I tend to share stories from the deeper past here. The time period of many of my posts stretch across the 19th and early 20th centuries in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region.

But sometimes the past we need to reckon with is not a century away. Sometimes it is only twenty years behind us.

The editorial below appeared in the Pottsville Republican-Herald of Pottsville, PA in March 2004, marking the first anniversary of the United States invasion of Iraq. At that moment, 660 American soldiers had already been killed and the central justification for the war – Weapons of Mass Destruction – had begun to unravel.

The author captured the uncertainty and unease of that first year of conflict, asking questions that were already beginning to trouble many Americans as Iraq descended into violent civil war and an insurgency began to grow. In fact, when this editorial was published, US forces were just days away from major combat operations in the Iraqi city of Fallujah that have since gone down as some of the most brutal fighting of the conflict.

The writer could not yet know that the Iraq War would stretch on for years, destabilize an entire region, and shape American politics and foreign policy for a generation.

Yet the letter captures something important: the early recognition that military action carries consequences far beyond the moments when the first bombs fall and initial successes stack up.

I share it now because the United States has launched its largest military operation since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. History rarely repeats itself neatly, but it can offer vital perspective.

This editorial reminds us how quickly war can spin out of control, how slowly its meaning becomes clear, and how decisions made in a matter of days or weeks can shape the world for months, years, and even decades.

---

Questions remain on Iraq year later

Weapons sought but never found

It has been a year since the venture the benefit of the United States launched its war against Iraq. Now, 660 American soldiers are dead, most recently a young man from Shamokin.

Thousands are injured or ill. Many of the wounded have lost limbs or eyes. These are all facts.

It is also a fact that we were told that we would invade the country because its government possessed weapons of mass destruction.

We made this decision in spite of warnings from United Nations inspectors, who were actually inside the country, that the weapons of mass destruction were not there.

Another fact is that now our government is admitting that the weapons of mass destruction might no longer have existed at the time of invasion, even though Iraq had them in the past.

So why did we invade Iraq? It couldn’t just be to promote the cause of democracy, otherwise we would be invading Haiti at the moment, or we would be putting more effort into building up a democratic regime in Afghanistan – 114 American soldiers have been killed there by the way, and we still don’t have Osama bin Laden.

We Americans are good people.

As a result, we don’t want to believe bad things about our leaders. We want to think that our nation of good people made a good decision and elected good people to govern us and deal with other nations in a just and fair way.

Moreover, a collective guilt for the lack of respect afforded in the past to our veterans who fought and died in Southeast Asia makes us want to give any military adventure the benefit of the doubt.

The suggestion that a president would allow a matter of private vengeance to guide his decision to wage war and kill hundreds or thousands of foreign civilians is difficult to swallow.

The idea that we invaded Iraq and sacrificed the lives of young Americans so that big American business can be guaranteed a steady flow of oil is equally impalpable.

Nobody wants to think that the administration manipulated the pain and sorrow of 9/11, turning it into a pretext for the invasion of Iraq.

Well, we must consider that oil is important. It is the main fuel for our industry and agriculture. Deprived of it for too long, our society would collapse.

Conservative think tanks have long maintained that the United States must gain control of a country in the Middle East so that it can control the oil supplies if it intends to maintain its level of influence in the world.

If that is the case, and it is us or them, who would be angry with a government that puts the interests of its people first?However, it doesn’t have to be us or them. There are alternatives to oil.

Moreover, even if we do get control of the oil, it will still run out some day – probably within the lifetimes of those Americans who are children at the moment – and then we’ll have to come up with alternatives without the luxury of time.

So we are only delaying the inevitable and that isn’t worth a single American life.

---

Listen to our most recent episode of the Public History podcast for more on this topic.