Poll Position: Was the war in Iraq worthwhile?
Yesterday, more than eight and a half years after it began, our war in Iraq officially ended. The debate about the war’s merit may rage for the rest of our lives.
Was the war in Iraq worthwhile?
- No (389 Votes)
- It's too soon to say (58 Votes)
- Yes (45 Votes)
Total Voters: 492
Loading ...You know the costs well: the loss of almost 4,500 American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqis in the face of a brutal insurgency; thousands upon thousands more who were wounded; $800 billion spent; bitter divides at home and some chilled relations abroad.
But the gains are significant, too: the overthrow of the tyrannical Saddam Hussein and the meting of justice by Iraqis; the birth of a functioning, if messy (and durable, one hopes) democracy in the heart of the Middle East; a union of disparate ethnicities once thought to be irreconcilable to one another.
The costs certainly are permanent. Only time will tell whether the gains are lasting, as well.
As things stand today, however, do you believe the war in Iraq was worthwhile? That’s this week’s Poll Position question. Answer in the nearby poll and in the comments thread below.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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202 comments Add your comment
anonymous
December 16th, 2011
5:34 am
It is not justified given the facts.
Saddam is just like any other dictators. So many of them around the world and why this particular person and country/
In any case, Iraq was better than now.
The world will not be a better place if the rest of the world works and fights for Israel alone. Time for us to have our own soverign and leave others at peace.
Will
December 16th, 2011
5:39 am
The war wasn’t worth it in my book. The Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11. They didn’t send the planes. They weren’t al Qaida. Saddam Hussein might have been a tyrant, an evil man, bad for the region. But…he didn’t send the terrorists associated with 9/11.
9/11 was used as a pretext to launch a war against Iraq. As an American that believes we should defend ourselves if attacked…I feel very strongly that since we weren’t attacked by Iraq…well then, gosh. What the hell were we fighting there for? And don’t tell me “weapons of mass destruction.”
Will
December 16th, 2011
5:48 am
Actually, can you imagine the medical research and potential breakthroughs that could have occurred over those 8 years if 144 billion dollars (the cost of one year of war in Iraq according to 2008 figures) was given to the National Institute of Health (NIH) instead?
DeborahinAthens
December 16th, 2011
6:19 am
NO,NO,NO! Dubya the Dumb, Cheney, the puppet master, and their cadre of idiots attacked a sovereign nation, ruled by a secular leader for reasons known only in their black hearts. I can speculate and it is ugly. The BS about liberating the Iraqi people is just that–BS. Ask the people of Iraq who have lost over 100,000 of their family and friends if it was worth it. We can try to tell ourselves it was a “good” war (what a crock) to salve our conscious, but the fact that they are burning American flags as we leave after almost nine years of misery and destruction tell the true story. Then we have dingbats like McCain saying we should leave soldiers behind to “protect” the people of Iraq from insurgents. This is more BS. There will NEVER be a good time to pull out because the inter-tribal murder and mayhem will always resume whether we leave today or a hundred years from today. But Dubya the Dumb will never take responsibily for his actions. Republicans are idiots. If we let them regain power we will be at war with Iran witin a year of the elections. War is good for business.
Ayn Rant
December 16th, 2011
6:20 am
The war on Iraq was an elementary strategic blunder! The US toppled Sunni-led Iraq, a bulwark against the expansion of Iranian influence in the Arabian Peninsula, and created Shiite-dominated Iraq, a conduit for Iranian arms and subversion to destabilize the Arab oil-producing countries.
So, here’s what we can expect for the next 40 years or so: in Iraq, a continuing three-way civil war between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds; in the Arab countries to the south, continuing bloody civil strife between the Sunni majorities and the Iran-supported Shiite minorities. Overall, disruption to the Middle East oil supply, and destabilization of the countries surrounding Israel.
After all the lies about weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi complicity in the 9/11 attacks, an embarrassingly stupid declaration of “mission accomplished”, and the squandering of 4500 American lives and a trillion dollars, American military forces are leaving behind a “democratic” Iraq and a regional mess.
