An 'Absolute Will To Forget': Iraq Casts Shorter Shadow Than Vietnam
Sometimes the whole country wants to forget.
Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. The last U.S. troops didn't leave that country until the end of 2011.
But Iraq, which dominated much of the nation's political discourse over the past decade, already seems largely forgotten.
"The Iraq War casts a shadow, but not a very large one," says Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Iraq still matters in policymaking circles. Its lessons help explain why President Obama waves off calls for a military intervention in Syria.
"There does seem to be an Iraq syndrome, at least in the foreign policy establishment, in showing virtually no commitment for something that might morph into an Iraq or an Afghanistan," says William Wohlforth, a government professor at Dartmouth College.
But Iraq has not led to a wholesale restructuring of the U.S. military, as the Vietnam War did. And as controversial as it was at the time, Iraq did not trigger the sort of political and cultural convulsions that Vietnam did.
Vietnam remained a difficult subject for years, if not decades, after the fighting stopped, while Iraq has already just about disappeared from political discourse.
"When a bad war ends, the inclination is not to think about it and move on," says William Schneider, a public policy professor at George Mason University.
Political Consequences
Iraq was a leading political issue throughout the presidency of George W. Bush, especially after the lightning attack and quick march to Baghdad gave way to a violent insurgency.
The course of the war went a long way toward explaining why Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress in 2006.
“ Very few are going to come forward and claim Iraq as a victory, but it doesn't seem as unambiguous a defeat as Vietnam.