Three Days Left to Eternity

Anthony Perez-Miller reflects and offers hope about our mission in Iraq:

On 9 April 2003, the statue of Saddam fell in Firdos Square, Baghdad. That afternoon I went to mock antiwar protesters in the main square here in Bloomington.

Twenty-one months and more have passed since. The news has often been grim; given the astounding success of the invasion, I did not expect that the path to Iraqi independence would be as difficult as it has proven. But I nonetheless have little patience for the moulting hawks whose support for this endeavor has depended upon how closely our efforts have resembled some unrealizable Platonic Ideal.

Since I was born in the post-Vietnam era, this is the first major war that my generation has experienced firsthand. Those of us that have ignored history can only rely upon the Vietnam obsessed press for perspective; and a grim outlook is the natural result. However, history has shown that when the United States enters a conflict, perseverance and patience must follow. History proves that most armed conflicts have setbacks, screw-ups and disasters, and no planning can exempt the technologically superior United States from this fact.

When looking at the War in Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom (the three week period from the initial invasion to the fall of Bagdad) can be looked at as the D-Day stage of WWII--an enormous undertaking that resulted in achieved, key-objectives. After D-Day, Allied forces had the Germans on the run and many thought that the war would be over by Christmas. However, Germany would put coal in the Allies' Christmas stockings by launching a lethal and desperate counter-offensive (the Battle of the Bulge). Just as our highly esteemed leadership in WWII miscalculated, many good men that planned for the war in Iraq felt the clean-up operations would be much quieter--yet, like the Germans, our Baathist and Jihadi enemies would band together and desperately fight it out to the last man.

Anthony continues by speculating how the end-game in Iraq will look:

Democracy in the Land Between the Rivers might still prove an experiment which fails utterly. Yet I would put even odds—at least—on a very different outcome: that this election will instead be of profoundly historic significance, and will mark the beginning of the advance of human freedom in a region that has until now never seen the like.

When a battle of wills takes place, he who hunkers down and pushes through will see victory. We must have faith that this experiment will not ideologically fail; as our Republic, the Great Experiment, was based on idea the idea of "We the People." Our nation, even through one of the bloodiest civil wars in history, protected this vision for mankind.

The execution of our objectives in Iraq has been imperfect, but excellent overall. Just as the Germans would ultimately lose after giving us a black-eye and a fat-lip, our enemies in Iraq will learn how fruitless it is to fight against a technologically and, most importantly, ideologically superior foe. We have history on our side, the only question is, do we have the guts to follow through with it? Many in Iraq desperately hope that we do.