In retrospect, it seems fair to say that unlike the war in Vietnam the war in Iraq has not tarnished the reputation of the American military. On the other hand it has not measurably elevated our country’s standing in the eyes of the world for strategic sagacity. It is unfortunate that we have ignored the wise advice of John Adams to resist the temptation to ‘go about the world in search of monsters to slay’.

After a decade of difficulties in Iraq the American public still have greater respect for the armed forces than they do for a host of other public institutions. The military have earned this regard not by exhibiting a perfect discipline or being particularly brilliant but by energetically responding to a multitude of extremely complex challenges. To their credit they have labored to address the gaps in their knowledge and have undergone a self-critique to improve their effectiveness and performance.

To say that the U.S. military (and the U.K.) were doctrinally and materially unprepared for the nature of the conflict in Iraq is no great revelation. The rather naïve and swaggering entry into that country was a symbolic precursor to miscalculation. Mistakes were made but the substance of these errors was largely the making of pig-headed civilians and high-ranking bureaucrats. The brush of history already assigns the ownership for the largest and most fundamental errors of the Iraqi War principally to the hands of Bush & Co. and their acolytes.

Col. Spain writes: “Americans will be debating for many years to come the wisdom of the political decision that took us to war with Iraq in March, 2003.” Perhaps he is right but I doubt it. The whole enterprise from its mendacious origination was reckless and the American public has pretty much concluded so.

Personally, from the beginning I felt the war in Iraq was so astoundingly stupid that it beggared belief. It amazes me still that a sophisticated country using reason and logic would allow itself to be deceived and thrust into a tar pit for the second time in thirty years.

However, with the ending of our major military commitment in Iraq this month I am still compelled to thank those in uniform particularly the fighting troops for volunteering to shoulder this unpleasant task. In the line of duty they risked life and limb and endured long separations from their families. This commitment to duty is a reflection on the strong character and the best traditions of our armed forces.

"If I ever conclude they died in vain, I hope it's not because yet another politician pulled us out of Iraq before we finished the job we were sent there to do."

So don't vote for Nouri al-Maliki again COL!

Don't worry there are not weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. You have finished the job you were sent there to do!

I hear the commander and sympathize with his feelings (lot of good that does, but, well . . .). I do however think we need to be careful with this term, "dying in vain." "Vanity" is an extreme condition, and while Ecclesiastes tells us that, ultimately,that's all there is, it's not really a judgment we should pass lightly regarding the lives of the fallen.

People do what they do for many reasons. Their self-respect. Their buddies. Their family honor. Where the specifics of the mission fall in that calculus is anyone's guess, and will vary as do the other concerns for each individual.

Is it really our role to pronounce a sacrificed life "in vain" because, in this case, Iraq isn't what we were hoping it would become when we went in in 2003? Maybe its our hopes that need some scrutiny.

"[W]ar has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end." George Kennan, September 2002

No one who hasn't fully appreciated that truth should ever order a war,fight in a war, or support a war.

Demanding that something as immense as the Iraq War conform to our expectations--no matter how admirable those intentions may be--is just asking too much. History doesn't work that way. It never has and never will.

Finally, a very minor quibble. This--"because yet another politician pulled us out of Iraq before we finished the job we were sent there to do"--is, I believe, misstated. We, the people, need to own up to this war in all its aspects, from its inception to our withdrawal. We're pulling out because there's no way Americans will agree to a SOFA that doesn't ensure our troops will never be tried in a foreign court. And the Iraqis won't agree to anything less (and a lot of them, not even that). Part of that's just Iraqi nationalism in all its dimensions, but part too is our conduct during the war. We should keep that in mind, next time.

Iraqis surely have concerns of their own. However, the numbers of deaths they suffered are several multiples of 13 I do believe. That said, it's not the good soul colonel who will have to have sleepless nights about those deaths. Which were in vain?

Their leadership, that we helped install, no longer wants us there - we are not being given a choice. We have left behind an arrogant officer corps whose subordinates have the look of fear on their faces. Some of the man in the street interviews find people who do not want us to go. They know how their police will act or not act when we are gone.

