In terms of its objectives, Operation Iraqi Freedom was a clear success. Saddam Hussein was deposed, tried and executed with ease. “We achieved our goals,” as John Bolton put it. Even so, the Iraq War is usually characterized as the poster child for American failure in foreign affairs, a perception based on questionable assumptions.
The fact that the Iraq war is often mentioned in the same breath as the ongoing conflict in Libya illustrates the West’s collective amnesia regarding just how much of an agent of international chaos Saddam was. As David French observed, the dictator caused “not one but two of the largest conventional military conflicts since World War II—the horrific Iran-Iraq war and Operation Desert Storm.” Between his sponsorship of terrorism abroad attempt to assassinate George H. W. Bush, Saddam was certainly a malevolent force. Aside from downplaying the threat posed by Saddam, arguments against the invasion often concern its supposed side-effects.
Life in Iraq
A common critique of the Iraq War maintains that it has seriously worsened conditions in Iraq. Yet on multiple weighty measures, quality of life in the Arab state either continued to improve throughout the war, or even began to improve when the invasion occurred.
Eli Lake lists several indicators of Iraq’s progress since the invasion. In the two intervening decades, the country’s GDP ballooned approximately tenfold, while life expectancy, literacy rates, and the prevalence of cell phone plans also increased. According to the World Bank, Iraq’s GDP per capita declined from 2000 to 2003, but rose quite swiftly thereafter – that is, it actually started to grow following the invasion. Currently, it is nearly at an all-time high. The suicide rate remained roughly unchanged by the war, while infant mortality continued to diminish.
The Death Toll
A related criticism of the war is that it led to far more deaths among Iraqis than would have occurred had Saddam been left in power. But how high is the casualty figure really? According to Iraq Body Count, documented deaths since 2003 amount to between 187,192 and 210,662 civilians, or 300,000 deaths “including combatants.” Of course, calculations vary. An infamous study published in the Lancet in 2006 came up with a total of over 600,000 deaths. Yet Fred Kaplan, among others, showed that estimate to be critically flawed in an article for Slate, and again in his rejoinder to the bizarrely emotional defense the study’s authors wrote.
Such numbers should be put into context. As Alan Dowd writes, “it pays to recall that Saddam murdered 600,000 Iraqis.”If one includes deaths incurred during his war of aggression against Iran, that figure is reasonable. Human Rights Watch famously estimated the number of people “disappeared,” then killed, by the Ba’athist regime at “between 250,000 and 290,000 people.” This number was based on just the government’s major sprees of detentions and killings.
David French compares Iraq to neighboring Syria, which also had a Ba’athist dictatorship. That tyranny was not overthrown. When the Arab Spring swept across the Middle East, Syria was plunged into a civil war which has made the country “a charnel house.” We can supplement this point with some numbers. According to the UN, the decade from 2011 to 2021 saw over 350,000 deaths in the Syrian Civil War. Combined with Iraq Body Count’s figure, this implies that, despite having a smaller population, Syria experienced more deaths from falling into civil war than Iraq experienced from an American invasion. This illustrates that the lack of American intervention does not mean many people will not suffer. Furthermore, the Syrian Network for Human Rights currently estimates that “Syrian regime forces and Iranian militias” are responsible for 87% of the war’s civilian casualties. Note also that Syria’s population plummeted after its civil war began, whereas Iraq’s kept rising fairly smoothly after the invasion.
Moreover, to blame all deaths from fighting in Iraq since 2003 on the Iraq War seems to assume that, without the invasion, Saddam would have remained in power and acted as a guarantor of stability in perpetuity. After all, the potential for sectarian pandemonium was already brewing in Iraq. The country was teeming with terrorists before Saddam was toppled, as Douglas Murray has detailed. These included even Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group that would later become ISIS.
Iraqi Public Opinion
Opponents of Operation Iraqi Freedom also tend to believe that Iraq’s populace deeply resents the invasion. This is a questionable notion.
According to a 2023 analysis, a survey conducted in Baghdad right after the arrival of US troops found that 49% of respondents considered the American intervention beneficial, whereas 47% thought it was “bad for them.” In a 2005 survey, 67% of Iraqis said “that their lives in 2005 were better than they [had been] during Saddam’s regime.” However, a 2023 poll showed a changed climate of opinion. By now, respondents favored life under Saddam over current conditions by 36% to 31%, a plurality replicated among both Shia and Sunni Arabs, though to varying degrees. In contrast, 63% of Kurds still preferred life without Hussein.
So are the critics right that the war has turned Iraq against the United States? Not really. As the author notes, most of those who prefer Iraq under Saddam are under 30, making them too young to have comprehensive memories of that time. Clearly, he infers, the answers to this question express people’s genuine “opinion of the former regime” less than “their discontent with the current situation.”
In any event, if only 45% of Iraqis view the United States as “a reliable partner,” that is still well above the 32% who think the same of Iran.
Iranian Influence
Probably the strongest objection to the war is that deposing Saddam allowed Iraq to drift into Iran’s orbit. This argument has gained force lately, as the Popular Mobilization Force (PMF), which is loyal to Iran, expands its influence in Iraq.
Troublingly, Kataib Hezbollah, which has attacked US forces on numerous occasions, is part of the PMF and thereby receives Iraqi government funding. Furthermore, Iran’s allies in Iraq are instrumentalizing the war between Israel and Hamas “to press for the complete withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.”
Therefore, this criticism is reasonable. Iran filled the power vacuum in the Middle East left by Saddam’s demise. Even so, one qualification is obviously in order. It stands to reason that Iran’s influence in Iraq, as in the region more broadly, has increased due to the 50 billion dollars or more released to Iran under Joe Biden. Earlier, sanctions relief under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) had already enriched Iran by tens of billions of dollars in previously frozen assets, perhaps as much as $50 billion. In contrast, Iran’s then-president Rouhani stated in 2020 that American sanctions restored by leaving the JCPOA had deprived Iran of $200 billion.
Funds obtained through sanctions relief can also be assumed to have facilitated Hamas’s Iranian-backed assault on Israel, which, as mentioned, has provided an opportunity to expand Tehran’s influence in Iraq.
Lastly, the PMF was created in 2014, in response to the rise of ISIS. That was itself a consequence of the 2011 withdrawal of American troops as opposed to the invasion itself, a withdrawal which John Bolton had already cautioned at the time. Rather presciently, he had warned that the exit would “enhance Iran’s influence there and throughout the region.”
It would therefore be a stretch to blame all of Iran’s current influence in Iraq on the US invasion. Once again, much of the mess laid at the feet of American interventionism is more directly due to a lack of commitment to securing Iraq.
Critics who charge the overthrow of Saddam with driving Iraq into Iran’s arms may also find history turning against them. That argument works now, but how much longer will Iran remain a theocracy? In the future, the country could become a democratic country – and possibly even a US ally, which it was prior to the Iranian Revolution. Under such circumstances, the fact that Iraq is no longer an opponent of Tehran could be beneficial in the long run.
ConclusionThe Iraq War was manifestly a success, even if the results of the conflict have been portrayed by the media as a disaster – just as with the Tet Offensive. However, the consensus one sees in the media does not correspond to the American public’s perceptions. In 2019, according to Gallup, while 50% of Americans think the Iraq War was a “a mistake,” 45% do not, even if most commentary on the war seems exclusively negative.