This perception is sustained by the U.S. president's triumphal and premature declaration that major combat operations were over. How can we forget the John Wayne-esque landing aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and the banner hanging on the aircraft carrier declaring "Mission Accomplished?"
But the war did not stop. Instead, it grew. The days gradually turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and months morphed into years. Five long years and 4,000 U.S. military casualties later, the war is still far from over.
In retrospect one can only look back and think: "How naïve of the Bush administration to believe they could wrap up war in a country the size and complexity of Iraq in just two weeks, install democracy as though it was an off-the-shelf, ready-to-install item, and go back to business as usual. But rather than naïve, it was more likely arrogance that led them where they are today.
That was plan A. When it failed Bush and his vice president turned to the second option: plan B.
Plan B, the administration knew, was something they could always fall back on; and that is, the very short attention span most Americans have when it comes to foreign affairs.
Messrs Bush and Cheney had to know that with time the public would grow tired of the war, tired of reading reports in their morning newspapers or watching evening news TV bulletins about countless improvised explosive devices, al-Qaida in Iraq, about a civil war that wasn't, or about Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Eventually other issues would take precedence, they banked on, slowly pushing the war off the front pages and from the top slots.
There would be more pressing matters for the folks at home: the rising cost of gas, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, healthcare, unemployment, or even the Academy Awards, Super Bowl or March madness.
Eventually, the numbers – both the dollar amount, currently standing at $502 billion, and the human cost, now over the 4,000 mark – would cease to have any real meaning; they would simply be numbers. How many people can really understand the value of $502 billion? And as for the 4,000 killed in action, the number will soon enough disappear from the front pages only to reappear once another landmark has been crossed. At a later time it will grab the headlines once again, but then as quickly be forgotten … except by the growing numbers of families and comrades-in-arms they leave behind.
In one respect former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was on the mark when he said: "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."