomplish). And it took the lives of 4,400 young American men and women, ruined the lives of tens of thousands more, costing the nation well over a trillion dollars.

A success? Hell no!

The big lies of this entire effort were not that we weren't told the truth about weapons of mass destruction or that the Bush crowd was playing fast and free hinting about a Saddam-9/11 link. The more consequential lies were that: the war would be a "cake walk" over in 6 days; that we would be welcomed with flowers; and that victory would usher in a new democratic order that would transform the entire Middle East.

The Bush crowd lied to us because they were itching for this war. They got it, but we and the Iraqi people have paid a bitter price.

From the beginning, President Obama has said that he was committed to a responsible departure from Iraq. Now we are leaving, as we must, but we have continuing responsibilities to the people of Iraq. Bush and company may have started this mess, but America still owns it. We are part of Iraq's history and must recognize that reality.

Bruce E. Gronbeck, professor of political communication at the University of Iowa, said:

Benchmarks, everybody, benchmarks: what are they for success in Iraq? Defining "success" in Iraq is at least as difficult as defining it was in Vietnam, for almost all of the same reasons. I would suggest that, for a moment, we define the question as broadly as we can: does Iraq represent the successful execution of U.S. foreign policy objectives as they evolved through the last decade of the twentieth century? Both in terms of international initiatives related to globalization and Bush 41's "New World Order" and of self-defense?

The answers are no. Candidate Bush 43 took strong stands especially in the 2000 presidential debates against policies of regime change, and then immediately undertook such actions. I need not review their consequences for this audience. I would note only that as a set of international cooperative initiatives, as an example of how to approach response to rogue-nations, and as planks in U.S. self-defense platforms, the Iraq missions were miserable failures. And maybe worse, they deflected U.S. attention and resources away from Afghanistan and took away U.S. credibility in handling the core Middle East problems and perhaps even the crises in East Asia.

And to think that we recited the "No more Vietnams" mantra year after year after year.  Then forgot it.

Bernie Quigley, Pundits Blog contributor, said:

Yes. The war in Iraq was an act of revenge for the events of 9/11. Period. It is a necessary component of the collective unconscious. As the bombing of Hiroshima was the price of Pearl Harbor. As the sacking of Atlanta was the price of Southern secession. The difference is that the invasion of Iraq did nothing else.

Peter Navarro, professor of economics and public policy at UC-Irvine:

Yes. We've succeeded in wounding our economy and killing a lot of people. Dumbest war we ever got in.


Frank Askin, professor of law at Rutgers University, said:

The only thing the U.S. succeeded in doing in Iraq was to have some 5,000 of our young men and women killed for no good reason. Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle have their blood on their hands.


Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, said:

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was and is the biggest military-diplomatic disaster in U.S. history. And, contrary to the Obama administration's well-crafted propaganda, it isn't over yet. We still have over 50,000 "non-combat" troops there — a convenient, and typically Orwellian, description of troops armed to the teeth and in constant danger of attack.

Hundreds of thousands Iraqis died in a war based on lies: there were no "weapons of mass destructions," Saddam Hussein did not threaten our legitimate interests, and there was NO link to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet we invaded and occupied the country, wreaked death and devastation, and created more new enemies. We paid out one trillion dollars, by the way — bankrupting ourselves in the process.