What we all should wonder is what are 16,000 members of the US Embassy going to be doing? What happens when we lose some of them? Surely these people are really there to keep an eye on Iran. One wonders why that has to be done from Iraq.

Meanwhile, we have turned them into a marketplace for American military hardware and American contract trainers. I guess that every sovereign nation needs a military and it will be interesting what Iraq does with theirs.

Sadr has told his followers that any vestige of American presence must be forced out of the country. Currently they are rocketing our "consulate" in Basra almost every day while we construct shelters over our construction trailers and living quarters. Please tell me that this is not a stupid idea.

I see this as "F Troop" holding Fort Apache.

Who could possibly disagree with the former colonel when he writes "I don't think we have achieved what we set out to achieve?" The original plan was to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and take them from Saddam Hussein's control. There were no weapons of mass destruction, as UN inspectors on the ground with total freedom to examine any part of the country they wanted to, had reported for years. It's true that the inspectors fled Iraq shortly before the 2003 invasion. The Bush administration's claim was that Mr Hussein had booted them out, but no, they said: they had fled the lethal force America was evidently planning to impose imminently on Iraq.

Mr Spain's present view seems to perpetuate the pre-invasion advice of general Colin Powell that if the Bush administration broke Iraq, the same administration would own it. My personal feeling is that if Iraq falls apart now the American military is departing -- the Spain prediction -- there's no need to start up another American invasion and occupation. Iraq is not broken pottery.

How well or ill America will in future be informed about how things went in Iraq to this point is perhaps indicated by the report from sweet-faced Ann Curry of NBC News Thursday morning that in the conflict to date, there had been 4500 American dead and 100 (yep, 100) dead Iraqis. 100,000, a companion smoothly corrected. Many would dispute that figure also as waaay too low.

. . . this moment, may I suggest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6cMQ6kBm0k ?

Sir,
Don't torture yourself. There is no answer to your question. That is the legacy of Iraq. You lost 13, but you brought the rest home. That's all you need to feel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6cv7JYlmX4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEHBAT7n6Go

Buddy Miller, "Worry Too Much . . ."

blaming failure on an early departure caused by unamed politicians is as useful for understanding this war as calling it "Bush's War," a beloved tactic of Democratic politicians who are culpable for the war's beginning.

While Pres Bush and the neocon advisors occupy a central role in the war's history, this war was made possible, including its various justifications, by the universalist, messianic, politically correct chimeras that plague the American world-view, and by a pre-existing corporate and governmental leviathan that needs conflict to thrive. Without these factors, Bush would have been rightly impeached before launching the war, and the war cheerleaders would be ineffectually lone voices crying in the wilderness. Not to mention there wouldn't even be a terror threat as US soldiers would have never been in the Arabian peninsula to begin with.

Unfortunately perhaps, the stabbed in the back meme might become an important part of one of the dominant narratives about this war. If so, it would indicate that we have, to use the old saw, forgotten nothing and learned nothing. The has held true for former wars, so why not this one?

Sir, a soldier never "dies in vain." He goes where his country asks him to go, he does the job his Officers and NCOs ask him to do, and that is the end of his responsibility. Any soldier that looks to a politician or Grand Strategy to validate his/her service will always be let down at the end of the day. War is War and you don't get to pick whether it was a worthy one or not. Did they serve with honor? Did they look out for the man to their left and right? Did they make the most out of the situation they were given? Yes, yes, and yes.

Forget about Iraq; it wasn't yours to lose or win anyways. Just make sure that the guys you did bring home have the support they need to move on with their lives, both in and out of service.

The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars by John Tirman.

(After reading the first Lancet study in 2004)

"Apart from the emotional impact of learning about the scale of killing, this magnitude explained, as no other account did, why the insurgency rose so quickly and ferociously in Iraq. Other explanations, notably, that Sunni Arabs were deprived of their status, seemed inadequate or at least incomplete. The killing or roughing up of Iraqis by US troops, putting many thousands in a Dickensian detention system, disrespecting social norms, and so on, had alienated many tens of thousands; and in the dense kinship networks of Iraq this sparked obligations of revenge and of defending one's community. And this would be significant only if the killing itself had been sizable. Heuristically, then, this appeared to be a significant finding: the US military was battling an insurgency that was to some important degree one of its own making, and the methods of battling it only intensified that very response of resistance."

