Schrag: Reflections in the Iraq War Six Years After September 11, 2001

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Peter Schrag

Six years after Sept. 11, 2001, a convenient moment for stock-taking, are we at war or are we not at war -- and if so with whom or with what?

Americans are killed at an average of 80 a month in Iraq. More come home forever damaged in body or spirit. But for most of us, daily life goes merrily on.

Iraqis are displaced by the millions and killed at a rate of 2,000 a month (down, it's said, from 4,000 a few months ago). It's not clear whether that's progress or just because of the growing number of neighborhoods that have been ethnically cleansed.

There is no draft. Taxes are cut for the wealthy -- our children will pay the cost -- and the rich get richer. Our ports remain porous; the administration bows to industry in its feeble enforcement of security at chemical plants, oil refineries and cargo shipments on airlines.

This week's congressional debate again demonstrates how the ultimate measure of the folly and hubris of the invasion of Iraq is the difficulty of extricating ourselves from it. Almost everyone wants to get out, but few responsible people know how and fewer still want to be responsible for whatever follows.

Despite the White House spin, Iraq never had any connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. Saddam Hussein didn't launch the terrorists. There were no WMDs, no yellow cake from Niger. The media were suckered, as they're being suckered again. Now, as the president says, Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. But we created that front.

For America it's a costly and crippling diversion. As Congress parses the various reports on "progress" in Iraq, the president prepares to ask for yet another $200 billion for the war. That's equal to nearly half of what America spends on schools or enough to provide basic health care for every uninsured American.

A conspiracy theorist might even think that it's all a trick to head off more generous social spending at home -- plotted either by conservatives in Washington or jihadists abroad. As the president says, the uninsured kids can always go to the hospital emergency rooms.

Even so, the war was fought on the cheap, with inadequate armor, underfunded, understaffed hospitals for the wounded and increasing demands on an ever more depleted military.

What our Iraq distraction has accomplished is to provide the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians and the Saudis with room to expand their own powers and influence around the globe -- in Africa, in the Middle East, in Latin America. Afghanistan, now increasingly controlled by our former enemies, and Osama bin Laden, whom Bush was once going to get "dead or alive," are nearly forgotten except when one of bin Laden's tapes reminds us of his existence.