Its defenders were wrong—and so were its critics

The Iraq War is the war that never ended. That’s true literally, in that U.S. troops are still in Iraq some 16 years after the American invasion, and figuratively, in that recriminations over Iraq — why the United States invaded, what went wrong, whether different outcomes were possible — continue to influence U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics to this day. The Iraq War has been a significant issue in every presidential election since it began in 2003. It has cast a shadow over every subsequent discussion of whether, where, and how the United States should use force. It has …