I hope all those above who mentioned weapons of mass destruction were being sarcastic. There weren't any, there never were any, and that was the excuse for going, not the real reason. One of the CIA analysts who was working Al Qaeda prior to 9/11 said in an interview that they were ordered to find an Iraqi connection to 9/11, and wasted many hours trying to explain that there was none. http://www.spymuseum.org/sites/default/files/spycast/2011_09_09_CindyStorer.MP3

The Iraqi police aren't ready? No kidding. We spent years of wasted effort training policemen while never bothering to learn how the Iraqi justice system works (hint: police investigators aren't the ones who investigate crimes).

I agree that the president should be bound by the War Powers Act, but saying that if we can't meet our goals in 90 days, we can't meet them in 90 years is a simplification. World War II lasted more than 90 days, as do most things that are important. Telling the enemy that they can win by just laying low for the first 90 days is a bad policy. We shouldn't invade people without dire necessity, and then we should have realistic expectations, not make ourselves for all the cultural problems that were there before we showed up. The timeline is not the problem.

Saying that every war since WWII has ended badly is also hyperbole. Did we "lose" WWII because the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe, and the Asian colonies were returned to their European masters? Did we "lose" the Great War because all of Europe's political and ethnic problems remained unsolved? Did we "lose" the Revolution because the new nation was broke (for decades after the war) and it took us another 14 years to finalize our form of government?

The Korean war didn't end with North Korea being conquered, but the major shooting stopped, and South Korea is now a picture of economic strength and social progress (imperfect, but a long way from 1949). How is that not a "win"? Whose standard of "win" are you using, Genghis Khan's? We need reasonable expectations, not categorical sulking. Leave that to Fox News.

The Colonel's last sentence said this:

"I hope it's not because yet another politician pulled us out of Iraq before we finished the job we were sent there to do."

I can’t believe i am hearing this from a retired army Colonel, but then again I guess I can. What are we in the military to do, demand that our political leaders do exactly what we tell them and if we say we want to stay in Iraq forever then by gosh they damn well better listen and do what we say?

Come on, the Constitution does not work that way.

I hate to tell this to the good Colonel but war is not ultimately about armies winning them, especially when an army defines what victory is. The hard reality is that sometimes in limited wars of choice like Iraq (and Vietnam) there reaches a point where the wars are no long worth fighting. Yet some folks place the desire of an army to "win" in a certain way over the constitution. I find this very sad and troubling, and I too have pictures of dead Americans in my office who were killed in action under my command in Iraq.

Right on, Colonel. The Army serves the people, and not the other way around. I believe we saw an extreme example of how it should NOT work, in the case of the French and Algeria. DeGaulle decided the war in Algeria was no longer in the national interest, but the Army thought otherwise. At least the French Foreign Legion did, and for a number of years thereafter, France actually had a mutiny of part of its military.

When actions are based upon 'untruths' [does it matter if they were 'lies' or merely 'untrue'] then disasters results. Abu Ghraib, and Haditha and all the others put the lie to the assertion that "the war in Iraq has not tarnished the reputation of the American military". On the other hand, the reputation was a 'mixed-bag' before. But the 'mix' comes if you parse out who/what was being fought. The U.S. military when fighting opponents viewed as 'white' doesn't have such a bad record for atrocities. The same cannot be said for when it fights opponents viewed as 'non-white'. Consider the century long tolerance of "Jim Crow' and "Lynch law" and "club-law' domestically as evidence of the problem [militaries reflect the population they are drawn from]. But ask the Native Americans; the Filipinos; the Haitians; the Vietnamese; the Afghans; the Iraqis; and [perhaps soon] the Iranians. Considerations of race, you see, infect much of what the U.S.G. does. Consider this: Hussein was born in 1937. Making him, what, 66 in 2003? He was not long for this world anyway. There's no need to push someone who is falling.

