The residents of Iraq took to the polls Sunday for another parliamentary election. While the results in terms of voter preference won’t be known for several days, the turnout (in the 60% range) was solid, if not overwhelming (turnout was lower than the mid-70% seen during the last parliamentary elections in 2005, but up from the 50%+ turnout during the most recent provisional elections).
Despite the violence that claimed the lives of 38 Iraqis on election day (the result of multiple attacks carried out amidst a comprehensive security clampdown), Sunday was accurately described as ”relatively calm” – despite, further, the fact that “14 people were killed on Friday, 27 two days before that.” Yet that’s what passes for calm in a relative sense in Iraq when compared to what could be and what was. After all, despite the “success” of the surge, on average 300 Iraqis are still killed each month in political violence.
The fact that this achievement in body count reduction only takes on the faintest hint of success when compared to the horror of the prior monthly butcher’s bill, hasn’t stopped the usual suspects (and some slightly less typical) from claiming victory – and rewriting Iraq as a success (as if an eventual positive result could ever justify the unthinkable and immeasurable tragedy in lives lost and shattered, dollars spent and opportunity costs incurred in terms of neglecting other priorities). But that’s the thing.
To talk about success in this context is to pervert the applicable chronology of the war (the war started with the surge) focus exclusively on the benefits (a democratic Iraq, with Saddam dead and buried) exclusive of the costs (too many to list), and even then, based entirely (yet again) on best-case-scenario expectations (assuming smooth sailing ahead in terms of Iraq’s peaceful transition, and discounting the increased power and influence of Iran).
But other than that, mission accomplished! Daniel Larison is highly quotable on the subject:
Whenever possible, I refer to the Iraq war as a war of aggression, because that is what it is and has always been. One thing that has often puzzled me about the reflex to declare victory in Iraq, as a Newsweek cover story did recently, is that I don’t know what it could possibly mean to achieve a victory that anyone would want to celebrate as the result of a war of aggression. Tens and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans are dead. Tens of thousands of Americans are injured, some of them severely, and Iraq now boasts one of the highest percentages of disabled people in the world. Millions of Iraqis were turned into refugees or displaced within their own country. All of this has come about because of a war that did not have to happen. All of this has come about because of a war we started. It is bad enough that our government unleashed this hell on people who had never actually done America any harm, but it is unconscionable that any of us celebrate what has been done as if it were something good and worthwhile.
Of course the new administration will try to make the best of it, claim progress and take credit for anything it can. That is in the political self-interest of this administration. Having inherited a mess that the political class has convinced itself was improving, it would not be advantageous to be the one overseeing the unraveling. The rest of us are not burdened by such considerations.
I don’t think it is particular noble to destroy another people’s country on the basis of unfounded, paranoid fears that its small, economically weak, militarily inferior government posed grave threats to the global superpower. There are many words that come to mind to describe this, but noble is not one of them. It is not especially noble to do this with no meaningful plan for restoring order and governance in the wake of the invasion. There is no nobility to be found in the afterthought of poorly constructing a democratic regime whose elections served as the trigger for massive bloodshed. Likewise, there was not much nobility when our government belatedly recognized its incompetence and failure long after it could do the civilian casualties any good and proposed a plan that would temporarily reduce violence long enough for the previous administration to get out the door. It is also hard to find anything noble in a sectarian-dominated governing coalition that oversees a politicized military and police force that has begun reviving the nastier bits of the old regime.
What a Danny Downer.
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