History Matters In Iraq And Afghanistan
There was a casual sort of brushing off of the past from Congressman Walter Jones earlier this week. Discussing Afghanistan policy on the floor of the House of Representatives, Jones declared, “I do agree with Mr. Obama, the war should have always been Afghanistan and we should not have gone into Iraq, but that is history now.”
It’s rather convenient for Walter Jones to dismiss the decision to rush into a war in Iraq as mere history. Jones is the member of Congress who engaged in wild, ranting speeches demanding that the invasion of Iraq begin, and as quickly as possible. It was Jones who renamed the french fries in the congressional cafeteria “freedom fries”, because he was outraged at the government of France for refusing to help get the Iraq war going on an accelerated timeline.
The truth is that, although the decision to invade Iraq was made several years ago, that decision is not just history, something to be forgotten. We are still living with the terrible consequences of that decision today. The American military occupation of Iraq is still very much in the sphere of current events, and if politicians like Walter Jones had not been in such a hurry to insist on war, life in the United States and elsewhere around the world would be much better than it is today.
Instead of trying to forget the mistake they made in 2002, politicians like Walter Jones would do better to remember the kind of thinking that led them to support what they should have known was an unwise policy. If members of Congress would reflect upon their tragic mistake in starting the war in Iraq, they might make wiser decisions about what to do with the mess in Afghanistan.
By trying to leave the mistake of Iraq in the past, Representatives like Jones are making additional blunders more likely in the future.
