Opinion: Drawing the Right Lessons From Iraq

(March 19) -- Saturday marks the seventh anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- and finally the news out of that once seemingly hopeless nation seems to be hopeful. Recent parliamentary elections were relatively peaceful with heavy turnout. Even once-reluctant Sunni voters came out in droves. U.S. troop levels have slipped below 100,000, and there is little sign that the American military withdrawal will be delayed.

Many both inside and outside government argue that the surge of 2007 -- combined with the switch to a more focused counterinsurgency strategy -- stabilized Iraq and that credit is due President George W. Bush for this critical shift in tactics. As time goes by, there is even reason to believe that Iraq may turn out to be a stable and peaceful country, vindicating for some the U.S. decision to go to war in 2003 and increase America's military commitment in 2007.

Don't believe it.

For all the recent good news, nothing could be more dangerous than for policymakers to draw the lesson from the U.S. war in Iraq that the ends somehow justify the means. After well over a trillion dollars in direct and indirect costs to the United States, resources and energy diverted from more pressing foreign policy challenges, the reputational and strategic damage to the U.S., and above all the loss of more than 4,300 American lives (as well as the approximately 100,000 Iraqi lives lost and millions others disrupted), the proper lesson from the Iraq war is that the United States never should have chosen to fight it in the first place.

Opposing View: Iraq War Bearing Fruit

Instead, the focus today is on whether there was a "better way" for the United States to invade, occupy and stabilize Iraq. Indeed, military officials are now seeking to replicate the supposed "success" of Iraq by transferring the same tactical approach to the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

Two important correctives must be offered to this narrative. First, while the 2007 U.S. troop surge in Iraq likely helped to tip the war in a positive direction, it was by no means decisive. Instead, a confluence of events (the petering out of sectarian violence and the growing separation of Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad; the initial decision by Sunni tribes and insurgents in Anbar province to turn against al-Qaida; and a cease fire declared by the Mahdi army) were as important, if not more, in turning the tide. By failing to recognize these dynamics, the self-congratulatory nature of the surge narrative denies any credit to the Iraqi people themselves.

Even more important, the focus for policy-makers shouldn't be what America got right after digging itself out of a hole, but how the U.S. found itself in such a big hole in the first place.

Focusing mainly on military tactics masks far more important conclusions about the strategic flaws, faulty assumptions and dubious judgments that underpinned the pre-war planning for Iraq.

What should instead be clear from the Iraq war is that the United States is ill-equipped to do effective and long-term nation-building; that military incursions not limited or combined with a clear and realistic political objective have a tendency to take on a life of their own; and that the unintended consequences of war must never be far from the minds of policymakers.

It seems almost impossible to believe after the strategic disaster of Iraq that military leaders would want to loosen the restraints on the use of military force. Yet, how quickly we seem to forget. Consider the words of Joint Chiefs of Staff head Adm. Mike Mullen in a recent speech on the use of force:

"We must not look upon the use of military forces only as a last resort, but as potentially the best, first option when combined with other instruments of national and international power," he said. "We must not try to use force only in an overwhelming capacity, but in the proper capacity, and in a precise and principled manner."

But if the Iraq war provides a lesson in the use of power, it is that the use of force must remain the absolute last resort. No matter how much we come to believe that military power can solve America's foreign policy challenges, the reality has generally been the opposite.

The words of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the civilian overseer of another doomed U.S. military intervention, are particularly relevant here. "War is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily," McNamara said.

On the seventh anniversary of the war in Iraq, these words seem even more appropriate than ever.