On Saturday December 18th, 2011 the last remaining American combat troops crossed into Kuwait officially marking the end of Operation Enduring Freedom which after nine long years cost 4,487 American lives and cost taxpayers an estimated $800 billion dollars. Yet, no one is marching into the streets waving American flags celebrating a national victory the way we as a nation envisioned it in 2003. Because other than in terms of death count we did not win. The Iraq War will forever be a stain on the record of American Foreign Policy.
Unpopular from the beginning, President George W. Bush marched us foolishly unprepared into Iraq using the political capital he gained from the up swell of patriotism post 9/11. The original war in Afghanistan was favored because that is where we were told 9/11 was planned. Others may argue its blueprints could be found in the Project for the New American Century. My beliefs fall somewhere in between.
The assertion that Iraq was in any way involved in 9/11 quickly prove to be false and information about the “weapons of mass destruction” that where sure to be used against us unless we acted was faulty. The war from the beginning was a sham. It was a power grab for corporations looking to force their way into an oil heavy market. While the people of Iraq are now free to enjoy a Mocha Latte at Starbucks many are no more free than they were under Hussein and we as Americans are in no way free. The war went on and as a nation we polarized. As we grieved we had no time to complain about the personal liberties being stripped from us to save us from the impending terrorist attack. The attack never came but the war went on. Now it is over and the loss of young heroes from small towns fighting for their country seems to be for nothing. The region is not stabilized and we are not safer today than we were on March 19th, 2003.
The end of the war does signal some change in American politics however. In many ways the Bush Administration is now officially over, but in many other ways it will forever live on in the Patriot Act and the loss of personal liberty experienced throughout the decade of fear. In many ways the national nightmare of watching families standing bravely at military funerals accepting that their child was lost defending a country that did not have pure intentions is over.
The end of the war could also be the dawn of a new age of hope. America is no longer in a place to blindly show its military force because, well, its military might has been used up. In a world where might can no longer make right we will have to compromise for awhile. In a world where we are no longer the lone superpower we will be unable to continue our practices that lead to such an obvious imbalance of wealth. Change is coming, drastic change and its main catalyst may be the fact that we lost in Iraq.
Small town America, often the backdrop of support for the War in Iraq over the decade of fear is silently awaiting the arrival of the young boys who will now return aged men. For those who have been in Iraq for the long haul they will be returning to a country where the patriotic merriment has been replaced with polarizing disagreement about the future of our nation. They will return to find that there are few jobs for them. Their friends are now married and have children, unscarred from constant battle. They will have a hard transition to the new America. The post Bush America. Where absolutely nothing works out for anyone and the rich run free to do as they please.
We as a country are little prepared to move on. We have fallen into a trap of pettiness that causes such disenchantment with the broken political system that people don’t think that they have the power to change it and in an America that now legally views corporations as people they may in fact be correct. Everything has changed since March 20, 2003 and it will never go back to the way it was. Too much damage has been done.
History will tell the true winners and losers of the Bush Administration but I find it likely to be that the winners were the military industrial complex and the losers where the American people. Our country, like Iraq, is in shambles. In our case morally rather than physically.
As a nation we must embrace a new period of political hope and fairness or suffer the fate traditionally faced by empires overstretching their military might. There is still hope that we are the nation of pioneers and revolutionaries that inspired the world to embrace our culture. Here’s hoping our culture is brave enough to change its ways to again become the beacon on the hill many hoped it would forever remain.