Matt goofs on the dates but the idea is right: a less-sophisticated, less populous state was drawn into a war by two belligerents who had not been ready for war but had been actively prosecuting separate ones, yet still managed to contribute mightily to the defeat of both and, more importantly, to decisively win the peace.
Twelve months from now the war will have lasted about as long as American participation in the second world war [A commentor clarifies: Between Pearl Harbor (12/7/1941) and VJ Day (8/15/1945) there were three years, eight months, and a week. The US invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003. We’re up to three years, three months, and three days at this point. So, in fact, it’ll be just over five months until we reach the “Can you believe that FDR beat back the Japanese and German Empires in this amount of time and you cannot even win a war in Iraq???” threshold.]. Twelve months after that there will still be six months left in the Bush administration’s lifespan. In January 2009 when a new administration takes office, the war will have been going on for five and a half years, virtually the entire span of time between Hitler’s invasion of Poland and the Nazis’ surrender. With the difference being that Andrew [Sullivan] doesn’t believe we’ll actually make any serious amount of progress between now and then.
This gets us toward what is, I think, a fairly fundamental point of political morality — it’s wrong, seriously wrong and seriously irresponsible, to support military action that has no likely prospects of success. It’s one thing to ask young men and women to kill and die for a good cause. It’s another thing entirely to ask them to kill and die as a token of your support for a good cause.
Clearly, my first-choice scenario for the world would be one in which the nominal goals of American Iraq policy — killing terrorists, preventing a civil war, building a stable liberal democracy — are achieved. But I can’t support the war — can’t say it was a good idea to launch it, and can’t say I think it’s a good idea to continue it — precisely because I don’t think the war is accomplishing its goals, don’t think it stands a good chance of accomplishing them, and don’t think it ever did stand a good chance of accomplishing them.
The goals may have been “killing terrorists, preventing a civil war, building a stable liberal democracy” but it seems obvious to anyone that the opposite result has occurred on each one.