I listened to President Obama’s address from the Oval Office last night with very mixed emotions. The Iraq war was not Obama’s doing—we all know that—but in trying to define yesterday’s moment, a clear sense of historic occasion eluded his powers of oratory. The situation there is still too uncertain to be overly self-congratulatory. And yet he did choose language which, I fear, will linger and fester in the halls of our memories for some time to come. When I heard him say, “America has met its responsibilities, now it’s time to turn the page,” I winced. It didn’t gall in quite the same way as Bush’s intemperate “Mission Accomplished” sound bite in May, 2003, but Obama’s words had a distinctly hollow ring, and I know that more than a few Iraqis will have cursed angrily upon hearing them.
America has most clearly not met its responsibilities on behalf of the Iraqis, most of whom had no say in the warfare we brought to them seven years ago. We leave them a Saddam-free Iraq, yes, but with a bruised and battered society and a dysfunctional government which may—or may not—survive our troops’ phased withdrawal from the the country at the end of 2011.
But Obama’s speech was not about the Iraqis, or really for them, either; it was directed at his American audience. Obama spoke about the great sacrifice Americans had made, in lives lost and money spent, and it is true, the price has been great. But just a quiet reminder, then, for the following facts may come back to haunt us: for every one American life lost in Iraq since 2003, the Iraqis have given twenty-five; and few nations in modern times have had their national patrimony as thoroughly trashed and looted as Iraq’s has—under our watch.
Reporting from Iraq since 2000, I harbor many memories, both fond and painful. It is a place that inspires a sense of bereavement in me. I have never been anywhere where I have seen more injustice and death, personally, than I have in Iraq. More often than not, though, my mind turns back to the fateful day—April 9, 2003—when Baghdad fell to the Americans, as the turning point in the war, the day in which the invading Americans’ “victory” was thrown away, and the seeds of chaos, and the coming insurgency, were sown.
That afternoon, standing in the street next to freshly arrived U.S. soldiers, I looked on as they allowed mobs of looters to raid the Ministry of Trade, and as others set fire to the Ministry of Transport next door. Flames shot up from buildings and pistol shots rang out as rival gangs of looters toughed it out. A man ran past in the street trying to catch a galloping black thoroughbred stallion, one of Uday Hussein’s private herd, that had been set free from the adjacent Olympic sports grounds. Soon afterward a thundering procession of Marines in tanks rolled by. I noted down the names they had spray-painted on the barrels of their guns: “Assassin,” “Carnage,” “Cold Steel,” “Crazy Train,” “Rebel,” and “Got Oil?”
I turned to Khifa, an Iraqi man who was with me, and asked what his feelings were at that moment. He replied: “I am very, very happy. But I don’t know why, I also feel like I want to cry. O.K., Saddam Hussein is gone, but I am afraid the Americans will need to put another Saddam Hussein in power to keep control here. Look around: there is no one, no authority, no police, and this is the result.”
A few hours later, the looting had spread and so had the destruction—quite a few buildings had been set ablaze. Amid the tumult, a distressed-looking middle-aged man in a suit came up to me. In halting English, he informed me that he was a pharmacist, and he addressed me as a representative of the invading American power. He waved his hands at the chaos around him and said, pleadingly: “Please. We just want to live under any system. Any system is better than this.”
Although I dismissed the man, and his implicit admonishment, explaining that I was a journalist, not a soldier, I was deeply shocked by what I was seeing. As the looting and destruction continued on in the days to come, and I saw that the American soldiers were doing nothing to stop it, my shock turned to shame. The world’s most powerful army had fought a quick and decisive military campaign and made its way to Baghdad within three weeks, only to stand by as the city’s ministries, hospitals, museums, and libraries were ransacked and burned, and, eventually, its armories, too. The explosives and weapons that were pilfered during those days would soon be used against U.S. soldiers by Iraq’s new “insurgents.” More than once I was told by American soldiers and officers that they were not there to “shoot looters”—as if there were a qualitative difference to the “Shock and Awe” aerial bombardment that had preceded their arrival, in which many hundreds of Iraqi civilians had been killed in Baghdad and other cities.
It was a bewildering time, and still doesn’t make sense to me. Soon afterward, of course, the real war began for the Americans and for the Iraqis, too. Things are better today: fewer people are dying than in 2006 and 2007, when the sectarian violence peaked, but they are still dying. Al Qaeda has resurfaced, lethally, and the political system remains fragile and disputatious. Under our watch, the enmity between Sunnis and Shiites and the Kurds has not been replaced by an authentic new national compact. If they are left unreconciled, things could still degenerate and lead to an all-out civil war. If this does not happen, in fact, I will be surprised. I hope I shall be.
