Is this success?

It need not have occurred. It was Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that set in motion the chain of events that are now culminating in the return home of the last American troops from Iraq. The swift liberation of Kuwait, the punitive sanctions imposed on Iraq and its international isolation did not make the dictator relent until the Americans finally ejected him in 2003.

Washington’s justification for the second invasion – Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction – was accompanied by a dangerous neo-conservative obsession with regime change, through war if necessary. It is also true that during the occupation of Iraq, a grave error was committed by dismantling the Iraqi military, which could have been the source of a stable transition to the new order.

As the last American troops head home by the end of this month, the war’s human cost – at least 60,000 Iraqis and 4,500 US troops killed – and its economic cost of more than US$1 trillion tell only a part of the whole story. That story is the history of a nation whose educational, medical and infrastructural achievements once made it the cynosure of Middle-Eastern eyes, being reduced to a deathly shadow of its former self. 

Certainly, Iraq appears to be better off politically today than it was under Saddam. But while the US-led invasion moved it towards being a functioning democracy, the country has come to be plagued by security concerns, sectarian and other strife that it had never known under Saddam, who was a staunchly secular leader. But those who believe that Iraq sets a precedent for introducing democracy through an invasion-led regime change should think again. Democracy without security, an efficient government and a buy-in by the people to the benefits of change, is a difficult imposition in the Middle East, as it is anywhere else.

As for the United States’ international credibility and image, Iraq is not Afghanistan, where America had a more legitimate casus belli. But it is not Vietnam either. US troops are leaving Iraq: they are not being chased out. 

Consequently, the war should not produce its own version of the post-Vietnam syndrome: the vehement aversion to entanglement in wars abroad that set in in America in the 1970s. US power will continue to be needed in an imperfect world. 

But the Iraq War continues to raise difficult questions about morality and motive long after the memory of Saddam has faded.