MISCONCEIVED, INCOMPETENTLY executed, horrendously damaging and vastly expensive, the US-led invasion of Iraq five years ago continues to dog world politics and divide American and international opinion. President Bush confidently defended the war yesterday, saying that "because we acted, the world is better and the United States is safer. Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight that America can and must win." Republican candidate John McCain said the US is "on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism." But Barack Obama asked pertinently: "And where are we for all of this sacrifice? We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad."
These flat disagreements are central facts in the US presidential campaign and will have to be resolved politically at the polling booths. Although it has receded as the main electoral issue the war profoundly affects debates on the deteriorating economy there, given its exploding cost, which some estimates put at an eventual $3 trillion. That would cover many of the employment, health, educational and social security expenditures demanded by voters. The case made by Mr Bush and his defenders does not convincingly compensate for this costliness, given the spiralling price of oil and the sheer expense of maintaining troops in Iraq indefinitely.
Removing Saddam Hussein from power was originally justified mainly because he was alleged to have weapons of mass destruction. That was wrong and quite misleading, as was dramatically confirmed by the United Nations and other authorities after the invasion. The separate case made by the war's apologists that Saddam Hussein was directly associated with al-Qaeda terrorism is equally incorrect. In fact that scourge was fanned and inflamed by the war, and especially during its incompetent aftermath when tens of thousands of Sunni Iraqis were summarily purged from the toppled regime.
The utter failure to plan and execute a nation-building programme left them little option but to mount an indigenous campaign of terrorism against the invaders which attracted external al-Qaeda support. Together they provoked a murderous civil war between Sunni and Shia Iraqis which peaked in 2006. The invasion force stoked this conflict and sectarianised it. The decision last year of some Sunni groups to support US troops against their erstwhile terrorist allies facilitated Mr Bush's surge policy of sending extra troops; but it is quite unclear as yet whether the reduced violence of recent months is an enduring fact. Iraqi casualties are certainly in the hundreds of thousands.
Iraq is a broken state and Saddam's demise created a regional power vacuum which has been filled by its long-term antagonist Iran, the war's main beneficiary. That is a great historical irony. If mismanaged or exploited by the Washington war party it could still pull the US into an even more dangerous military confrontation. Mr Bush's successor will be left with the most difficult decisions on how to get out of this strategic quagmire which has so damaged the US's international standing.