Today marks the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  In the years we fought, rebuilt, and bled in Iraq, we lost 4,486 good men and women.  31,928 additional Americans were wounded in the conflict.  Our coalition allies also bled and died in the conflict, and thousands of Iraqis were killed and wounded.  We shelled out trillions of dollars in the endeavor, money which we either didn’t have and had to borrow or that could have been spent somewhere else.  We have seen many examples of how brave, resourceful, and capable our people in uniform are, and we owe this generation of young men and women a debt that we will never be able to repay.

The stated goals of the war, as I understood them in 2003, were to remove the Baathist Saddam Hussein regime from power, bring the dictator and his cronies to justice, and help the Iraqi people rebuild and hopefully discover western style democracy.

Well, the first two goals were met and met pretty quickly.  Resistance to the invasion and the end of the regime came within weeks of the first tank crossing the line of departure.  Saddam, his family, and his cabal of sadists were either hunted down and killed or captured, tried, and punished.

Did we accomplish the third goal?

In the aftermath of the invasion, every whacko who could raise bus fare headed to Iraq and got his jihad on, making the job of reconstruction and democratization harder by an order of magnitude.   I cannot imagine the difficulty of building a civil society and all that comes with it while also keeping your head on a swivel for ambushes and bombs.  It’s hard to convince a population without a cultural history of democracy that they should participate in their government when you’re still having to make night time raids to capture guys who want to murder people who don’t agree with them.

Iraq has had several national and regional elections.  Fears, which I shared and expressed, that the country would shatter haven’t been born out, at least yet.  I don’t know if the average Iraqi is any better off today than he was 10 years ago, but I hope someone more informed on that aspect than I am will fill us in on that one.  Iraq is a quasi-democracy, but has definite teething problems as it finds its way forward.  Maliki isn’t exactly George Washington, and I expect that he will leave power over his dead body.  Iran definitely benefited from the resurgence of the Shia elements of Iraqi society, and will be meddling in Iraqi politics for years.

I guess the main question is this:  Is the United States better off in March 2013 than we were in March 2003 when it comes to Iraq?  Was the removal of Saddam Hussein, the sort-of democratization of Iraq, and the killing of jihadists who were drawn to Iraq like a moth to a flame worth the cost in blood and treasure?  I honestly don’t know.  I think it’s going to take years for the events that March 2003 set in motion to come to full fruition, and I fear that we will have to look back in another decade to see what the Iraq War has wrought.

That being said, I am forever grateful to the men and women who gave up years of their lives, lived and worked in deplorable conditions, and sometimes gave of their blood and lives in this conflict.   I need no space of years to see and appreciate what they did, and I am humbled by their dedication to the country.