After Five Years in Iraq

Time for honest discussion

of troops' exit long overdue

Last Wednesday, March 19, was the fifth anniversary of the current American war in Iraq. It is hard to believe it was five years ago when Americans watched on live television as night skies over Baghdad lit up in a hail of bombing and missile explosions, the opening salvos by U.S. forces in an effort to depose the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein.
Vice President Dick Cheney assured Americans just days before the war that combat operations in Iraq would take "weeks rather than months," and certainly not five years. Since then, both human and monetary costs of this war have become staggering.
Combat operations intensified rather than eased as continuing difficulties plagued our forces.
Because it seems no one who controls American policy has an idea what we are trying to achieve with this war, there is no end in sight.
As of Sunday, four thousand American soldiers have died in Iraq. Over 30,000 have suffered injury.
One who gave up everything for us was young Army Sergeant David S. Collins of Jasper, who died in a roadside bomb attack in April 2006.
The price tag of this war (on borrowed money ultimately to be paid off by American taxpayers) will exceed one trillion dollars. That’s enough to fund over 27,000 public school systems the size of Pickens County's.
The war began with an invasion force of 100,000 U.S. troops. Five years later, there are 158,000 American warriors in Iraq, even with Saddam Hussein dead and his tyrannical regime ousted from power. Dozens of foreign countries initially contributed troops to the endeavor. Today the United States goes it alone.
Early on, we were led to believe the Iraqi people would be dancing in the streets by now. However, that is not the case, as up to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in sectarian violence that has raged since the beginning of the war, and this despite our best efforts to quell long-boiling tensions among ancient Mesopotamia's ethnic groups.
Adding to our grief, the Iraqi government, its security forces and public services remain dismally dysfunctional. Still today, many Iraqis have no clean drinking water. Electricity is in short supply even in Baghdad, the capital city. In some neighborhoods, sewage overflows into the streets, and children are dying of disease.
True, a dictator has been crushed. And the Iraqi people have participated in elections they were promised. But they have not received the order, security and comfort they expected their new government to provide. The "surge" of several thousand extra American troops has in fact lessened ethnic violence and weakened the insurgency. Both were raging less than a year ago. Unfortunately, violence is back on the rise since January.
It has been shown repeatedly that stated reasons before the war for the American invasion of Iraq––hidden weapons of mass destruction; Iraqi ties with al Qaeda terrorists who attacked us on September 11, 2001––were both completely false and were known to be false even before this war began.
Over sixty percent of Americans now support a full withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Who can say if that’s a good idea or not, as none of our "leaders" seem to want to engage in an honest discussion about why we are still there, how we are going to achieve our goals, and when we can fully protect American lives by getting out of there.
Those who have suffered the brunt of American policies, our defenders at the front and the Iraqi people, deserve such a discussion. They would probably appreciate at least an attempt at a solution.