"...The US leaves Iraq having learned nothing"

Via Friday-Lunch-Club

Bacevich, in TNR:

"... The U.S.-led assault on Baghdad in 2003 finally finished the work left undone in 1991—so it appeared at least. Here was decisive victory, sealed by the capture of Saddam Hussein himself in December 2003. “Ladies and gentlemen,” announced L. Paul Bremer, the beaming American viceroy to Baghdad, “we got him.” 

Yet by the time Bremer spoke, it—Iraq—had gotten us. Saddam’s capture (and subsequent execution) signaled next to nothing...

With officials such as Bremer in the vanguard, the United States set out to transform Iraq into a Persian Gulf “city upon a hill,” a “kicking ass” heavy-handedness ...Unable to win, unwilling to accept defeat, the Bush administration sought to create conditions allowing for a graceful exit. Marketed as “the surge,” this modified approach was the strategic equivalent of a dog’s breakfast....In military circles, to declare that “there is no military solution” became the very height of fashion.

By the time Barack Obama had ascended to the presidency, this second phase of the Iraq war—its purpose now inverted from occupation to extrication—was already well-advanced....

Which brings us to the present. After seven-plus years, Operation Iraqi Freedom has concluded. Operation New Dawn, its name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid, now begins. (What ever happened to the practice of using terms like Torch or Overlord or Dragoon to describe military campaigns?) Although something like 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, their mission is not to fight, but simply to advise and assist their Iraqi counterparts. In another year, if all goes well, even this last remnant of an American military presence will disappear. 

So the Americans are bowing out, having achieved few of the ambitious goals articulated in the heady aftermath of Baghdad’s fall. .....Back in Iraq, meanwhile, nothing has been resolved and nothing settled.

Call this the War of Iraqi Self-Determination (2010–?). As the United States removes itself from the scene, Iraqis will avail themselves of the opportunity to decide their own fate, a process almost certain to be rife with ethnic, sectarian, and tribal bloodletting. What the outcome will be, no one can say with certainty, but it won’t be pretty.

One thing alone we can say with assurance:As far as Americans are concerned, Iraqis now own their war.... As U.S. forces have withdrawn, they have done so in an orderly fashion. In their own eyes, they remain unbeaten and unbeatable. As the troops pull out, the American people are already moving on: Even now, Afghans have displaced Iraqis as the beneficiaries of Washington’s care and ministrations. Oddly, even disturbingly, most of us—our memories short, our innocence intact—seem content with the outcome. The United States leaves Iraq having learned nothing."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 1:50 PM

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