A few years ago while photographing a wedding I spotted a picture on the wall, one I had seen before. It was an American sailor, so jubilant on VJ day thatthe Second World War was over, he was grabbing every woman he saw in Times Square and giving her a kiss. Alfred Eisenstaedt's photo, which appeared on the pages of Life magazine, was on the wall of the house I was shooting in, so I asked the bride and groom to recreate the same pose, with the wall photo in the background.
The original photo became the iconic symbol of the end of the war.
I highly doubt we will see any such icon emerge from the past weekend, as the last American soldiers slinked out of Iraq under the cover of darkness, ostensibly to protect against possible attack during the final withdrawal.
Perhaps it was so there wouldn't be any other iconic photos taken, like the fall of Saigon.
Nearly nine years later, twice as long as the United States was involved in the Second World War, the Iraq war, for the Americans at least, is over.
While there could be some justification found in the Afghanistan war, where Osama Bin Laden had been based, Iraq was an entirely different story. Upon serious reflection, it would be difficult for anyone to say it was worth it. Yes, Saddam Hussein is gone. But so are tens of thousands, perhaps over 100,000 Iraqis. Does anyone really know how many?
The Americans have a much more accurate number of their own dead - 4,487, plus over 30,000 wounded. Was it worth it to them?
The final pullout was reminiscent of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, very much a tail-between-their-legs moment. What happened after Afghanistan? The Soviet Union fell apart soon thereafter.
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, the United States government was in decent financial shape. Bill Clinton left office with surplus budgets.
Iraq has essentially bankrupted the United States. Yes, Afghanistan was the start of the "Global War on Terror," and continues to this day, but it was a side-show in comparison to the Iraq conflict, where there were 239,000 people in theatre in 2006.
Last summer, the United States nearly defaulted on its national debt. This was in large part due to politics, but more significantly, a result of the debt having grown to be so large in the first place. The prime reason it was so large was not sub-prime mortgages, but the near decade-long war in Iraq. It had bled the coffers dry.
Don't expect a post-war boom like what was seen in the 1950s. More likely, the United States may go down the path the United Kingdom took after the Second World War. Once the head of an empire on which the sun never set, the British simply could not afford to rule the world anymore.
We've seen it in the American economic malaise since 2008, with a powerful recession and pathetic rebound. While the end of the Iraq war should mean less military spending, the cutbacks are not likely going to be enough. Iraq war veterans' grandchildren will end up paying for their war.
Yes, there needed to be a response to the 9/11 attacks. That response was Afghanistan. If the focus had been there in the first place, instead of lining up against Iraq, perhaps some resolution could have come to that conflict, too.
Then again, there's a reason Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires. It's a fight they had to fight, but one they ultimately could not win.
Iraq, on the other hand, was not a necessary fight. And as we have seen, they did not win there, either.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected]
