Opinion

Iraq, 10 years later

On this day in 2003, the United States and allies in a “coalition of the willing” launched an initial air assault to expel Saddam Hussein and liberate Iraq.

Ten years later, Americans remain divided over the wisdom of that war.

The tendency, at least as it affects our politics, is to dwell on the mistakes and hindsight hand-wringing that helped define the war. These include the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction, the disbanding of the Iraqi army, the delay in returning government to the Iraqi people and, above all, the sacrifice of nearly 4,500 good Americans in uniform who served in that war but didn’t live to make the return trip home.

With all this, we believe two facts are worth repeating. First, even though Saddam Hussein was not involved in 9/11, he was a threat. Second, the Middle East is a more hopeful place with a fledgling democracy having replaced Saddam’s ruthless rule.

On this anniversary, our eye should be on the future. For all the problems, by the time George W. Bush left office, he had in effect handed his successor a victory. Now our military is out of Iraq, and President Obama tells us this is a victory, too.

Maybe. When a Tunisian policewoman spits on a street vendor and the next thing you know the Mubarak regime finds itself overturned, something big is happening. As we write, we have Syria coming apart at the seams, headed by a government as willing to murder its own people as Saddam’s was. Not to mention an Iran bent on acquiring a nuclear weapon — and dominating Iraq.

In the years after World War II, America helped Japan rebuild and stood by allies such as South Korea because we recognized that a Pacific growing freer through the spread of representative government and growing richer through the advance of trade was in the interests of the American people. Helping the Iraqis raise up a free Arab nation in the heart of the Middle East was based on the same proposition.

People say that the legacy of America’s intervention in Iraq won’t be known for years. That’s true enough. But it’s more important to acknowledge that, ultimately, the final verdict on that action will depend on decisions we take today.

Whether Iraq emerges from the regional turmoil as something close to what we had hoped for remains, at least in part, in our own hands.