Iran is the victor in the war on Iraq!
Karl Marx
December 16th, 2011
6:50 am
No it wasn’t worth it. It was GW’s ego that got us into it who is almost as bad a president as Carter. Iraq will be in civil war influenced by Iran within 2 years. You cannot instill our values by doing it for them no more than anyone could have done it for us in 1776. Just think where would we be if France had fought the Revolutionary War for us. The Iraqi people should have found a way to get rid of Saddam if that is what they wanted. Stupid move by a stupid president
Aquagirl
December 16th, 2011
7:10 am
When you start a war over an admitted mistake it’s probably not going to turn out well.
Duh.
@@
December 16th, 2011
7:30 am
Only those who fought are entitled to an opinion on that topic.
WASHINGTON — One in three U.S. veterans of the post-9/11 military believes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting.
The survey also showed that post-9/11 veterans are more likely than Americans as a whole to call themselves Republicans and to disapprove of President Obama’s performance as commander in chief. They also are more likely than earlier generations of veterans to have no religious affiliation.
The poll results presented by the Pew Research Center portray post-9/11 veterans as proud of their work, scarred by warfare and convinced that the American public has little understanding of the problems that wartime service has created for military members and their families.
I support them and THEIR opinions.
@@
December 16th, 2011
7:31 am
Ah poo! All blue.
HDB
December 16th, 2011
7:35 am
Definitely waqs’t worth it!! We toppled a dictator that WE put in place and supported for years because of a simplistic motive — REVENGE — rather than the national interest!! Shows what happens when you rule by EMOTION rather than LOGIC!!
Aquagirl
December 16th, 2011
7:36 am
All blue.
That’s what you get for posting before adequate coffee intake.
Road Scholar
December 16th, 2011
7:55 am
“.. the loss of almost 4,500 American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqis in the face of a brutal insurgency; thousands upon thousands more who were wounded..”
Er Kyle, the estimates of dead Iraqis is 100,000 and the number of US wounded is estimated at 30,000. I have not seen an estimate of Iraqi wounded, but with 100,000 dead I suspect it is well over 100,000. Now many of their dead and wounded were caused by the religeous and tribal strife of the sunnis, shias and kurds, but they did occur during the war. You seemed to underplay the totals with the language you used.
Was it worth it…time will tell. Yes they got “freedom” but what will they do with it?
Jacky Jack
December 16th, 2011
7:56 am
Worth it to whom? If you’re asking was it worth it to defense contractors, big oil, etc., just check their accounts receivable the past 8 1/2 years. If you’re asking if it was worth it to the 4500 killed and 32,000 wounded and their familes, the answer is hell no! But this is what you get when you elect gutless politicians from either side of the aisle. And unfortunately, that’s all we elect. I will never vote for an incumbent until term limits are imposed. So I will NEVER vote for an incumbent! JVH
Road Scholar
December 16th, 2011
8:02 am
Hopefully, the next war (heaven forbid) will be on budget and a special tax set up to pay for it. Other than gratitude, how has the American people contibuted to this effort? I know our tax money covered the bill, but how much work here at home was delayed or cancelled as a result of diverting money to Iraq?
Aquagirl
December 16th, 2011
8:09 am
how much work here at home was delayed or cancelled
Nothing that I know of, we put the entire war on a credit card. We’ll be finding out over the next few decades.
That’s one of the legacies of this war, no one but the all-volunteer military made any type of sacrifice unless you count the .04 seconds it takes to slap a yellow ribbon on your car.
Chuck Doberman
December 16th, 2011
8:10 am
“The war on Iraq was an elementary strategic blunder! The US toppled Sunni-led Iraq, a bulwark against the expansion of Iranian influence in the Arabian Peninsula, and created Shiite-dominated Iraq, a conduit for Iranian arms and subversion to destabilize the Arab oil-producing countries.”
