By David Gushee
Barack Obama came into office, in part, on the strength of his promise to end the United States’ war in Iraq within 16 months. On Aug. 31 he will offer a major speech that is supposed to mark the fulfillment of that promise. This culminates a full month in which the White House has sought to create a clear sense of transition between a U.S. “combat role” and the new “advise-and-assist” role our 50,000 troops will now undertake.
In a great irony, it has become politically important for a president who opposed the Iraq war to persuade the nation of its successful conclusion. In a time when the war in Afghanistan has intensified with little progress for American goals, the president cannot afford to risk the perception that he has presided over two ultimately failed war efforts.
But it must be doubted whether the Iraq war will ultimately be counted a success. That depends on how the goals of that seven-year war are now understood and the relative costs and benefits of the war. This is a difficult challenge given that the original stated goal of finding weapons of mass destruction proved a red herring.
If the next round of goals is understood to have been the end of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny and the development of the first truly democratic regime in the Middle East, the first definitely happened (no small thing) and the second is very much an open question.
If we understand the real goals of the war more cynically as the forced creation of an American-friendly regime basing our troops in the heart of the hostile Middle East, or as a war to ensure continued American access to Iraq’s oil, we accomplished this, at least temporarily. But the question is whether these benefits outweighed the grievous costs.
What were those costs? As of the time of this writing: 4,735 coalition forces killed (4,417 American), 31,716 U.S. troops wounded, and 47,541 others injured or harmed — not counting contractors. The war has cost us an estimated $845 billion in borrowed money. The Congressional Budget Office projects the ultimate cost of the war will reach $1.9 trillion. We will be paying for the health care of Iraq war veterans long after readers of this column have gone to meet Jesus.
As for the Iraqis, the best estimate of the costs of our invasion include tens of thousands of soldiers killed at all stages of the war; at least 100,000 civilian deaths; an environment of constant insecurity and terror for seven years; the slide into ethnic/religious bloodletting of terrifying proportions; as many as five million orphaned children; a massive internally and externally displaced and refugee population; tremendous physical and psychological health problems; and the disruption of the economy, including access to basics like electricity and safe drinking water. As of 2009 Iraq was sixth on the “Failed States Index,” meaning it is the sixth-most-dysfunctional country in the world.
The war has had other unexpected and subtle costs. Looked at from the perspective merely of U.S. interests, these include costs to our relations with the nations we brought along with us into the war; weakening of the more justifiable struggle in Afghanistan; an international perception of U.S. lawlessness, incompetence, occasional cruelty and lack of concern for Iraqi lives especially until 2006; a strengthening of Iran and consequent endangerment of U.S. interests; inflaming of Christian-Muslim tensions; and a documented increase in hatred of, and terrorist activity against, the United States, including the birth and deadly activities of an Al Qaeda branch in Iraq.
There also has been a considerable cost to the credibility of U.S. evangelical Christianity. Many of our most visible Christian leaders and groups, especially on the conservative side, backed the Iraq war and did not revise their postures even as both the rationale and the conduct of the war fell apart. Once again it became clear that political loyalty to nation, party and president trumped whatever restraints were supposed to be provided by just-war theory or allegiance to Christ. I remember speaking to theologically quite conservative British Christians in 2005 and seeing that they were able quite easily to disentangle conservative theology from the peculiarly American evangelical brand of conservative theological politics.
Andrew Bacevich is right in his important new book Washington Rules when he argues for a total rethinking of our bipartisan posture of engaging in permanent war around the world. I wonder what it will take for Christians to do their own rethinking. We don’t need Bacevich to tell us that our constant support of war contradicts the teachings of Jesus and the best of our own tradition. Repentant reflection on the human costs of our support of the Iraq war seems appropriate.