In March of 2003, the United States invaded Iraq after a 48-hour ultimatum against Saddam Hussein to step down and turn in his "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs). The American people were promised by the US government that the Iraq War would be over in a matter of days—"shock and awe," so to speak—or weeks at most.

Although not quite within the time promised, by May of the year, President George W. Bush stepped on a navy ship and proclaimed to the world, "mission accomplished" for the Iraq War. In December, Hussein was in custody, but the WMDs—"proof" of Iraq’s potential status as a terrorist threat to the United States—never surfaced, nor did any connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.

The United States was engulfed in an Iraq War. It had saved a country from the rule of a dictator, but it did so by trying to force its own views on a culture so radically different from it own, without approval—or at least with only initial approval—of most of the world, and without much of a plan to change Iraq into a functioning, self-sustaining democratic nation.

Now the United States, as the nation responsible for starting one Iraq War against Hussein and opening the nation up to another internal Iraq War is stuck trying to get the fledgling democratic country to stand on its own to suppress insurgency.

Hussein’s dictatorship, with all of its evils, had been the dam keeping back the flood of a civil war brewing between the followers of two of the three sects of Islam in Iraq, the Sunnis and the Shias, who both want supremacy in the country.

Al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the only foreign attacks on mainland America in over two hundred years—the reason the United States decided to "police" the world and bring potential terrorists like Hussein down before they do more harm—now really has entered Iraq to help stir up problems for Americans fighting the Iraq War.

Most of America’s allies that did show an initial support of starting the Iraq War—Great Britain, for example—have started pulling out or radically decreasing its forces aiding America in the Iraq War. America started the Iraq War and now, well over four years later, America is practically left alone struggling to bring some sense of order to the country.

The American government’s "goal" for "winning" the Iraq War has changed dramatically over the years, although it has never been entirely clear. Was the Iraq War "won" when President Bush declared "mission accomplished"? Was the Iraq War "won" when the country had its first democratic elections?

Now the president at least admits that total peace will never be possible in Iraq—but how much peace is the government aiming for? Is supporting the Iraqi government and military so that they can calm the insurgency entirely on their own one day "winning" the Iraq War? When will that day come? When can Americans say—even if some American troops must still be stationed in Iraq as they are in Afghanistan and other countries—that their country is no longer at war?

Supporters of the Iraq War must realize that, far from "emboldening the terrorists" and "not supporting our troops," the Americans against the Iraq War want to make America’s defense a priority, they want the huge casualties of innocent Iraqi civilians to cease, and most of all, they want our sons and daughters home. These Americans want—and deserve, according to the principles that founded this nation—answers.