The question is, who won the war?
America is an unsurpassed military power. We have overwhelming superiority over any conceivable enemy except Russia, China, and India, and each of them possesses only slight and questionable superiority in one or two areas (Russia probably has more nukes, although they're outdated and not in as useful a posture; all three can field more infantry, although their infantries are less well-equipped and well-disciplined). Our naval and aerial superiority, and ability to project power to any corner of the globe, is unmatched; even unchallenged. We can defeat any nation-state or combination of nation-states, anywhere, on any terms.
Of course, the cost of all this is also unmatched: The 2010 Pentagon budget is $685 billion, not counting black budget items. This is a shade over 6% of the American gross domestic product, and a shade over a quarter of the federal budget. It is also around 45–50% of the world's military budget.
What of the cost of the Iraq War? A lot of tallies have been given, usually running into the multi-trillion dollar range, but the tally in lives is greater than the tally in treasure. Caesars have always assigned monetary value to lives, and the American Caesar is no different. The military provides a "death gratuity" of $100,000. The law provides for a cause of action for "wrongful death," when one person's negligence results in another's death. In a wrongful death action, a jury determines the value of a life—usually by a more or less actuarial calculation of the person's earning capacity in the probable remaining years of his life. It's a cold affair.
So we know how to put a value on an American life. But what's the value of an Iraqi life? No one knows exactly how many Iraqis died as a direct result of the war, and no one knows exactly how many died from allied (read: American and occasionally British) military action, versus al-Qaeda and other insurgent action, versus simply because of the sickness, famine, and dislocation that came as a result of the invasion. Numbers from credible sources vary from 95,000 to more than half a million; few have even ventured to try to count the number of injuries. NGOs tell us that millions more fled their homes, those who could afford it to Syria, Jordan, and Iran, those who could not simply to less-violent provinces. Whatever the numbers are, they sure as sugar aren't reported on CNN or Fox News.
If you don't even bother to figure out how many died, it's pretty clear you don't put much value on Iraqi lives.
Now, in fairness to the American military, it must be stated that our soldiers have made occasionally valiant attempts to compensate Iraqi civilians for damage or deaths we have directly caused. The payments are paltry, and of course there is a variety of possibly unsolvable economic problems with figuring out how much to give, but it's been tried, and some people deserve credit.
God's not a respecter of persons, and I doubt he's much of a capitalist, either. Each life, whatever its age, gender, occupation, even religion, is of incalculable value. But if, like Georg Cantor, we decide to compare infinities, I think that the Iraqis infinity of pain is greater than ours. Congratulations. If infliction of pain is the criterion of victory, then we won.
But why'd it happen at all?
There's no use in going over the same old ground. We were duped, for reasons that no one even remembers. The original objectives of the war—a putative link between Iraq and al-Qaeda that not even the CIA believed in, and weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be Saddam's nonexistent bluff to avert Saudi or Iranian invasions—are forgotten, and were never achieved. Once we found out the word "victory" was meaningless, we set our sights on refusing to lose—no more Vietnams!—and have managed to withdraw (mostly) on our own terms, with an uncertain pseudo-peace. Woodrow Wilson would be proud.
Suppose that in some warehouse somewhere outside Baghdad, the US Army discovered some chemical weapons. Suppose that in one of Saddam's palaces, the Marines found proof that Saddam helped Al Quaeda plan 9/11.
ReplyDeleteWould the war have been any less of a disaster? Would fewer Iraqis have been killed? Would there be fewer than 5 million Iraqi refugees?
Or suppose the USS Maddox had come under fire in the Gulf of Tonkin. Would there have been any less of a bloodbath in Vietnam?
Did people protest the Vietnam War because "we were duped" about the Gulf of Tonkin?
You're right, there is no use going over that ground again. We ought to recognize that these wars don't happen by accident, by mistake. The official lie must be understood as a necessary element to militarism. It allows the wars to be, at worst, only tragic but never criminal.