Cover Story

A bittersweet birthday

18 March 2006

On 20 March, the Iraq conflict reaches its third anniversary. Con Coughlin defends the decision to invade, explores the impact of Blair on Bush’s second term — and reveals what Condoleezza Rice thinks of David Cameron

Squabbling generals, political score-settling and a country reportedly on the brink of civil war. The third anniversary of the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom this week — which coincides with kidnappings and explosions in Gaza and the West Bank — hardly seems a cause for celebration.

The painful and challenging task of rebuilding Iraq after 35 years of Baathist tyranny is far from complete, but that must now take second place to the increasingly bitter battle that is being waged over history’s judgment: whether the war was justified in the first place, and whether postwar Iraq could have been handled better.

The old adage that the victor wins the right to set the historical record to his advantage is becoming something of an obsession for those who participated in the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s despotism. Take the military campaign. No less an authority on warfare than the peerless Sir John Keegan has concluded that the military campaign to overthrow Saddam’s regime, which began on 20 March 2003, was a brilliant success, achieving all of its stated military objectives within the space of just 21 days.