WWII is frequently looked upon as a just war with a clear and definitive victor - the Allied Forces led by the US. Nazism was defeated and the world (well the Western part anyway) was saved from tyranny. Since WWII the US has been engaged in a number of conflicts, none of which were "wars" as expressed by the US Constitution, though to those fighting they probably felt pretty war-like. Out of the two dozen or so "conflicts" we've been engaged in since WWII, Vietnam alone holds infamous verb of "lost" as part of its pop history. But to hear pundits talk of Iraq one would think we "lost" that one as well.
If you look back to WWII, what were the objectives of the Allies? How did we measure success and why, looking through the forgiving lens of history, do we consider this conflict, above all others, to be the epitome of a "good and just" cause?
Regime Change
Well, one could hardly argue that getting rid of Hitler wasn't a huge, positive achievement. Removing him from power and holding him accountable for his actions was one of our primary goals of WWII. Yet the same could be said of our goals in Iraq with regards to Saddam Hussein. According to the New York Times, “he (Saddam) murdered as many as a million of his people, many with poison gas. He tortured, maimed and imprisoned countless more. His unprovoked invasion of Iran is estimated to have left another million people dead. His seizure of Kuwait threw the Middle East into crisis. More insidious, arguably, was the physiological damage he inflicted on his own land. Hussein created a nation of informants – friends on friends, circles within circles – making an entire population complicit in his rule.” To be clear, Hitler's actions resulted in more people dying than did Saddam's, and if a large body count is the prime metric of evilness, Hitler should be ranked higher than Saddam. But Stalin and Mao's actions resulted in more people dying than did Hitler’s, so trying to parse degrees of evil seems a bit untenable since the world allowed those two to operate unabated. Suffice it to say that getting rid of Hitler and Saddam were equally compelling goals and metrics of success for their associated conflicts. If that is the case then, our performance in Iraq was equal to that of our performance in WWII. Hitler was removed from power and committed suicide before being held accountable for his actions. Saddam was captured and, in some bizarre manner, held accountable for his actions. Both ended up in the grave as a result of US-led actions.
Post-War Governance
Besides toppling these dictators, another goal of these conflicts was to ensure that a stable democracy flourished in the post-war years. On this metric the Iraq conflict is already ahead of WWII. Nation-wide elections in Germany weren't held until 5 years after the war concluded. Iraq held nation-wide elections before the war was even over, and has consistently held them ever since. Additionally, it's important to remember that well over half of Europe fell under communism post-WWII. For 60+ years eastern European countries that had suffered under Hitler lived under the suffocating and deadly tyranny of communism. There simply is no good, reliable account of how many millions died under Soviet rule, but it is undeniable that had the western forces prevailed and democracy was instituted instead of the Iron Curtain, millions more would have lived. Now compare post-WWII communist Europe to Iraq. Except for Joe Biden, nobody is seriously considering breaking Iraq up into separate countries. And even if that is what eventually happens, it is highly unlikely that any of those new countries would fall under the control of a modern day Joseph Stalin. By this metric, ensuring a post-war stable democracy, we've done far better with the Iraq war than we did in western Europe, and infinitely better than eastern Europe, following WWII.
By the Numbers
While there is some subjectivity to how successful the Iraq war was in regards to the above metrics, there is no subjectivity if we look at some often talked about figures;
Number of people liberated
Civilian casualties
US casualties
Cost
Length of conflict
Here are the figures for WWII. Cost is adjusted for inflation and expressed in 2010 dollars
Number of people liberated - 120,000,000
Civilian casualties - 40,000,000
US casualties - 416,800
Cost - $5,000,000,000,000.00
Length of conflict (days) - 2,189
Here are the figures for Iraq. Cost is adjusted for inflation and expressed in 2010 dollars
Number of people liberated - 30,000,000
Civilian casualties - 108,904
US casualties - 4,475
Cost - $800,000,000,000
Length of conflict (days) - 3,185
In tabular format;
Metric WWII Iraq
# liberated 120,000,000 30,000,000
US cost $5,000,000,000,000 $800,000,000,000
cost per\lib $41,667 $26,667
US deaths 415,000 4,475
civilians liberated per US death 289 6,704
duration in days 2,190 3,185
us deaths per day 189 1.4
civilians liberated per killed 3 275
Putting aside the domestic politics of how we got into the Iraq war, by what yardstick did we lose the conflict? The fact that WMDs weren't found? While there is very legitimate concern over the rationale for the invasion of Iraq, that concern has no bearing on the results of the conflict. Compared to WWII...and every other American conflict save the Revolution and Civil War, our conflict with Iraq was a stunningly subdued victory.
