lessons from lost wars in 2012

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http://www.nationofchange.org/lessons-lost-wars-2012-1325610678

It was to be the war that would es­tab­lish em­pire as an Amer­i­can fact. It would re­sult in a thou­sand-year Pax Amer­i­cana. It was to be “mis­sion ac­com­plished” all the way. And then, of course, it wasn’t. And then, al­most nine dis­mal years later, it was over (sorta).

It was the Iraq War, and we were the un­in­vited guests who didn’t want to go home. To the last sec­ond, de­spite Pres­i­dent Obama’s re­peated promise that all Amer­i­can troops were leav­ing, de­spite an agree­ment the Iraqi gov­ern­ment had signed with George W. Bush’s ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2008, Amer­ica’s mil­i­tary com­man­ders con­tin­ued to lobby and Wash­ing­ton con­tin­ued to ne­go­ti­ate for 10,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops to re­main in-coun­try as ad­vi­sors and train­ers.

Only when the Iraqis sim­ply re­fused to guar­an­tee those troops im­mu­nity from local law did the last Amer­i­cans begin to cross the bor­der into Kuwait. It was only then that our top of­fi­cials began to hail the thing they had never wanted, the end of the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary pres­ence in Iraq, as mark­ing an era of “ac­com­plish­ment.” They also began prais­ing their own “de­ci­sion” to leave as a tri­umph, and pro­claimed that the troops were de­part­ing with -- as the pres­i­dent put it -- “their heads held high.”

In a final flag-low­er­ing cer­e­mony in Bagh­dad, clearly meant for U.S. do­mes­tic con­sump­tion and well at­tended by the Amer­i­can press corps but not by Iraqi of­fi­cials or the local media, Sec­re­tary of De­fense Leon Panetta spoke glow­ingly of hav­ing achieved “ul­ti­mate suc­cess.” He as­sured the de­part­ing troops that they had been a “dri­ving force for re­mark­able progress” and that they could proudly leave the coun­try “se­cure in know­ing that your sac­ri­fice has helped the Iraqi peo­ple begin a new chap­ter in his­tory, free from tyranny and full of hope for pros­per­ity and peace.” Later on his trip to the Mid­dle East, speak­ing of the human cost of the war, he added, “I think the price has been worth it.”