The End of the Iraq War

The war in Afghanistan (I don't like that term, but it's the common one, so there it is) has been in the news lately. The president is promising to decrease troop strength there. The Mainstream Media is still sending in live reporters in the midst of live firefights to give us live reports. That's still there.

It struck me recently that I haven't heard a peep out of Iraq for quite awhile. I thought that perhaps I was just not a diligent news follower. I toyed with the idea that it was a media conspiracy. You know, "We like the president, so we will keep our mouths shut about Iraq." That kind of thing. Sounded all too ... conspiratorial. So I thought I'd take a look and see what was out there.

I noticed that the Associated Press is reporting that there have been 4,466 deaths in the Iraq war so far. (Oddly, the number is down from the number originally reported.) They also say that roughly 3,500 of those were due to hostile action, and that another 32,000 plus were injured in that time. Um, okay. But what's going on? Is there fighting? Are they coming home? What's happening out there? Not much news coming out of Iraq. Maybe it's all over?

According to icasualties.org, 59% of the military fatalities in Afghanistan have occurred in the last two years, while the initial 41% took place in the prior 7 years of the conflict. Now that isn't a statistic I've heard on the news. The majority of deaths in Afghanistan have occurred in the last 20% of the time that the conflict has been going on, and that is all on the president's watch. It's also interesting that, according to a study by Michael Heaney and Fabio Rojas, since President Obama has taken office, the anti-war movement has almost entirely vanished. As part of a partisan political force, it had momentum from 2001 to 2008, but dropped off the map when the Democrats took the White House. It appears, then, that the Left is not so much "anti-war" as much as partisan politics. This is further demonstrated in the president's promise to end these wars while engaging in an unapproved and seemingly illegal engagement in Libya. And, as Nick Croucher points out, as it turns out, WWI, WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War were all fought under Democrats. Are they "anti-war" or simply partisan politics?

So now I've slid back to my original thought. I know that the media is not the best source for news. I know that the media will report what they want us to hear, not what is necessarily news. We aren't likely to find that the majority of deaths in Afghanistan have taken place under Obama. We don't hear much out of Iraq, likely because the president has decided it was over and if the news keeps quiet on it, it is. We don't see anymore protests because it isn't about war; it's about politics. Or, to put it another way, I've slid back to my original conspiracy fear, and I'm afraid I just might be stuck with it.