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The Wisconsin State Journal Bill Wineke Column: Invasion Was Mistake, but We Can't Leave

Posted on: Monday, 20 March 2006, 09:00 CST

By Bill Wineke, The Wisconsin State Journal

Mar. 20--Can anyone really remember why it was that the United States invaded Iraq three years ago?

Can anyone really predict what will happen there during the coming months? Can anyone really evaluate whether the 2,300 Americans, the 51 Wisconsin soldiers and Marines, who have died there really made the world a better place?

Some things are, most assuredly, positive. The people of Iraq have voted again and again, defying terrorist threats to cast their ballots for freedom. Iraqi young men have signed up for police forces and for military duty. Iraqi politicians have worked for peace. These activities have marked them for assassination. These are brave people.

Some things are, most assuredly, negative. Despite the claims of our national leaders that Iraqis have "looked into the abyss" of religious civil war and turned away, the reports of brutal killings of Sunnis by Shiites and of Shiites by Sunnis keep appearing each day.

It is not at all clear that the elected leaders of Iraq will be able to prevent civil war. If the angry residents of the country determine their government can't protect them from constant violence from their neighbors, they may reach a tipping point and begin unsanctioned war.

One way civil war seems to be averted in Baghdad is that vehicle traffic is banned from the city on any occasion that seems risky. If we banned all vehicle traffic from Washington, D.C., every week or so, no one would suggest things were under control in our nation's capital.

The news last Thursday was that American forces launched the biggest airstrike since the invasion on suspected insurgents in Iraq.

If, after three years, the country remains on the verge of civil war and the occupiers -- us -- have to launch massive airstrikes against insurgents, there is no way to claim this battle is going well.

The invasion has cost this country a fortune and it has devastated Iraq. Electricity production is lower than it was three years ago. So is oil production.

Nevertheless, I'm not one of those who think we should bring our troops home anytime in the near future. We created this debacle and we have a moral obligation to the Iraqis to help them rebuild their society. I think the continuing promise to reduce our troop strength sends exactly the wrong message to everyone.

We have to stay; but we have to admit our failure. We went into Iraq to make things better for those people and to make the region safer for the rest of us.

It is pretty difficult to conclude that things are better for the Iraqi people. They no longer have to fear the tyrant Saddam, but now they have to fear the people, Sunni or Shiite, who were once their trusted friends and neighbors as well as fear foreign terrorists and, unfortunately, fear being innocent victims of American counter-terrorist attacks.

President Bush says the world is safer because of our invasion. Perhaps it is. Perhaps the seed of democracy planted in Iraq will grow and spread throughout the troubled part of the world.

Three years into the conflict, however, it is hard to see that happening and even harder to see how we withdraw from the conflict we started.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Wisconsin State Journal

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Wisconsin State Journal

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