Remembering Iraq

The violence unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 persists, but Americans, from Barack Obama on down, are eager to declare the Iraq War at an end. Apart from a few diehard neoconservatives still keen to use Mesopotamia as a springboard for the pursuit of imperial fantasies, Americans can’t wait to shake the dust of Iraq from their feet and be done with the place.

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Yet even as we leave, we should not forget. Common decency demands that we honor the service and sacrifice of those who bore the burden of waging that war. No doubt some committee will soon start lobbying for the construction of an Iraq War Memorial to be erected on the Mall in Washington. That effort deserves to succeed.

My own view is that every American war, large or small, ought to be commemorated smack dab in the middle of the nation’s capital. Crowding every inch of the Mall with granite and marble war memorials—the bigger the better—just might help deflate the continuing American illusion that we are a peaceful people desirous of nothing except to be left alone. It might help us see ourselves as we really are.

Yet the commemoration of the Iraq War ought to have a second component: American soldiers and American citizens are owed an accounting of exactly what this war was about. Who devised it? What was its actual purpose? What did it achieve and at what cost? Why did so much go so wrong for so long? Who should be held accountable?

As the U.S. military misadventure in Iraq approaches its conclusion, loose ends abound. We need to tie up as many of those loose ends as we possibly can—not too settle scores or engage in partisan posturing, but to get to the bottom of things.

In Great Britain, the controversies provoked by the Iraq War produced an official investigation—a truth commission, of sorts. Inevitably, the Chilcot Inquiry didn’t satisfy everyone and didn’t answer every question. But it was an honorable and worthy effort, a tribute to British democracy.

Any effort to remember the Iraq War on this side of the water ought to include a similar undertaking. Congress should create and fund a nonpartisan commission of scholars and Iraq War veterans—no politicians and no generals—to investigate the war’s origins, conduct, and outcome.

Where is the member of Congress who will champion this cause? Don’t hold your breath waiting for volunteers.