On September 1, President Obama announced the formal end to combat operations within Iraq, ending the combat phase of the third longest war fought in US history. For comparative purposes, the table below lists the duration of several major US engagements:

The President’s declaration of the “end of combat operations” is significant, but its impact will most be felt by Americans who have little or no direct stake in Iraq.  For many, if not most, Americans, the moment will spark brief interest with some political and economic ramifications and then shall largely pass.   For the Americans who have loved ones serving in the armed forces, the declaration may feel like semantics over substance.  Tens of thousands of American soldiers remain in harm’s way in Iraq and will for the foreseeable future.  Declaring combat to be over isn’t likely to mean combat is over.

It’s hard to fathom that two of the three longest wars ever fought in US history were fought concurrently.  It’s even harder to fathom that for one of those engagements, the rationale for the war remains murky to this day.  The Bush administration never settled on one consistent justification for the Iraq invasion: preemptive strike against a nation colluding with al-Qaeda to destroy the US; a need to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction within Iraq; Iraq’s failure to abide by UN resolutions and its abuse of an oil for food program; the need to remove a brutal dictator….  On top of those justifications, commentators have posited several additional theories (with varying degrees of credibility) for the US engagement in Iraq: oil, a need by Bush to complete work his father began, a belief that democracy could be planted in Iraq and then cultivated throughout the Middle East, and more.

If the objectives of the war were murky, so, too, was the identity of the enemy itself.  The enemy was self-selecting, and lived within the neighborhood of the ally.  The only uniform characteristic of the enemy was allegiance to an idea; of course, ideas don’t wear uniforms.

The oddities of the Iraq War which set it apart from most other US wars- group actors rather than state actors, lengthy engagements, murky objectives- may become the rule rather than the exception.  The single largest reason for such a shift in war’s identifying characteristics may be technology.

Military technology makes war increasingly impersonal.  The days of crossing an open field to charge enemy lines are largely over. Today, enemy combatants may be killed by drone airplanes, or by rockets launched from afar, or any other number of remote means.  That technological capability means fewer military casualties and fewer deployed troops (both very positive), but it may also correlate with less interest and sacrifice by a civilian population in and for its nation’s wars- which makes war easier to launch and much harder to stop.  It is far easier for a civilian population to suffer war’s costs if there are relatively few combat casualties than it is to suffer war when the machine of death is fully engaged.  By lowering war’s “barriers to entry,” technology can result in more frequent military engagements with increasingly lower thresholds of justification for each such engagement.  This is precisely the threat President Eisenhower foresaw in a prescient 1961 speech:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades… Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Technology hasn’t only changed the characteristics of war, it has also arguably changed the participants. Other than isolated examples, such as the US war against the Barbary Pirates in the early 1800s, war has historically been fought between nation states and not between a nation state and rogue groups. Not so any more. Modern warfare capabilities make it impractical for most nation states to “win” a traditional military engagement against a superpower such as the United States (the Gulf War, for example, lasted only about 45 days). That fact alone makes it less likely nation states will directly attempt to incite such superpowers to war. Instead, nation states may find it preferable to fund rogue groups (such as al-Qaeda) to take on the difficult task of toppling a superpower. Alternatively, rogue groups may pursue that goal independent of state support. Either way, superpowers may find conflict with rogue groups to be the new norm.

This is not to say that the American soldiers who heroically sacrifice their time, sweat, blood, comfort and even lives at the request of their nation do so in vain. They proudly carry the banner of the United States of America throughout the world and do more good than any other fighting force in the history of the world in the process. Rather than conquer Iraq for example, the American military has worked hand in hand with a new Iraqi government, chosen by its people, and spent hundreds of billions building up a nation which suffered under the rule of a brutal dictator for decades. Similar efforts are underway in Afghanistan and build on American efforts following prior military engagements, such as Germany and Japan.

Even while American efforts in combat operations may ultimately produce much good, Eisenhower’s warning rings true. The “cost” of war cannot be viewed as merely financial, despite technology’s and the military industrial establishment’s arguments to the contrary. Human life is precious, and a nation’s best shouldn’t be sent to die for anything less than a necessary cause. The best tool to combat the ease with which a nation may enter into war is, as Eisenhower noted, an alert and informed civilian population. Apathy is the worst enemy of democracy.

Nevertheless, war will sometimes be necessary. And it will always be ugly. John Stuart Mill perhaps put it best:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

President Obama’s call for the end of combat operations in Iraq is a cause for celebration, but it is also a call for a new review of the forces and circumstances that led the US into Iraq in the first place. Was the engagement a critical cause, worthy of the sacrifice so many have paid, or was it something less which should have remained untouched? Americans need to ask these questions and demand the answers. The process is fundamental to being alert and informed. Regardless of the conclusion one reaches on the question of Iraq, the process of reaching the conclusion will better inform the future.