Sounds Of Silence

"It's quiet tonight."
"Yeah, a little too quiet."
Insert sound of crickets chirping here.
Do they have crickets in Iraq? We can ask some of the American soldiers coming home this holiday season after nine years of planting seeds of democracy while avoiding improvised explosive devices. Sure, just up the road apiece there are plenty of service men and women ducking and dodging, but in the former Mesopotamia, the guns have gone silent.
Okay, maybe that's overstating it. It will probably be another few thousand years before lasting peace comes to the cradle of civilization, but for now we can savor the fact that after a decade of fighting and dying for regime change that occurred eight years ago when Saddam Hussein was captured. Then there was all that sorting out that was left to do. Wars don't just end when we capture the bad guy. There was still plenty of security that needed to be put in place and warring factions to be wrestled to the ground.
Now that's all taken care of. That's why we can come home from Iraq with a clear conscience. We certainly don't need to worry about any weapons of mass destruction. Any destruction that needs to be done there can be done a few at a time, thank you very much. Mission accomplished there. But can we put this one in the "W" column? Perhaps simply because we met our objectives and it happens to be the middle initial of the guy who got us into the mess in the first place. In the meantime, history will determine if all the sacrifices made by Americans on the front lines and on the home front. For now, we'll enjoy a pause in the action.