The Iraq War: Three Years Later

Posted on Sun, Mar. 19, 2006
Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial
An incomplete mission, a war-weary nation

At the onset of the war in Iraq, Americans were anxious but supportive of President Bush sending the U.S. military to the Persian Gulf to topple the dangerous regime of Saddam Hussein. That invasion began three years ago today.

A March 2003 poll from the Program on International Policy Studies showed 66 percent of Americans favored invading Iraq; 32 percent opposed it. No close call there.

In 2006, it is clear that Bush's war has done one good thing: rid Iraq of Hussein, who terrorized his own people and threatened neighboring nations. The bad man of Baghdad can do little more now than shoot verbal volleys at the judges presiding over his trial.

But Bush cannot claim that this war has so far achieved any other U.S. goal. To the contrary, his administration's poor judgment and mistake-prone conduct of the occupation have made Americans less safe.

The war has been a boon to jihadi recruitment and the spread of extremist Islamic ideologies.

It also has harmed America's ability to influence world affairs. The United States has been ineffective on a number of issues recently.

Bush has not been able to gain international agreement to confront the genocide in Darfur. He has come away from gatherings in Chile and China with precious little achieved on crucial economic matters.

The administration has failed to get the operational reforms it seeks for the United Nations. Washington has been a backbencher in efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear standoff.

Other factors intrude upon these issues. The heavy-handed style of John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, discourages coalition-building. China and Russia routinely impede the U.N. Security Council from taking needed action against nations that behave badly.

Still, these last three years have created new critics of the United States and emboldened old foes. These last three years have eroded America's prestige.

Before Iraq, said Steven C. Clemons, a useful mystique surrounded the strength of the United States. Clemons heads foreign policy studies at the New America Foundation.

Rogue nations such as Iran didn't know the boundaries of our power. This blundering war of choice in Iraq has revealed them.

Iran's mullahs know that the United States, no matter what President Bush says, lacks the military and economic resources to start a grand fight with Tehran.

The leaders of many of our closest allies, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, cannot side too closely with the United States without risking an uproar from their antiwar publics at home.

In his second term, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have shown a new realization about the importance of diplomacy. But they are working with far less leverage than before.

Americans' trust in the President and his ability to stabilize Iraq is evaporating. A Program on International Policy Studies survey released last week showed that 54 percent of Americans now believe the administration made the wrong decision when it invaded Iraq. That's quite a drop from 2003.

The United States has backed itself into a corner in world affairs - and on how it should proceed in Iraq.

To leave now, as sectarian violence grows, could allow a full-blown civil war to erupt and spill over throughout the region. Terrorism breeds inside such chaos. That prospect likely is behind the current military offensive around Baghdad, and planned U.S.-Iran talks on Iraq.

We helped make this mess; we have a moral obligation to try to leave Iraq in one piece. It is not an endless obligation, though. By the summer, it should be apparent whether Iraqi leaders can form a unity government that shuns violence.

With each U.S. or allied soldier killed, with each Iraqi civilian gunned down, with each bomb that tears a wider divide between Shiites and Sunnis, the burden grows on Bush to show Americans why the United States should stay in Iraq.