An empire or a republic? Iraq War leaves questions

President Barack Obama announced last week that Operation Iraqi Freedom is now over.

With the withdrawal of 100,000 troops, the fourth longest war in the history of the United States (shorter only than the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the Vietnam and Revolutionary wars) has been declared a win.

Obama said the Iraqi security forces now have primary responsibility for security and that only a "transitional force" of American troops would remain to backup the Iraqi security forces.

So what will the role of the U.S. be in Iraq from here on?

To answer that question, we have to get away from the rhetoric of our leaders and look at the facts instead.

The U.S. State Department has built an embassy in Iraq that is the largest in the history of civilization. It is the size of the Vatican City.

To protect that embassy, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told Congress that between 6,000 and 7,000 private security forces would be necessary.

To put that in perspective, there are a total of 4,000 U.S. Special Forces in the world.

Those armed guards aren't counted in the number of U.S. forces in Iraq, because they are mercenaries from private companies like Blackwater.

More than 100,000 private forces will remain in Iraq.

So we reduced U.S. forces from 144,000 to 50,000, but we're leaving 100,000 mercenaries in the country.

Those mercenary armies have been responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the war, including Blackwater's killing of 17 civilians in the notorious Nisour Square incident.

That incident, which the FBI said "at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules," led to both the U.S. and Iraqi governments refusing to let Blackwater operate in Iraq.

Blackwater's response?

They created over 30 "shell" companies to apply for military contracts without revealing their sordid name to the government.

The owner of Blackwater, Erik Prince, was secretly recorded saying that Iraqis "crawled out of the sewer, and they have a 1200 A.D. mentality."

When his employees brought a lawsuit against him, that self-proclaimed patriot moved to Abu Dhabi, which has no extradition treaty with the U.S.

Companies like that will continue the occupation of Iraq.

In addition to the eighty-football-field sized embassy in Baghdad, 50,000 troops and 100,000 mercenaries that are being left in Iraq, the U.S. military will also establish five "Enduring Presence Posts" at U.S. military bases in Ninewa, Erbil, Kirkuk, Diyala and Basra.

So the government and media aren't being entirely honest about the "withdrawal" from Iraq. But the government has always been dishonest about Iraq. And the media has always been complacent.

This war was founded on lies.

It was sold to the public and taxpayers as a war of necessity to stop an inevitable attack from Saddam Hussein's regime.

Then it was about the freedom of Iraqis. Then it became a stop-gap measure to prevent a civil war. Then it was an anti-insurgent battle.

But, according to the rhetoric of both administrations that have overseen the Iraq war, it has always been in the best interest of the Iraqi people.

A peer-reviewed study published in 2006 in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, estimated that over 650,000 Iraqis had been killed as a direct result of the U.S. invasion. And that was more than half the war ago.

The UN Refugee Agency estimates that there are over 3.5 million Iraqi refugees.

So the idea that the war has helped Iraqis is, at best, a very tough case to make.

What about Americans? Has the war been good for us?

It certainly hasn't for the 4,416 U.S. service members who died in Iraq – or their families.

For the 300,000 soldiers who have served three or more tours, it has been exceedingly difficult.

What about the taxpayers, who conservatives love to proclaim are their primary concern?

Remember when Paul Wolfowitz said the reconstruction of Iraq would pay for itself? Or when Donald Rumsfeld said the war would cost American taxpayers between $50 and $60 billion?

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist, published a peer-reviewed study that estimated the cost to U.S. taxpayers of the Iraq War at $3 trillion. That was his conservative estimate.

There are about 100 million taxpayers in the U.S. That puts the per-taxpayer cost of the war at $30,000 each.

I'd rather have the cash.

Of course, those costs have yet to be felt, because both the Iraq and Afghan wars are financed by borrowing.

But the economic reality will hit home sooner or later, and it's going to hurt.

Real unemployment in the U.S. is currently 16.7 percent. One of every six Americans is unemployed or underemployed.

There is little doubt left that economic recovery has faltered.

We, as a country, have some very difficult choices to make.

After World War II, Britain realized they could keep either their empire or their republic.

They chose well.

The Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans and so many others had less foresight.

Which path will we follow?