Sad but true
HadIt
December 16th, 2011
8:19 am
This war was a lie from the beginning. There were no weapons of mass destruction. This war was to avenge Saddam’s murder plot against George Bush, Sr.. I loved my father very much, too. And if someone tried to kill him I would be furious. But I would not sent 4500 of my countrymen to their deaths to get even. But then I’m not American royalty like the Bush family.
St Simons - we're on Island time
December 16th, 2011
8:31 am
worth it? Why don’t you ask those 9,000 parents and 6,000 children
nelson
December 16th, 2011
8:31 am
They[U.S.] should have softened Bagdad up with artillery ANd air strikes for [24- 7] like Iwo Jima Guadecanal and the gone in with Marines and assume that all were enemies or atleast giving aid and comfort to the enemy and a few weeks[all over] rATHER THAN 10years.
Concentrating on rebuilding infrastruture while our own is in need of major repair. I really do not see the trillion dollar expenditure in Iraq being worth it, or for the whole rest of the middle east.
There comes a time when we have to face the fact that these people are waging a holyn war with us as their target and all the time they are talking out both sides of their mouth telling the U.S. that they are our friends. Now Iran has one of our most sophisticated aircraft. Not good.
JDW
December 16th, 2011
8:33 am
NO!
JDW
December 16th, 2011
8:38 am
@@…”Only those who fought are entitled to an opinion on that topic.”
Incorrect and shortsighted. Service people, like anyone else will be hesitant to classify the very thing that they have spent 8 years sweating, bleeding and dying for as “not worth it”.
The people that can best assess? The families of those that died or were injured get a special vote and those that paid for this exercise in futility the rest…the American Taxpayer.
td
December 16th, 2011
8:39 am
I see the leftest view is well represented so far on this blog. Let us look at the tale of the tape and see if the war was worth it.
1: 30 million people are now free and have the right to vote for their own form of government.
2: The Kurds are no longer being attacked by weapons of mass destruction.
3: 15 million Islamic women can now vote, go to school and have other freedoms that the vast majority of Islamic women do not have.
4: The 5th largest military in the world has been totally destroyed.
5: The free flow of the driving force of our economy (oil) is not being threatened by a mad man.
6: Our only friend in the region is less threatened today.
7: There is one less place in the world that the terrorist can be funded and trained from.
carlosgvv
December 16th, 2011
8:40 am
For all practical purposes, the War in Iraq was a declared one. We went into Iraq with the intent to topple the existing Govt. and install one more suited to our needs. Iraq was no threat to us so this was a war of pure agression fueled by political dogma and politics. The only real winner is The Military-Industrial-Complex.
JDW
December 16th, 2011
8:41 am
@@@…BTW you sort of missed the salient point in your own link…
“Among veterans, 44 percent said Iraq was worth it. That compares with 36 percent in the poll of civilians.
Cosby
December 16th, 2011
8:41 am
Whio knows…The US has forgotten how to fight a war anyway …not since WWII have we actually faught but played police action – Korea – nothing accompolished…viet Nam — nothing accompolished….Iraq, Afganistan..still in review but could it be the same as the others…next time we send troops we better take the notion to fight and take no prisoners or not send the troops in the first place.
Don
December 16th, 2011
8:43 am
I believe that the nation building in Iraq had a lot to do with the Arab Spring. The modernization of the one of the most backward regions on earth has begun – and in the end, it will be mostly for the good.
saywhat?
December 16th, 2011
8:44 am
The Iraq war was the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States, bar none. Despite all his other disastrous decisions, the Iraq war alone is enough to cement W in place as the worst president ever.It will likely only be topped if one of the current crop of Republican candidates somehow wins the presidency
Finn McCool
December 16th, 2011
8:47 am
tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians? Are you serious? Multiply that by 10 and you might get close. Just consider the impact on civilians alone and comprehend all the families utterly destroyed:
-Grandparents who lost all their infant grand children
-Cousins who are cousinless.
