Remember Iraq?

The process of forgetting ‘Bush’s war’ has already begun, says Andrew J. Bacevich. But if President Obama fails to learn from that disaster, he’ll pay the price in Afghanistan

What is it about the war in Iraq that induces officials to lie, dissemble, prevaricate, and otherwise exert themselves to dodge the truth? Now even Barack Obama, who prior to becoming President accurately denounced Iraq as a ‘dumb war’, has joined the crowd.

A much publicised speech on 2 August to the Disabled Veterans of America became President Obama’s own ‘mission accomplished’ moment, albeit this time without the triumphal banner and, blessedly, without America’s commander-in-chief decked out as a flyboy. ‘As a candidate for President,’ Mr Obama reminded his listeners, ‘I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end.’ Fulfilment of that pledge now beckons. ‘And that is exactly what we are doing,’ he continued, ‘as promised, on schedule.’

The President took great care to avoid using the ‘V-word’. His remarks contained no references to victory or winning or, in the vernacular preferred by George W. Bush, kicking ass. Obama also passed over in silence the various fictions and fabrications advanced for going to war in the first place. Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Never found. Substantive links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’eda? Nope. The Anglo-American invasion triggering a wave of democratisation sweeping the Islamic world? Not happening. The road to peace in Jerusalem discovered in downtown Baghdad? You’ve got to be kidding. Yet none of these matters diminishes Obama’s conviction that the light at the tunnel’s end is now burning brightly.

This is sheer malarkey. What the artfully chosen phrase ‘responsible end’ actually signifies is that the United States is abandoning its effort to determine the future of Iraq through the concerted use of hard power. After seven years of arduous effort, Uncle Sam’s fighting forces are calling it quits.