Continuing with our tour of what the rest of the world thinks of President Obama’s declaration of an end to U.S. combat operations in Iraq, this editorial from Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter has one very succinct message for the United States and any nation with similar intentions: learn the limits of military power.
The Dagens Nyheter editorial says in part:
… the achievements are meager. Few neighboring countries are likely to view Iraq as a role model. Saddam Hussein wasn’t hiding any weapons of mass destruction and there were no international terrorists in Iraq. On the other hand, the war led to a wave of bloody terror in Iraq that is still going on.
At the other end of the spectrum are the enormous costs. The U.S. has spent almost a trillion dollars in Iraq. But the money hardly counts in light of such human suffering.
For better or worse, what has been done cannot be undone. But we can at least try to learn from past mistakes. And in the case of Iraq, it is above all about distinguishing what can and cannot be achieved by military means.
When there are so many overlapping reasons for a decision rather than a single good one, people should be suspicious. This is an insight worth keeping in mind now, when operations in Afghanistan are justified by a smorgasbord of reasons: the fight against terrorism, building democracy, the liberation of women, regional security, etc.
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