-Children with no parents, maybe no grandparents
-People with missing limbs, or blind, or what have you
What did we get out of this whole mess? What did those civilians get out of this whole mess? And some want to believe that we created good will towards America and Americans? Wake up – we jsut spent 10 years creating future terrorists.
td
December 16th, 2011
8:48 am
saywhat?
December 16th, 2011
8:44 am
Really? Can you even attempt to back up your accusation with any intellectual thought and prove your argument?
td
December 16th, 2011
8:51 am
Finn McCool
December 16th, 2011
8:47 am
tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians? Are you serious? Multiply that by 10 and you might get close. Just consider the impact on civilians alone and comprehend all the families utterly destroyed
How many Iraqi citizens did the regime kill every year? Why do we not ask the Iraqi people if they are in a better place today then 9 years ago?
Voice of Reason
December 16th, 2011
8:52 am
Waste of time, money, and good American lives. The whole “war on terror” should have been handled by intelligence agencies and special forces. I can almost buy the initial push into Afghanistan, but we didn’t need to be nation building. Iraq was a total waste.
Misty Fyed
December 16th, 2011
8:56 am
Leftist view? There is nothing left leaning about me and I say the war was a poor decision.
We attacked a sovereign nation for no reason other than we didn’t like them. We installed a democratic form of gov’t that they didn’t ask for and weren’t willing to fight for. Now we are leaving with billions in debt, thousands of our own dead, tens of thousands wounded and for what. We weren’t bound by a treaty. Iraq wasn’t invading Israel.
Yes we won but the victory does not justify the cost.
Finn McCool
December 16th, 2011
9:01 am
How many Iraqi citizens did the regime kill every year?
so, instead of those civilians losing their families to Iraqi bombs, they lose them to American bombs. That puts them in a better place? Their families are still dead.
Rickster
December 16th, 2011
9:02 am
What people forget, is that there was no surrender after Gulf War I – there was a cease-fire. Allied forces agreed to halt offensive operations if Saddam agreed to certain conditions. He failed to honor those conditions – so we had all the reason we needed to resume offensive operations (not to start a second war.)
It wasn’t because 43 was getting back at Sadda for trying to kill his daddy. Saddam had used WMDs against his own people. He had tried to exterminate the Kurds in the south. He failed to abide by the terms of the cease-fire. AND – despite the lack of coverage by the mainstream media – Britain’s intelligence DID confirm that Saddam tried to buy the uranium he needed to build a nuclear weapon.
That was all the justification we needed.
It wasn’t because 43 was getting back at Sadda
JF McNamara
December 16th, 2011
9:03 am
I guess all the people who voted “Yes” work for Lockheed, Halliburton or got an excessive military allowance.
@@
December 16th, 2011
9:12 am
JDW:
Kyle asked for opinions…I gave mine.
Notice how I didn’t question yours? I acknowledged ALL of their opinions…2 out of three recognized its worthiness. One out of three did not. You saw only the one.
I’m off for an in-home evaluation.
Road Scholar
December 16th, 2011
9:13 am
Aqua: By spending any money on the war, we did not increase, or even maintain the spending levels on Transportation. This added to the increase in difficient bridges, added congestion and air quality degredation, the lack of additional air safety for new traffic control systems, etc. Yes some of the war’s costs were on the credit card/deficit increase, but the quality of our transportation system has gone down.
I agree with the rest of your post. Convenient patriotism by many! Don’t get me wrong, many contributed to our trops welfare, but not to the scale we should have.
