i'm torn: if claiming "victory" makes it easier for delusional fantasists to go along with the withdrawal, i'm sorta prepared to live with it, but if the idea that we "won" in iraq but then lost by withdrawing prematurely is the medium-term result, then i'll have wished that we had pushed back harder in the first place.

and make no mistake: after we withdraw, the very same lousy news from iraq that we have today (it's only "good" in comparison to what was) will suddenly be seized upon by right-wingers as evidence of how mistaken withdrawal was.

It will to be an uphill battle as the years advance and memories fade.

I predict the flypaper apologia makes a strong comeback circa 2021.

I don't see how a fair assessment of the war can occur without the words "Saddam Hussein" being invoked. I'm not much more positive about it than you are, Ezra, but to leave Saddam out of the equation is ridiculous.

"I wrongly, stupidly, supported the Iraq War."

Hey, I'm smarter than you AND Yglesias. But I don't have a cool blog everyone wants to read.

There's a "Victory in Iraq" push coming from conservative sites for November 22: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31937_Victory_in_Iraq_Day

She may be tipping her hat to that.

I dunno. It seems wrong to decide whether it was a "victory" by looking at the costs. I think every war the US has ever "won" had a boatload more casualties than this one.

And the war did achieve its stated objective: ensuring that the US would not be attacked by Saddam-made and al-Qaeda-delivered WMDs. As it turns out, there was no real risk at the time, but now we know.

As far as democracy goes, the jury is still out. Life was obviously pure horror there for a long time, but at least on paper, Iraqis probably have more political rights than people living in most other Arab countries.

I hesitantly opposed the war, I think it was a waste of time, money, and lives, and I think we should the hell out as soon as we can.

But we did remove a brutal dictator, and we did help establish a nominal democracy.

To echo Martin: clearly the removal of Saddam and his regime need to play a significant role in the analysis here.

One can still conclude that on balance the war was not a victory, or it was a failure, or whatever. But it would be crazy to say that Saddam's general craziness and megalomania was not a major reason we got into this war. And it would be dishonest to say that his removal isn't a significant accomplishment of the war.

It is possible to make the argument that Iraq was better off with Saddam than without (because the only way to eliminate Saddam was under the current scenario with a big civil war, etc., and because the current government isn't strong enough to keep order). But that's a key question that should be made explicit and not ignored.

mk, since you're the most recent to say it, i'm going to call you on it.

this war was the making of the bush administration, period, case frickin' closed. saddam was doing absolutely nothing provocative.

his removal only counts as an accomplishment insofar as you think that under saddam, more iraqis would have died and more would have left the country than has actually been the case since 2003.

since there is absolutely no basis for believing that, what you're really saying is the retributive justice of removing from power a murderous dictator was, by itself, an accomplishment, and perhaps if the fantasists of the bush administration (cakewalk/greeted with flowers/turn things over to chalabi and leave) had been correct, we could agree.

but there was never a chance that the fantasists were correct, and that was knowable in advance.

the 'right' (conservatives, neocons, rethugs, et.al.) do one thing particularly well: establish or change the message, words, and phrases that apply to current and historical events. Example: the surge. the surge is whatever it was that produced relative (rather than absolute) calming of violence - and that 'whatever' could vary month to month but it was/is still good, wholesome, necessary and patriotic. They even have forced Obama to say it was a fantastic success. Paying off the rebels and giving them arms, and fueling an ethnic cleansing of various Baghdad neighborhoods aren't mentioned or minimized. And unsolved problems aren't in the discussion either: Kurdish separatism and more ethnic cleansing of border Kurd areas (Kirkuk, Mosul) are under the rug too.

The whole Iraq thing has been justified as good from the start because the surge was awesome, years after the worst kind of hideous sectarian violence/murder, with never a bow to the blood that was running in the streets.

After this bad/cheap/excessive credit-fueled recession/depression is run its course in 2-10 years, we will hear that Bush's economic policies produced victory over world exceeses produced by Dems.

I guess it is not surprising that the GOP is all about the consistency and repetition that sells Mickey D's, since the Madison Avenue advertising bad guys all moved to DC conservative think tanks.

We should remind them:
- were's the beef?

As it turns out, there was no real risk at the time, but now we know.

A great many people knew then, at the beginning, that the WMD scare was a lie.

I wrongly, stupidly, supported the Iraq War.

wtf? you did?

Hey, I'm smarter than you AND Yglesias. - commenter Kyle

did yglesias support it too? if so, that's surprising! klein/yglesias (used to be yglesias/klein, but matt was demoted after he trashed team of rivals without reading it) is my go-to dudes-about-my-age progressive
duo!

of course, you still are--i'm just taken aback is all.

The jury is still out about whether or not removing Saddam was an accomplishment of the Iraw War. If Maliki turns out to be Saddam 2.0: A Shia Strongman, then I don't think removing Saddam would have produced any meaningful net benefit.

Let's try this on for size...

It's an interesting definition of "victory." I guess you can define victory as more than 300,000 American fatalities, more than 500,000 wounded, probably millions of German deaths, millions of Germans and Polish displaced, $3 trillion in inflation adjusted costs to the U.S. economy, an empowered Soviet Union, an unaddressed threat in Vietnam, and massive damage to America's image around the world.

Would you then consider WWII to be lost as well?

Did you not mention the reduction in fatalities (both military and civilian) out of ignorance or in a deliberate attempt to skew the truth? Did you ignore the democratic elections because you did not know about them or because you did not wish to acknowledge them?

Have you run your opinion past anyone who is actually in Iraq?