Buzz's Obituary for the Iraqi War

President Bush declares victory and "Mission Accomplished" nine years before the Iraq war actually ended.

The last American combat troops left Iraq last week, not in a victory parade, but in the middle of the night, without advanced warning to the Iraqis, who might have attacked the last convoy as it made its way to Kuwait. The Iraqi War will be studied, written about and debated for generations to come, but its legacy is already known.

• 4,487 Americans dead
• At least 100,000 violent deaths of Iraqi civilians
• 32,226 Americans wounded, many of them horribly maimed for life
• $800 billion cost
• 505 bases & 170,000+ troops at height of conflict in 2007
• A cruel dictator, Saddam Hussein, is deposed
• In his place is a shaky elected government with an uncertain future, while sectarian bombings and violence continue daily
• Oil production, nine years after the war began, is still not up to pre-war levels, nor are municipal services such as water, electricity and garbage disposal
• America’s reputation has been sullied by such horrors as Abu Ghraib and the fact that America entered the war without justification
• Strategically, the greatest advantage has gone in the Middle East to Iran, which now has an influence disproportionate to what it had before this war began.
• Iraqi war diverted resources from the Afghanistan war for years, thereby weakening our efforts there
• America has been weakened and is less influential as a result of the war

Buzz’s Verdict: Some commentators, such as David Brooks of the NYT, argue that it is too early to tell whether the war was successful and that it will take 50-100 years to know if the war was really worth it. If it will take 50 years to figure out whether asking 4,000 Americans to die and another 30,000 Americans to serious impair their lives, the verdict is already in: it clearly wasn’t worth it.