VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Our Flip-Flopping Wars – RealClearPolitics
December 17, 2009
Our Flip-Flopping Wars
By Victor Davis Hanson
We don’t hear all that much about Iraq these days, do we?
The war at one point almost tore apart this country. Public anger sent George W. Bush’s approval ratings plummeting. And the outrage over our losses helped elect vocal anti-Iraq-war candidate Barack Obama.
But Iraq is hardly in the news anymore. That seems odd, given there are still 120,000 American troops stationed there.
So, why the silence?
In short, Americans are not dying in Iraq as they were from 2006 to 2008. Twice as many Americans have died in Afghanistan this year as in Iraq. As of this writing, in December, there have been four coalition fatalities. That’s about 1/10 of the number of people murdered per month in Chicago in 2008.
Perceptions of the war in Iraq have also changed in unforeseen ways.
“No blood for oil,” for example, was once a common anti-war cry. But Iraq’s auctioning of its oil leases has gone mostly to Europeans, Russians and Chinese – not Americans.
The U.S., it turned out, did not go to Iraq to steal its natural resources. Apparently, we instead ensured a fair auction by a constitutional government that preferred non-American companies to pump its oil. In the end, we were more idealistic – or naive -than conspiratorial.
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