Iraq war: Lessons learned?

Iraq — a country many Americans probably would like to forget about — came back to the forefront this week with the announcement that the last American combat troops have left the country.

Although the combat mission officially has ended, we still have 50,000 U.S. soldiers there who are not completely out of harm’s way.

Therefore it’s kind of a muddled milestone. There’s no clear-cut victory to trumpet, no decisive moment to celebrate.

It’s instead a time to reflect on what took us to Iraq in the first place and how we can avoid following that twisted path in the future.

People worry about an “exit strategy” for situations such as Iraq.

Perhaps we should be much more concerned about the “entrance strategy” that seemingly was flawed and not thought out very well. Pair that with an exit strategy that really didn’t exist and it became a recipe for trouble.

After seven years mired in a country far, far away, the main question on many minds is this: What have we accomplished?

We did, of course, accomplish one mission: deposing a brutal, kleptocratic regime and eliminating Saddam Hussein as an obstacle to Mideast peace.

But that came at a tremendous cost to America (more than 4,000 dead, tens of thousands wounded, billions of dollars spent and untold damage to the U.S. reputation in the world).

Iraq, too, suffered massively. Its order and society were badly shattered by the war, and it now is confronting a power vacuum and daunting prospects for the future.

It can fairly be said that once we’d broken the back of Iraq, we were obligated to see it through and attempt to help rebuild the country.

And we tried to do that, but only time will tell if our efforts will succeed.

While it’s deserving of some muted celebration, the departure of combat troops from Iraq also should be a stark reminder that war can be a dirty business and is an imperfect enterprise. And it should not be entered into lightly.

All the sacrifices of our soldiers in Iraq — and we should forever remember and honor their noble efforts — will be for naught if we don’t take away some important lessons from our involvement there.

The biggest lesson should be that before we commit our men and women to war, they (and the American people) deserve to know clearly what goals are being pursued. The next time (and there will be a next time, despite the doe-eyed optimism of idealists) we need to get it right.

And while Iraq may seem to be partially in the rear-view mirror of Americans now, Afghanistan and the ongoing war on terror have not gone away.