Second guessing on Iraq

Who am I with my limited knowledge to second guess these decisions? As they say, hindsight is always 20/20.

However, there were plenty of experts at the time who cautioned about this so-called ending of the war and between 2011 and today many more experts of various disciplines warned of the problems developing in Iraq and Syria. If nothing else, the history of internal conflict and the early behavior of Iraqi leadership should have been clues, not to mention one party in a conflict cannot end a war on its own.

The real question was whether or not we had accomplished any goal sufficient to justify the sacrifices made by our military personnel. It’s questionable whether simply “getting out” meets that criteria.

Another apparent simple question is why getting in seems so easy.

In 1960 the logic of the Communist threat and the Domino Effect got us into Viet Nam. Democratic presidents escalated the war and a Republican ended our involvement which in that case ended the war as a loss and waste of 50,000 plus American lives. In the 21st century we have the reverse between Democrats and Republicans, but now the world is a much different, much smaller place and the enemy has the ability to come to us. Does a brutal Islamic insurgency mean anything to us?

Could the US be secure without vigilance and involvement in the Middle East? How do we factor in ethnic, tribal and sectarian divisions (which our naive politicians apparently have not done)?

“All I’ve said about this job, I take it back,” Mr. Biden later recalled telling Mr. Obama. “Thank you for giving me the chance to end this goddamn war.”

“Joe,” he remembered the president responding, “I’m glad you got to do it.”
For two men who had run for office on the promise of getting out of Iraq, it seemed like a moment of validation. But that moment has proved achingly ephemeral. It was not the end of the war or even the end of their involvement.

Two and a half years later, Mr. Obama has ordered up to 300 Special Operations members back to Iraq and may yet authorize airstrikes to prevent the collapse of the government at the hands of a brutal Islamic insurgency. New York Times June 23, 2014

Can we simply end a war on our terms? Can we look the other way and not get involved at all? Maybe history will have the answers fifty-years for now, but it is clear to me that playing politics and relying on hope and naive optimism doesn’t work in the twenty-first century.