"Americans will be debating for many years to come the wisdom of the political decision that took us to war with Iraq in March, 2003."

There is no debate among sane Americans. The entire thing was a huge waste of blood and treasure. The winners are the military industrial complex, American Generals who played war and "won" medals, the Likud, and Iran.

I await our Suez moment, (a strike on Iran or Pakistan). The Suez gambit was the final insane intervention of the British Empire.

Maybe I'm having a synaptic misfire, maybe not. When I read pieces like this and the "what was it all for" type of sentiment, my mind goes to the following:

Why in the hell do we constantly hear our senior officers (and CSM types) tell us that we've built, become, and served as the best military in the history of mankind - but now, all of a sudden, we have serious discipline problems, zero tolerance is how to reset the force, we don't know the basics, etc?

How in the wild, wild, wild world of sports do you mate those two statements up to one another?

How are you a great fighting force without discipline and knowing the basics? Seriously....how?

It drives me crazy that we are instantly a rag-tag group of misfits because the war is over. Really? When I ran my 2 miles in 16 minutes you said I was fit for combat. When I come back injured you tell me that now my 17 minute time makes me a turd. When I cuff my sleeves and hump my gear all over damnation I'm a warrior. When I do it in the motorpool I'm a douche bag.

If we truly are lacking discipline, if we don't know our basic tasks, after ten years of war - well who's at fault for that? Perhaps the real truth is that we really didn't do that well. We didn't enter the war at the level we should have been at, didn't perform at the level we should have, and are exiting at a level below where we should be. Again though, who's at fault for that? It damn sure isn't 2LT Smedlap or SGT Snuffy.

it's our senior leaders: they built the force that went to war, they lead the force during war, and they're bringing it home. If they have complaints about all of that, then they are the first ones that need to get purged.

We support and defend the Constitution, we bear true faith and allegiance to the same and we do this on behalf of the American people, at the orders of our civilian leadership. With that in mind, I don't often ask whether my cohorts' passing was in vain in regard to the political context.

While the rest of the nation debates the war in a historical context, when the service members ask about what the war was for, or what it resulted in, the wrong answer is so we could come home and find our force in danger of being hollowed, our capabilities eroded, and our morale diminished - not to mention our jobs in jeopardy. I find that it breaks the faith and trust we place in our leadership. As an institution, I can't see how that's appropriate or productive for our future efforts. Additionally, all it does is assure us that in the next war, more of my cohorts than necessary won't be making the trip back home alive.

I am no fan of how the Bush Administration handled this, but is everyone here so all-fired sure that the alternative to this war would have turned out better?

Does anyone here reflect on what Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq after a crumbled sanctions regime would have done in the region? The same guy that murdered on average 10,000 of his own people every year, that attempted genocide against the Marsh Arabs by diverting one of the great rivers of the world, the guy who invaded three of his neighbors in 12 years, and who used chemical weapons on another country and his own people?

I am humble enough to know that this is a hard call. I have studied this stuff for years and do it for a living and I find it hard to see the good of having left things as they were while at the same time mourn for things as they have turned out. But I think the cocksure attitude of many of you here on this topic is not becoming to the gravity of the issue. I really doubt that any of you can show me a plausible way that things would have been OK absent this regime change. Having to weigh two really crappy outcomes against each other does not make this a no-brainer. If you think otherwise you are just like George Tenet in asserting the "slam-dunk" without considering the possible repercussions of your polices.

I am no fan of how the Bush Administration handled this, but is everyone here so all-fired sure that the alternative to this war would have turned out better?

Does anyone here reflect on what Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq after a crumbled sanctions regime would have done in the region? The same guy that murdered on average 10,000 of his own people every year, that attempted genocide against the Marsh Arabs by diverting one of the great rivers of the world, the guy who invaded three of his neighbors in 12 years, and who used chemical weapons on another country and his own people?

