How will history judge the US involvement in the Iraq war?

They say that history is the narrative of the victor, so even history can be interpreted through a partisan filter. I don’t believe there is any dispute that Saddam’s Iraq was waging war across the Middle East; after all he fought a 10 year war against Iran that killed up to 1 million, invaded a number of his neighbors, and gassed thousands of Kurds who resided within Iraq’s borders. History will probably say that the USA became involved for good reasons: Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, a US ally – and the potential for Saddam to wreck havoc with the free flow of oil, and more importantly – his overt threats to uses weapons of mass destruction to dominate/blackmail the region.

The partisan talking heads can claim whatever they want, but between Saddam’s claims and bad US intelligence on the matter, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress voted for the invasion of Iraq – after all possible alternatives had been exhausted. The fact that Saddam was bluffing about the weapons is just Monday night quarterbacking and is not relevant to the question about how history will judge the US involvement in the Iraq war. The outcome of our presence there has yet to be determined. If we can finally leave (we will have 50,000 troops there indefinitely), and the Iraqi government sustains the rule of law and becomes an enlightened Democratic beacon of hope to the region, then our presence was a tremendous success. If Iraq falls into the same religious chaos that caused the Iraq/Iran war, then it will be considered Iraq’s failure, not the USA.

The global reality is that you could take all the militaries from around the world and combine them, and they would not be as big or as well equipped as the US military. Whether we like it or not, the US military is the SWAT team for the rest of the world. That is a difficult position for the US to be in, but without this global force, many people believe that the same type of brutal chaos that is ravaging Africa and the Middle East would run rampart across the globe. Of course, the opposing view is that the US foreign policy is causing “bad feelings” and “resentment” around the world, and that our military involvement around the globe makes Jihadist do what they do. Pick your side.

At the end of the day, it was an exercise in the USA trying to protect its national interests - and no country should be faulted for making that attempt.