Who won the Iraq war.
Walter Russell Mead makes the rather bold claim that the U.S. war in Iraq "changed the course of world history" because it resulted in the loss of stature and defeat for al-Qaeda in Iraq and generally helped to turn the Arab world off of al-Qaeda's brand of terrorist violence. Bold assertion aside, Mead's point begs the question: could the U.S. have "defeated" al-Qaeda another way? Had we focused our counter-terrorism efforts on zeroing out the remaining al-Qaeda leadership around the world, while abstaining from any large-scale occupation of an Arab country, I suspect we'd find ourselves in much the same place vis-a-vis al-Qaeda; not to mention the fact that we'd have lost far fewer soldiers and not have tacked on several hundred billion in debt.
(AP Photo)