Five years later, Iraq is still a mess

Jack Jacobs Military analyst

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and four days later, Congress declared war on the Axis powers. In Europe, war had already been raging for nearly three years, and in Asia it was nearly a decade old, but the U.S. had been deftly avoiding the conflict and was still unprepared at the time of the attack.

American offensive action was slow in coming and feeble in execution. In February 1942, the USS Enterprise struck the Japanese on Wake Island but was driven off, and a month later there was a largely ineffective raid on New Guinea. In June, we launched the air attack on Japan by Jimmy Doolittle, but there were only 16 planes involved, and the largely symbolic attack caused little damage.

A genuine American counterattack did not occur until we landed in North Africa in November 1942. But only two and a half years later, the Second World War was over.

The contrast with our effort in Iraq compared to World War II is startling: This month marks the end of five years of fighting there. To be sure, this is a different kind of war in most respects, but the difference says a great deal about the U.S.'s strategic objectives and its ability to achieve them.

Much has been said and written about the administration’s justification for the invasion of Iraq, and since this is an election year, you can expect a lot more on this subject. Five years later, more is known now that was not publicly understood at the time.

Hindsight is 20/20
Despite the administration’s assertions in 2003, Iraq did not have nuclear weapons and was not actively trying to develop them or to secure the raw materials for their manufacture. In fact, Saddam Hussein was quite surprised that we attacked Iraq, especially given that he was our strategic ally against a more dangerous common enemy, Iran.

It is now accepted by most observers that the invasion of Iraq was based on simple, but flawed, strategic thinking by people who understood neither the region nor the strengths and limitations of national power.

Fearing large-scale growth of fundamentalism and its threat to both the U.S. and Muslim countries, the administration assumed that democracy was the cure for the spread of Islamic revolution and terrorism. On many occasions, President Bush stated that every person loves democracy, and as an assumption in the U.S., a country with a 200-year history of it, this is difficult to refute. But the U.S. isn’t Southwest Asia, and while all people may love democracy, they don’t necessarily have the visceral, emotional attachment to it that we do, nor may they be willing to fight for it.

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