It feels weird having to type this, but there is a certain undercurrent of the internet that needs to actually hear this message. The United States was victorious in the Iraq War (2003-2011). And it wasn’t even close, no matter how hard the historical revisionists try to convince you of otherwise.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not justifying the war. Was the war fought on a lie? Yes. Should we have never been there in the first place? Also Yes. Did it forever alter my adolescent-through-early-college staunchly isolationist view of the world? Yes. If I had things my way, not a single American life nor a single American dollar would’ve been spent on that shithole. But this isn’t Planet Dan, and we need to embrace reality.
Let’s look at facts; George W. Bush wanted Sadaam Hussein out of power and dead. Was it partially a war for oil? Yes. Was it also the most expensive and petty Please love me Daddy of all-time? Also yes. However, this article isn’t about motives, it is about results. Thus, we need to take stock by asking ourselves a few basic questions.
- Is Sadaam Hussein still in power/alive? This is a pretty objective question with a straight-forward answer. Fuck No. Get as mad as you want, but let’s face facts; Sadaam was deposed pretty quickly after our dubious invasion into Iraq. Following that, Sadaam Hussein didn’t last a whole lot longer once removed from power. Good fucking riddance.
- Is the Baathist party still in power? Another objective question with yet another straight-forward answer in the Fuck No column. See, the thing with dictators is that they typically don’t like to have a line of succession. After all, having a clear Plan B makes it all too easy for the second-string quarterback to ensure that you conveniently meet an untimely demise. Sadaam was certainly no exception. However, operating without an heir-apparent comes at a cost; the nation crumbles without the leader present. The Baathist’s weren’t ready for life post-Sadaam, and their subsequent failures show that.
- So, is ISIS and Al-Baghdadi controlling Iraq? Look at me, with the hot streak of direct questions with easy answers. Three-in-a-row for the category of Fuck No. In the interest of giving credit where it’s due, Barack Obama was pretty effective at using drone strikes and limited-scale engagements to peel back the ISIS onion layers before exiting office. Al-Baghdadi is now dead and ISIS does not control nearly the amount of territory they did circa 2014. So much for the Caliphate…
- So, who is running things in Iraq? Alright, this one admittedly isn’t going to have as clean of an answer as the first three. However, generally speaking, the US-installed puppet-government (yeah, I fucking said it, let’s not bullshit ourselves) still has control of most of the territory. Granted, remnants of loosely-connected ISIS sects still wreak some havoc in rural areas, but these are not large enough threats to de-stabilize the government as a whole. Say what you will of George W. Bush’s rhetoric of spreading democracy throughout the region, but one thing is for certain; Iraq is still a democracy. A flawed one, sure. But still a democracy. Unless you prefer a dictatorship?
- So, the Baathists/insurgents/ISIS killed more Americans than vice-versa? Excuse me one moment while I chalk a fourth tally under the header of Fuck No. And this one is pretty observable. We ‘Murica’d pretty fucking hard over there. Tragically, nearly 4500 US service members lost their lives in the Middle Eastern nation during our time there. While Iraqi death tolls are hard to verify-numbers range from 40,000 to one million-many sources hover around 100,000. Translation? We took out roughly 20 of their goons for every one of ours that we lost. If that isn’t a pretty objective scoreboard for war then I don’t know what is..
- “Well Dan, we never got gas prices down to $0.50 per gallon, so HA, gotcha!” Fine, looks like you got me on that one. Although, that’s a bit of a self-own because that argument inherently normalizes Iraq as a purely commodity-war. To anyone tone-deaf enough to use this talking point, you’ve lost any moral right to use rhetoric regarding freedom, democracy or some heavy-handed appeal to religion. If you’re so desperate for a debate-point win and are willing to sacrifice all of your social capital to do so, then by all means, use this autistic argument.
So, what is the argument for the US not winning the war in Iraq? Neocons supported it? Be that as it may, it still doesn’t alter any of the above-mentioned facts. The defense industry made money off of it? While I admit that this is true-and let’s face it, the only actual reason we went into that bullshit war-it isn’t relevant to the overall Win/Loss column. The CEO of Raytheon getting another infinity pool and private jet isn’t relevant.
Who took the bigger L; the Baathists or the revisionists?
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