When President Bush announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq the first of May, a large “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging in the background, my friends who supported the war on Iraq were gleeful. After months of buildup and heated arguments about our country’s rush to war (which I oppose), and the brief flurry of deadly fireworks in the sand, they felt like celebrating. “So, we won after all, huh?” they said, laughing. “Still against the war?” Celebrating that they were right. Celebrating that I was wrong.
Four months have passed. An average of one soldier a day has died in Iraq since then. We have lost more soldiers since “Mission Accomplished” than in all of the “major combat operations” that preceded it. We have found a host of…errors… in the arguments our President used to take us to war. Iraq is plagued with violence, and the democracy we promised them has yet to be seen. Now, soldiers are dying again in Afghanistan – once again the biggest opium producer in the world – in a war we were supposed to have won more than a year ago. This is not what “winning” is supposed to be like.
My friends who celebrated on the first of May celebrated prematurely. You could even say they were wrong, and that I was “right”. Maybe I was. Maybe I am.
But as yet another headline tells me of yet another soldier dying, the last thing on my mind is celebrating.
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