Quote Originally Posted by simonm View Post
I think that this is one of them issues that will be judged retrospectively. It will be deemed either a worthy success or a miserable failure depending on a variety of factors including:

  • How long it actually takes to complete the campaign
  • What the magnitude of both military and civillian casualties are
  • Whether or not the eventual changes will be broadly welcomed by the Iraqi people
  • Whether or not they do actually find concrete evidence of WMDs.

I think it's impossible to judge it at this early stage.
Interesting running across this post that I made 13 years ago about how we might look back on the invasion of Iraq.

The campaign itself to Topple Sadam went pretty quickly it has to be said. But what I imagine few people foresaw was how long western troops had to remain stationed in Iraq fighting insurgents. There was a sharp rise of sectarian violence and disunity among the various racial and religious groups in the country. And when the troops finally left, the new 'democratic' regime nearly collapsed amid the rise of ISIS which threatened to turn the country into some crazy extreme caliphate that, if it had been successful, would surely have posed a greater threat to the world than Sadam's Iraq ever would have?

Sadam was reputed to have killed many of his own people but how many have died in Iraq, either as a direct casualty in the 'liberation' or as a casualty of violence that has arisen as a consequence of that? I don't know the answer but it seems to me hard to argue that Iraq has really become a better place than it was before, or that lives have been saved.

And as for the WMD's; that idea has largely been discredited now. No real evidence of such has ever been discovered.

But is the world a safer place as a result of the deposition of Sadam? It seems to me that terrorism around the world is still rife, as rife as it has ever been and probably worse than it was before the invasion of Iraq. I think it would be extremely difficult to argue that it has made the world a better, safer place.

We are where we are but, I think when I look back that I must judge it to have been a mistake. I do not think that we can say that we have not done more harm than good deposing of Sadam.