Evidence We Won Iraq

Four months into my tour at Qayyarrah-West, Iraq, about January 2005, I wrote this. It seemed appropriate at the time and it still does. It started one night during our tour when my colleagues and I were discussing a variety of things before one of our seemingly never-ceasing meetings. We were discussing home, the war and our jobs, both in the military and in civilian life. We also were “smokin’ and jokin’,” just laughing, and enjoying good company. It’s really amazing what a soldier can find that will amuse him or her in a war zone. Some of the most mundane things will bring howls of laughter in the proper, and sometimes improper, context.

Of course we discussed this war, “Our War” if you will, and how long America will be in Iraq. Opinions range from two years to “till forever.” Of course, we can’t and won’t know when we will leave until it actually occurs. We won the Gulf War and we’re still in Kuwait, though we have left Saudi Arabia.

We’ve also won three wars in Europe over the past ninety years (World Wars I and II, and the Cold War) and we’re still there. It’s the same in Japan and Korea, of course. Promises or assurances when it comes to war and politics are normally useless. Most of us understand this. America was assured by President Clinton that we would be out of Bosnia-Herzegovina within a year. That was in the middle of the last decade and we just pulled the last of our peacekeeping “Implementation” and “Stabilization” forces out of that nation about ten years later. There isn’t a soldier alive then that didn’t know that those words were a pure, unadulterated lie. And we have troops just a few miles south of there in Kosovo still today.

Well, all this got me to thinking. Occasionally soldiers do that, you know. I decided that as a public service it might be good to let you know how to tell when “Our War” is over.
So, in keeping with the craze pioneered by late-night television host David Letterman, I present to you a list of “The Top Ten Ways to Know the Iraq War Has Been Won” in descending order from 10:

10. Your neighbor’s son (or daughter) returns home from Iraq with an Iraqi bride (or husband);

9. The Iraqi Liberal Democratic Party accuses the Iraqi Conservative Party of wanting to make the old people of Iraq eat pork and send their retirement funds to New World corporations because of proposed changes to Iraqi pension laws;

8. The political spending of the Iraqi presidential elections, run by American experts hired from inside The Beltway by Iraqi political parties, is being compared to the spending in California gubernatorial elections;

7. Iraqis protest the impending departure of American troops and bases from their towns, and form committees to go to Washington to lobby the latest Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission, Congress, the Pentagon and the President;

6. Your new state-of-the-art laser satellite receiver/gaming box/movie cube/television combo was manufactured in Fallujah, Iraq, deep in the heart of the Sunni Triangle;

5. Iraq’s leading retailer is Wal-Mart;

4. Iraq’s biggest new hip-hop group, Hezbollah’s Hellions, hit number one on the Billboard pop chart in the US;

3. American labor unions lobby Congress for protection from cheap Iraqi imports;

2. Hooters announces the opening of their new Baghdad restaurant;

And the number 1 way that Americans will know when we’ve won the Iraq War:

1. Teams of Iraqi lawyers arrive at the 9th Circuit Federal District Court in San Francisco and at The World Court in The Hague, Netherlands ready to file suit against the United States Department of Defense for damages incurred during Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and The Iraq War.

Again, America will have freed the oppressed.