The Iraqi Elections and the U.S. Invasion
Does the fact that Iraq is holding elections mean the U.S. invasion was a success?
No necessarily.
For starters, this “success” came at a huge cost: hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. military expenditure, thousands of U.S. lives lost, widespread destruction of Iraqi infrastructure, and uncountable Iraqi deaths, both military and civilian.
In addition, merely holding elections is not the ultimate goal; many countries have held elections that were meaningless in practice. We have yet to see whether Iraq’s “democracy” will become a de facto religous dictatorship.
Finally, even true democracies choose bad policies (think Latin America or India) and non-democracies have achieved substantial economic progress (think China). If success in Iraq includes security from violence, personal freedom, and economic development, then the jury is still out.
Categories: My Blog
Fady Khairallah
I understand that elections are not the ultimate goal. However, they are a mean to an end are they not?
Would anyone looking in on the United States in the last 18th Century have predicted anything but the collapse of this aberration?
Was the goal, in the end, not worth all the struggles?
I understand that we want to disincentivize American military adventurism. I’m all for that.
I understand that the cost in treasure and blood is high. But that is sunk cost at this point.
It’s time to stop beating the doom and gloom drums for Iraq. Give them half a chance will ya?
They deserve it as much as we did in 1776.