| 来源类型 | Article
|
| 规范类型 | 评论
|
| Lessons from the Iraq War |
| Hal Brands; Peter D. Feaver
|
| 发表日期 | 2019-06-20
|
| 出版年 | 2019
|
| 语种 | 英语
|
| 摘要 | The Iraq War is the war that never ended. That’s true literally, in that US troops are still in Iraq some 16 years after the American invasion, and figuratively, in that recriminations over Iraq — why the United States invaded, what went wrong, whether different outcomes were possible — continue to influence US foreign policy and domestic politics to this day. The Iraq War has been a significant issue in every presidential election since it began in 2003. It has cast a shadow over every subsequent discussion of whether, where, and how the United States should use force. It has inflamed debates over whether America should recommit itself to an ambitious internationalism or pull back from the Middle East and perhaps the broader world. It has haunted American statecraft.
But it is not clear what America has actually learned from Iraq. Former Iraq War supporters — mostly but not exclusively Republicans — have hesitated to admit some hard truths: that the war was a strategic mistake, that it was flawed not just in initial execution but in conception, that it inflicted an enormous human and financial toll (far beyond what its supporters predicted), and that it set off a cascade of damaging consequences that plagued US policy in the Middle East and far beyond.
Yet critics of the war — mostly but not exclusively Democrats — have also failed to face some inconvenient facts: that the war was not based on lies or malevolent motives, but rather on a good-faith effort to confront a significant if overestimated threat; that the surge of 2007–08 succeeded in bringing the strategic goal of the war — a stable, friendly, democratic Iraq — within reach; and that the precipitate withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 was an avoidable strategic blunder that undercut American policy in the Middle East and far beyond. A more honest reckoning with the Iraq War begins with the long-overdue recognition that neither the war’s supporters nor its critics have had a monopoly on either wisdom or folly.
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Yet critics of the war — mostly but not exclusively Democrats — have also failed to face some inconvenient facts: that the war was not based on lies or malevolent motives, but rather on a good-faith effort to confront a significant if overestimated threat; that the surge of 2007–08 succeeded in bringing the strategic goal of the war — a stable, friendly, democratic Iraq — within reach; and that the precipitate withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 was an avoidable strategic blunder that undercut American policy in the Middle East and far beyond. A more honest reckoning with the Iraq War begins with the long-overdue recognition that neither the war’s supporters nor its critics have had a monopoly on either wisdom or folly. |
| 主题 | Foreign and Defense Policy
; Defense
; Middle East
|
| 标签 | American politics
; foreign policy
; insurgency
; Iraq war
; Vietnam
|
| URL | https://www.aei.org/articles/lessons-from-the-iraq-war/
|
| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States)
|
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物
|
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/266016
|
推荐引用方式
GB/T 7714 |
Hal Brands,Peter D. Feaver. Lessons from the Iraq War. 2019.
|
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