Tom
December 16th, 2011
9:16 am
td is exactly right. We brought freedom to Iraq: Children are now free to be blown up in the street on their way to school. Women are free to be compelled to wear chador when in public. Iraqi Christians and Jews are free to be persecuted. Iran is free to do as it likes with its former-enemy neighbor. Yes, td, sweet, sweet freedom!
quick work break
December 16th, 2011
9:22 am
It’s impossible to say if the “Arab Spring” was at all influenced by a nascent Iraq democracy. But my guess is, given the size of the opposition parties that existed in Iraq, they probably would have made their own changes, without such a loss of Iraqi and American lives and treasury. That’s hindsight, of course. But the initial blunders and misinformation are not forgivable.
zeke
December 16th, 2011
9:22 am
td, with a 10 year war, did you serve or do anything productive that supported the troops? or just defend the mindless leadership that took us to war in iraq needlessly. we need a strong national defense, not offense. as eisenhower warned the military industrial complex needs to be watched carefully. and folks like the cheneys need to be shunned.
Ben
December 16th, 2011
9:25 am
Short answer, no. American loss of life simply isn’t acceptable when most people can’t give a simple answer as to why we went to war in the first place.
The idea that it may ultimately lead to the spread of democracy in the Middle East is a shameful reason to tell a mother her son is dead from a IED. Those are goals of rich men and kings.
This was a war for money and power. Also the reason nothing will change over there. “Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be King, and the King ain’t satisfied ’til he rules everything”.
This will be a dark period in American history.
the red herring
December 16th, 2011
9:25 am
the war began on misinformation. even democrats in congress as well as many other countries believed that saddam had weapons of mass destruction. we have given the iraqi people a chance at democracy and freedom. if this takes hold and flourishes in the region it may have been worthwhile as it could possibly lead to other countries in the region becoming less dictatorial. only time will tell on that and i’m not sure the Iraqis are strong enough to stand up to pressures from Iran, etc. So my vote is that it’s still too early to tell. I do believe that Iraq should have been required to pay at least a portion of our military expense of being there either with oil or proceeds from oil. I only wish we had finished the job when we ran Iraq out of Kuwait. I believe it would have been much less expensive and time consuming back then.
MarkV
December 16th, 2011
9:33 am
All those arguments based on the gains also raise the inevitable question. If our intervention in Iraq, in spite of the costs, were so worthwhile, why don’t we do it everywhere else where there is a similar situation?
GUNGA DIN
December 16th, 2011
9:38 am
the US has got to learn to keep our nose out of other countries. we are hated around the world because we interfere with the lives. we can not continue to waste American lives and tax dollars to support a world police. let the ragheads, turban heads and slant eyes kill each other as they have for thousands of years and will continue to do so.
D-STORM VET
December 16th, 2011
9:51 am
No the war wasn’t worth it! We had a war because Saddam threatened daddy Bush,so baby Bush wanted to make sure he got Saddam. The war was all about getting revenge for his daddy. Someone need to burn those damn Bushes.
Get Real
December 16th, 2011
9:53 am
The war didn’t cost us 800 billion because Cheney told us the Iraq oil would pay for it, you silly people. And WMD? Iraq doesn’t have any now, never mind they didn’t have any BEFORE. AQ in Iraq? They certainly aren’t there now, but then, they weren’t there before because Saddam hated AQ and kept them out of Iraq. One of the bloggers on here said the fifth largest military in the world was defeated. They didn’t have a plane that could fly in Iraq so by what measure was it the fifth largest? I would say the true measure of “was it worth it” would be what did we get out of it? So, what DID we get out of it?
Jack
December 16th, 2011
10:01 am
Better to have bombed them back into the 12th century. No foot soldiers.
Quagmire - Herman Cain's WingMan
December 16th, 2011
10:03 am
Ben – Great Post
This War was about Rich men talking and young men and women dying. This war went from WMD’s that were never found to Operation Freedom. The war started as a lie, justified as a lie, and ended with a little or no sense of closesure for either side. Proud of our Men and Women of the US Military. Ashamed of some of the politicians that caused it for Greed and nothing else
Paul Kennedy
December 16th, 2011
10:07 am
The actions of a fading empire. Typical.
southpaw
December 16th, 2011
10:08 am
McCool @9:01
What are the odds of Iraqi citizens being killed by their government now, as compared to 9-10 years ago?