Resident Fellow Richard Perle

For a government fighting an unpopular war, five years is an eternity. In the sight of history, it's just a blink, far too short for considered judgment or a balanced accounting. But judges and accountants won't wait, so the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq has renewed the debate about that action and its consequences--a debate dominated by the terrible costs, with almost no assessment of the benefits.

The costs are all painfully immediate: thousands of fatalities, vast expenditure, widespread political and diplomatic disapprobation, a reluctance to use force in future conflicts where intervention might prevent larger wars or mass killing.

Some of the benefits are also immediate. Some have only begun to emerge; others will emerge over time. The immediate benefit is the destruction of Saddam's regime. Responsible for two wars with more than a million dead, involved for decades with terrorist groups, rewarding suicide bombers with cash payments, unwilling to document chemical and biological weapons (some of which he had used), Saddam forced the question: should we risk leaving him in place and hope for the best, or destroy his regime and end the risk that he might collaborate in an attack even more devastating than 9/11?

I believe the right decision was made. Baghdad fell in 21 days with few casualties on either side. Twenty-five million Iraqis had been liberated and Saddam's menace eliminated. There would be no weapons of mass murder to be shared with terrorists. And while the expected stockpiles of such weapons turned out not to exist--the world's intelligence agencies having got it wrong--the potential for resuming their production had been destroyed. The unearthing of the mass graves that held some of Saddam's 300,000 victims gave the war a further moral justification.

So what went wrong? I believe the seminal mistake, from which a cascade of other errors flowed, was the failure to hand Iraq over to the Iraqis on the day Baghdad fell. Coalition forces should have remained under an agreement with an interim Iraqi government. Sadly, we turned liberation into an unwelcome occupation that facilitated a deadly insurgency from which we, and the Iraqis, are only now beginning to emerge. With a misplaced confidence--arrogance might be more accurate--that we knew better than the Iraqis how to build their nation on the ruin of three decades of dictatorship, we gave an American a fool's errand, to govern Iraq from Washington.

Plans to set up an interim Iraqi administration to begin reconstruction while preparing the nation for elections had been hotly debated. Support for doing so came mostly from the Pentagon, where the idea of working closely with Saddam's opponents was advanced even before the war. But the State Department and the CIA were vehemently opposed, arguing that only Iraqis who were in the country at the onset of war could manage the task of interim governance. The problem was that Saddam's opponents in Iraq were mostly dead.

When executive departments are deeply divided, the National Security Council tries to tease out a consensus. If that fails, issues of importance are decided by the President. At least that is how it worked in the administration of Ronald Reagan in which I served. But in this most important case, disagreement led to delay and indecision, at times approaching paralysis. The President failed to lead what became a fractious, dysfunctional administration. A decision to stand up an interim government was reversed within days and the ill-fated occupation got underway. Iraqis, many of whom would later be elected to high office, were treated as underlings, unable to influence decisions made by mostly young, well-meaning Americans, many of whom had never been abroad, living in seclusion in Baghdad's "Green Zone."

Politically, the occupation was a disaster. The security situation deteriorated as Al-Qa'eda and Saddam's bitter-enders unleashed an unspeakable reign of terror. Insurgents targeted mosques to incite sectarian divisions. Memory of the coalition's swift victory faded. These were dark days.

Yet, there were bright days, too. Millions of Iraqis defied death to vote in the first truly free elections in an Arab nation. The belief that Arabs were incapable of democracy, which had made it easy for western governments to ally themselves with dictators, was challenged by incredibly brave men and women with ink-stained fingers. The urgent task now is to build on that brave affirmation.

Since the refocused effort known as the "surge", Iraqis in mounting numbers are rejecting the violent path of the insurgency. Al-Qa'eda in Iraq has lost momentum and is struggling to stave off defeat. Traditional Iraqi leaders have turned against the jihadists. And while there are still suicide bombers eager to earn a ticket to paradise by killing innocents, the tide has turned. The prospects for democratic governance are brighter in Iraq than any Arab country. But it will take time.

The "surge'' is working because it is a partnership, not an occupation. It is led by a wiser, chastened administration and an impressive team of military officers. I believe the strategy could have been adopted much earlier, and would have spared much pain.

Only the Iraqis themselves can build a humane, open society that fairly reflects the diversity of a great civilisation. They needed our help to remove Saddam five years ago and they need us to stay the course now. I believe we will.

Richard Perle is a resident fellow at AEI.