Six Lessons From The Iraq War 20 Years On

Things to remember before the next conflict

(Public domain)

Like so many Americans, one of the earliest memories that is burned into my mind is September 11th, 2001. At the time, I lived in Connecticut near the submarine base in Groton. Around lunchtime, students started getting pulled out of class and taken home. I was confused and hopeful that I, too, would be removed from school. I was. But it wasn’t to go out to lunch or go to the park. It was to go home and watch hours of coverage of smoking and collapsing buildings.

Less than two years later, in 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. As a child, this made sense. The bad people were in the Middle East, and we were going after them. It wasn’t until late high school and college that I realized that the Iraq War had nothing to do with the War in Afghanistan or the War on Terror. A realization that some people still haven’t had to this very day.

The events in Iraq were a military success but an international debacle. The outcomes were nothing like anyone expected then, and we are still grappling with the consequences (and the expenditure) now. When Saddam Hussein was pulled out of his hidey hole six months after the end of major combat operations, many people thought that Iraq was riding a rail to a brighter future. Those people were wrong.