Protests marking two years since the beginning of the war in Iraq have been taking place in many countries of the world. The demonstrations do not match those of last year in size; neither do they match those that took place in the run-up to the war. Millions then took to the streets to urge President Bush and his allies not to attack Iraq. Nonetheless, two years later, the protesters are still very vocal. They are not allowing what they firmly believe was a costly misadventure to be forgotten. They insist that the war caused needless bloodshed, pointing out that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
Of course, those responsible for the war are just as adamant that war was the right course to take. Bush, who gave the order to attack, naturally defended the invasion with an impassioned speech that put a premium on the fact that Saddam Hussein is no longer, having been replaced by a democratic model to be emulated in the Middle East.
It might be hard to disagree with Bush when he speaks of the noble goals of democracy and reform. Many Iraqis are indeed reveling in their new freedom. Eight million experienced casting a ballot in the first free and fair elections they had ever known. They turned out in January to vote for a 275-member assembly which is considered the first step on the road to self-rule. Yet the jury is still out on whether that vote will lead to a stable democracy. A Sunni Muslim boycott of the election left that group vastly underrepresented in the assembly. Six weeks after the elections, leaders from the Shiite Muslim majority and the Kurdish minority have yet to form a government, elect a president and parliamentary speaker or agree on a host of divisive issues.
Neither did the election bring the day of the American’s departure from Iraq any closer. The million-dollar question of when remains up in the air because the training and deployment of Iraqi security forces — which President Bush says must precede any withdrawal of US forces — proceeds haltingly at best. Thus, there is no foreseeable way out for US troops who have lost more than 1,500 of their own in Iraq. And in the near future, because of the terrifying lawlessness and acts of barbarity, there appears to be no sign of a return to normalcy in the lives of Iraqis whose losses are far, far higher and more incalculable than any the Americans have experienced.
While Bush extols the virtues of the invasion, along with a good number of Americans who believed his Iraqi policy was good enough to re-elect him, the supporters of the war will not disagree that toppling Saddam opened a Pandora’s box of unanticipated complications, ensuring that Iraq will remain in the news, mostly for the wrong reasons. The jury is still out on the good or the bad of the war. Some protesters demand a full withdrawal of foreign troops; others predict that would leave Iraq in an even worse position. On one thing, however, Bush was absolutely right. Nothing said or done can bring back those who have been lost. The consequences of war go far beyond the ballot box.
