Iraq: Admit Failure

There were many reasons for going to war that made sense to a lot of people back in 2003. We were a nation gripped by fear and we were being guided by a president and administration that still held the confidence of much of the American public. But five years, billions of dollars, and thousands of lives later, we must admit something that America has never been good at: We made a mistake.

Let me start by saying that I have been adamantly opposed to the war from the very beginning, but I can understand why some people believed that it was the right thing to do. As laid out by the Bush Administration, going to war with Iraq seemed like a rational and, dare I say, responsible thing to do. They showed us satellite images of the bunkers where the weapons of mass destruction were being stored. High ranking officials assured us that Saddam Hussein was a cohort of Osama bin Laden. We felt pity for the Iraqi people who were being brutalized by their tyrannical leader. Still riding the wave of goodwill that he garnered after Sept. 11, President Bush seemed like a sure, confident, and competent leader.

But there were no WMDs. And there has never been proof that Hussein had any real connection with bin Laden. For those of us who don't believe in blindly trusting those who have been elected to serve and lead us, it is now glaringly clear that this country was led into a war under false pretenses. Our emotions were manipulated at a strategic time by powerful men who knew exactly what they were doing. We aren't in Iraq right now to stop terrorism or free the oppressed or ensure world peace. We are there protecting our oil, trying to keep this region of the world that we are grossly over-dependent on under our thumb.

What has been the cost of this involvement? More than 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed and 30,000 have been wounded, many gravely and permanently. As for the people we were "liberating," a recent joint American/Iraqi survey put the number of Iraqi civilians killed since 2003 around a staggering 650,000 ("Study: War blamed for 655,000 deaths"). How is life better for these "casualties of war"?

Less important than the loss of human life, but still extremely troubling, is the financial toll. Financial analysts are now predicting that the cost could top $1 trillion by the time the war is resolved. While that is just an estimate, the bill is growing by a concrete $200 million per day ("Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion"). Who is going to foot that tab? Not George Bush. It's going to be future generations of tax payers, who are going to have to contribute a substantial portion of their hard earned wages towards paying for a war that accomplished absolutely nothing.

Even though a solution isn't clear (how could it be with this magnitude of a mess?), the first step is admitting that we made a mistake. We failed. Admit that we shouldn't have gone there because we did so for the wrong reasons. For those of us who disagreed with the war from the beginning, that's a pretty easy statement to make. For people who truly believed that going to war in Iraq was the right thing to do, it's probably not so easy. But the evidence speaks for itself and it's time for this country as a whole to take responsibility for its actions. Start dealing with this situation from the standpoint of correcting our mistakes and getting out somewhat intact, rather than forging ahead still foolishly and irrationally believing that we can come out on top.

But there will always be people who believe that the president knows best and that it's our jobs as citizens to follow along. So I guess if President Bush's idea of a successful military campaign is one that kills nearly a three-quarters of a million civilians, costs American taxpayers thousands of billions of dollars, destabilizes a whole region, and causes an entire generation to lose faith in its government, then congratulations, "Mission Accomplished."

For more information on the Iraq War, past and present, visit CNN's War in Iraq Archive.