Back in 2002–an unbelievable 10 years ago–many early bloggers advocated going to Iraq and taking out Saddam Hussein by force. Then, rather than simply killing him and leaving, we should attempt to help the people there form a democratic form of government to represent them instead of a fascist tyrant. We did so for myriad reasons. Not for the crass lie that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, which no one ever claimed. 9/11 was, on the other hand, part of the argument because we believed that turning a blind eye to tryants in the Middle East helped set up conditions that fostered terrorism and gave terrorists funding and places to hide–and that without shaking the entire region up and making it clear that there was a cost to that, we’d just see more of it. That was one component of many of our arguments, although it was far from our only argument.
Indeed, I remember ruefully how whenever we would advance another argument, we would be accused of “changing stories,” rather than what we were actually doing: noting that there were multiple good reasons for action.
In any case, almost all the specific arguments we made wound up coming out of the President’s mouth, and almost all of them wound up in the Authorization for Use of Military Force that was debated and passed by overwhelming bipartisan majority by Congress.
So far as I’m concerned every one of the reasons listed in that authorization was valid at the time it was signed, and almost all of them remained valid throughout. It’s still worth reading as an important historical document for anyone who wants to know what those reasons were, or has somehow forgotten them. Or who, in anti-war outrage, never bothered to read or listen to them.
We were known as the “warbloggers.” Some of us actually were in the military and served over there. Some even blogged right from the battle lines. Some of us stayed on the home front and tried our best to support it here. Those first few years were our time in the sun, though that faded long ago, especially once it became obvious that Barack Obama was not going to do some damn fool thing and just yank us out of there, and as it became obvious that “the Surge”–which the naysayers endlessly said would fail and make things worse–had succeeded spectacularly.
We watched as it was endlessly predicted that we’d never have enough troops, never be able to recruit enough replacements, that people contemplating service would refuse because they knew they’d be sent off to a losing effort. Those who said this were wrong; the military was stressed, but we always had enough people to get a tough job done, and we got it done.
We also watched as some who came home from Iraq and expressed regrets and doubts were played up in the media, while those who came back and said they never regretted it didn’t seem to get so much attention.
Over the years, some of us in retrospect changed our minds ourselves and thought the whole thing was a mistake. But I think most of us never did. Democrat, Republican, independent, we didn’t care: we believed this was a noble cause that had to be fought, and if some of us changed our minds, well, a lot of us didn’t. Whichever side you came down on in the end, I’m glad for that time of camaraderie we shared, and the good things we did together to try to help the troops.
I am still proud to have supported the effort. If I could have signed up to serve, I would have. Being stuck at home, I did everything I could here, both as a volunteer to help charity efforts (including co-founding one) and to do my best to support and defend the effort politically so we would not do something foolish and leave before we had done what we needed to do. In fact, I did so much to defend it, it contributed to some major health and personal problems I went through–not that it’s anything like actually serving, it was hard on me and my family. Yet I don’t regret it, for it was important work. At least one of my “on the home front” comrades died, almost certainly in part due to the stress of the charity work we did together to support the effort. (Plunge, you are missed.)
In remembrance of something we used to do semi-regularly here on Dean’s World, and to underscore the fact that I have no regrets, I will note what our losses look like, in final summation:
President Obama, in his latest State of the Union address, said that over 1,000,000 Americans served in the conflict in Iraq. A conflict that is now officially over. I am prepared to accept that number at face value and to express my gratitude to every single person who served, in any capacity.
For a long time we argued on this blog that war creates casualties and that is never good but it is a necessary consequence to a noble cause–and this was a noble cause. Often, I and others would note in the face of endless stories and anti-war arguments about “mounting casualties” and comparisons to Viet Nam that no, casualties were quite often not mounting at all. Indeed, casualties were often amazingly small and could only be described as “mounting” by playing funny with the numbers to make it look like we were failing. If you simply count every casualty as a “mount” then in every war casualties always mount no matter how good or bad things are going, because people do get killed; the honest question is whether the number getting killed is high or low, diminishing or increasing, sustainable or unsustainable. That may be messy, it may seem cold, but it is reality. And if you think war is always bad or never justified and therefore every loss is unjustified, well, we just don’t have much to discuss: we disagree, and I advise you never to volunteer for military service. But so far as I am concerned, lives given in a noble cause are never wasted.
In any case, according to icasualties.org, a total of 4,484 of those who served in Iraq died there. That figure including not just combat casualties but people who died of things like heart attacks, traffic accidents, diseases, etc. Still, if we accept that all those fatalities were as a result of the war, that means that if you served in Iraq, you had a 0.45% chance of dying there.
Less than 1/2 of 1%, in other words.
One thing history will note about this conflict is just how minimal the cost in American lives was. Those who predicted “another Vietnam” for years consistently claimed “casualties are mounting” and predicted an ever-escalating count of American bodies. Many of us said it would not happen, and while it may be crass to say “I told you so,” we were correct all along. It was never even close to that. Casualties were always low, going from a bit high in the beginning, to very low, to rising a bit as some things got out of hand (as they often do in a war), to a little lower, to somewhat higher again as we used a surge of troops (a surge that worked, by the way) to try to restore order, to slowly diminishing again until finally they petered out and we left–mission, this time, truly accomplished.
In war, soldiers die. Today that doesn’t happen to anyone who didn’t volunteer knowing full well that it might happen to them. They are adults, and they signed up knowing all that. They still sign up knowing that today. They have every right to be proud, and those who fell must be remembered, respected, and honored. But whatever else you might say, one thing that is stark: the loss of those lives was minimal compared to what was predicted by the doomsayers. And the result was removal of one of the worst fascist mass-murdering tyrants in the world. Those who took part in it should be proud. Now it is over and, while Iraq’s still got problems, it is demonstrably a better place than it was the day the first boots hit the ground. It is up to the Iraqi people to chart their own destiny from here. God’s blessings upon them.
And with that, I think, I will declare my “warblogging” career finished as well, and will cease to use the blogging category of “the war.” While there will be other wars in the future, and they’ll be blogged about, we’ll use another category for that, and leave the warblog entries distinct for posterity and whatever tiny slice of history they represent.
Thanks to all who served, or who helped, whatever your final stance. I will always believe you helped take out a monster and made the world a better place, setting the stage for reform in the entire region known as the Middle East. I salute you.