I am humble enough to know that this is a hard call. I have studied this stuff for years and do it for a living and I find it hard to see the good of having left things as they were while at the same time mourn for things as they have turned out. But I think the cocksure attitude of many of you here on this topic is not becoming to the gravity of the issue. I really doubt that any of you can show me a plausible way that things would have been OK absent this regime change. Having to weigh two really crappy outcomes against each other does not make this a no-brainer. If you think otherwise you are just like George Tenet in asserting the "slam-dunk" without considering the possible repercussions of your polices.

Had a genuine surreal experience listening to some of Obama's remarks at Ft. Bragg.

What the president labels as a "success" is, in fact, as Tom called it in his defining book on the subject -- a Fiasco. As news coverage makes clear -- we are roundly and soundly hated in Iraq, save among the few who directly benefitted from the waste of live and dollars.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/world/middleeast/falluja-is-left-wounded-by-war.html

Nothing is more infuriating that the waste of the fine people Obama accurately describes as some of America's finest. 

Maybe a trillion dollars expended to create a vacuum for Iran's growing ambitions in the region. 

This was a day for sober consideration of the gigantic blunder we allowed ourselves to commit. Instead, we get self-congratulations of exceptionalism.  Obama's words are an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

For distortion and fake analogies, this is hard to beat:

Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries - from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced down fascism and communism, to you - men and women who fought for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar and delivered justice to those who attacked us on 9/11.

To compare the anti-colonial efforts of the American Revolutionary army  (BTW, we didn't "overthrow" the British Empire, it went on merrily without us) to the kind of over-reaching imperialism we've exercised since WWII is ridiculous, and to compare the illegal war of agression we conducted in Iraq with the struggle against fascism and communism smears history with multiple layer of distortions  and stupidity. 

We hung some guys at Neurenberg for starting an unprovoked war -- like the lie-based slaughter machine we launched against Iraq. That's the lesson from WWII.

Yes, an elite unit got bin Laden and good riddance. Has zero to do with Iraq.

Equally repellent is the fact that this president, for political expediency, has condemned US forces to stay in Afghanistan until the 2012 elections are safely over. If defeated, he can hand the mess to his successor. Let's remember, in Afghanistan, we're fighting an enemy invulnerably located in Pakistan, which controls our supply lines. And has nuclear weapons. 

Great leadership.

prerequisite for candidacy to national office should mirror USN's NWC course prerequisite and answer the question whether the Sicily campaign in the Athens vs. Sparta conflict was a good idea badly executed, or a bad idea. And, has anybody heard a rebuttal to date of Clausewitz"s observation "War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means", ? All those assumptions we keep making based on nearly zero intel just hurts my soul for the families who lost loved ones.

To echo the sentiments of my brothers and sisters, we fought for each other and because we were asked to.

What we accomplished is more than what anyone asked us to do and completely our of our sphere of responsibility- Our job is to fight and win this nation's wars, not nation build, not facilitate the creation of forms of government, nor hold human rights violators accountable but read below for surprising results of the time we spent in Iraq:

-Dictator of 30 years was removed AND HELD ACCOUNTABLE (How many counties in the the world are still begging that their government to be held accountable for conducting comparable acts).
-A country that lived with the type of government that mass murdered its own people and where the Army and Police could make people disappear was replaced with a representative democracy that includes segments of the population that were marginalized for 30 years. Police and Army that, since 2004, has been acting in the best interests of their people, getting killed along side US forces for their people's freedom against radicalized Jihadist
-For the first time in 30 years that marginalized population, and millions of other Muslims, were able to observe Ashura in Karbala and An Najaf (huge Shia Religious Holiday)
-Radicalized Jihadist were able to show the world openly the form of rule it offers- suicide bombs carried out by 14 year olds, torture houses, indiscriminate killing of women and children, and the suffocating noose of strict sharia law

Radicalized Jihadists are going to tell you that they won, that they made the US retreat and we aren't going to contradict them in our media. They are going to tell you we are "colonizers" and "imperialists" but what we have exported here is representative government and religious freedom. And because we live where we live you get to decide for yourself how you think/feel about it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/12/on-iraq-the-gop-is-out-of-touch-with-its-own-voters/250050/