Iraq will never have a happy ending

The famous ‘surge’ has proved a complete failure, says John C. Hulsman. Whatever Obama may say, nation-building is a luxury America can no longer afford

With Britain now withdrawn from Basra and American troops gone from the streets of Baghdad, Iraq is no longer front-page news. While there are still intermittent reports of carnage, and obscure stories written about political rumblings there, the problem seems manageable, far away, forgotten. Americans worry about the great recession, healthcare reform, and a little bit about Afghanistan. But Iraq has been conveniently forgotten.

This case of collective amnesia has been aided and abetted by a narrative that allows us to forget both Iraq’s frustrating intricacies and its horrors. The convenient narrative is this: that at the last possible moment the surge — the desperate build-up of American troops led by a dynamic American general, David Petraeus — snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, turning around the Bush administration’s grand exercise in nation-building.