The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

    The war is not over

    It’s been nearly seven and a half years since D-Day in Iraq commenced and with the last combat specific groups moving out this week, it seems that the yellow ribbons are finally starting to show fruition. President Obama has called a cessation to all offensive military actions and already the troops have started packing for the return trip home. Still, many questions are left unanswered and people everywhere agree that the War in Iraq deserves a very attentive examination.

    The days of Laissez-Faire ended with Versailles, so it is no  wonder that the United States and its allies would jump at an attempt to launch military operations against a country that is supposedly harboring terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, and is sitting on top of one of the world’s richest oil fields. Factor in the deposing of a tyrannical dictator whom touted anti-western ideology and it’s almost a wonder that we did not invade sooner in a fine, guns blazing John Wayne fashion. Yet, in the end we have found few terrorists, no unsanctioned weapons and the Iraqi population seemed rather more complacent under the former dictatorship.

     Since the first American soldier set foot on Iraqi ground on March 30, 2003, America and the world has had ringside seats to a war that seems to have lost the popular momentum almost from the onset. The originally tepid public quickly came around to the view that the war is a drain on the American economy, an unwarranted US meddling in Iraqi affairs, and a flagrant loss of American life. Over the war’s seven plus years duration, cries for ending the War in Iraq have steadily mounted.

    With the change in the White House Administration, came a change in the wartime policy. President Barack Obama stated that he would end the war in his original campaign promises. Now, this seems to be turning into a reality.

    But as the troops roll out, the questions begin to bubble to the surface. Questions of both administrations and their policies are ubiquitous. People the country over are left wondering “why?” and more importantly, “What now?”

     The fact is that most of the modern world has been against the war from early on. The US majority denounces the campaign and it even appears that the large portion of Iraqi nationals do not want our involvement. Polls the world over hold a cynical view of America’s handling of the occupation. By most accounts, it was time for us to come home.

    Certainly, Iraq is now a free, democratic state, but this begs the question; is Iraq ready for freedom, and do they indeed crave democracy? Some indicators say no. It is certainly a sudden culture shock for the long oppressed people. Europe took over a thousand years after the fall of the Romans to come around to the notion of equality to all. The United States has attempted this transition in Iraq in just over seven years.

    For many, the big question resounding throughout the hearts and minds of Americans the nation over is “Did we win?” In the avocation of democracy, one must have a dubious outlook on the American victory. The Iraqi democratic government appears frail at best. The truth of the matter is that upon abdicating, Saddam Hussein left such a power vacuum in the region that the contingencies have become endless. One could rightly argue that it is purely from the American military presence that we have not seen a dozen coup d’états since the dictator’s capitulation. So, will the fragile façade of peace simply collapse once our troops are removed? This seems very likely.

    One also cannot forget about what the end of war normally means to a country’s economy. France and Great Britain suffered tremendously after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the world over felt the impact of the Great Depression in the wake of World War I. With the Obama administration instituting new and untried economic policies and our wartime economy already at a major predisposition, what will we have to look forward to in the upcoming years? The outlook is potentially bleak.

    Yet with all of the talk of Iraq, we must not forget our premiere objective in the war against terror: the capture of Osama Bin Laden and apprehension of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. This seems as it is one of the extraordinary cases wherein the population has forgotten entirely about the original mission as a sort of mob rule took control during the Iraqi Invasion. To this day, Americans wonder, “Where is the mastermind behind September 11, 2001?” By all accounts, Bin Laden’s head should have rolled long before the first A-1 Abrams rolled on Iraq.

    Another, even more frightening factor, is that of empires and what inevitably becomes of them. They seem destined to fail from the top down, often with the assistance of outside factors. It could very well be that America is coming dangerously close to this precipice. Rome fell to the barbarian tribes of Europe, Hitler’s Third Rich collapsed after its over extension on multiple fronts, and Great Britain found the maintaining of an empire to be too unwieldy and cost prohibitive.  Although America is not an empire in the traditional sense, parallels can surely be drawn from all of these examples.

    I believe that it is good that the War in Iraq is finally at an end and that the Iraqi people now have the option of the universal freedoms famously denoted within the United States Constitution and shortly thereafter the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; these thoughts have been in evolution since Ancient Greece. But frankly, it was a war that we were neither wanted nor required to fight. The policies of the Bush administration and the follow up of the current one have placed this country in a downward spiral that I believe we will be recovering from for years to come. In summation, one is reminded of the ominous words of the French Marshal Foch in 1919, “This is not a peace. It is an armistice…”

     

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