It has been over a decade since the United States has entered Iraq, and there is still no clear winner.

Fifteen years ago on March 20, 2002, U.S. troops invaded Iraq in the aftermath of 9/11 terrorist attacks under the guise that Saddam Hussein was harboring, “weapons of mass destruction.”

It was begun by then President George W. Bush. However, it didn’t end when Bush left the White House, nor did it end when Hussein’s government was overthrown. It started a wave that became the norm for Middle Eastern news and international politics in the 21st century.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were brutally killed. The Middle East was still rocked from its own civil wars. No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

What began as a war to remove a threat to the US became an exercise in nation building.  Many soldiers served multiple deployments to Iraq.

Matt Ufford served in the Marine Corps from 2000 to 2004.  He entered the war at age 24 and told The New York Times, “We brought war everywhere we went.”

And bring war they did. The highly disputed numbers are staggering enough to make your stomach drop to the floor. Credible estimates of Iraq War casualties range from 150,000 to 460,000. Other estimates, such as the 2006 Lancet study, and the 2007 Opinion Research Business survey, put the numbers as high as 650,000 and 1.2 million respectively, while body counts, which likely underestimate mortality, put the numbers as low as 110,000.

The final death counts are just estimates but are devastating enough. One such study, according to Splinter, suggested there were 500,000 “avoidable deaths” since the Iraq War started. Still, a new poll by Pew Research said 43 percent of Americans continue to agree with the decision to invade Iraq.

Iraq’s government said that Iraqi authorities would coordinate US troop presence with President the current standing of our military head, Donald Trump. Recently and the decline in ISIS activity has decreased the need for US troops, according to the Iraqi government.

In December, Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi declared the military mission against ISIS complete.  

“Our heroic armed forces have now secured the entire length of the Iraq-Syria border,” Al-Abadi posted on his Twitter account, CNN reported.

As ISIS has been driven out of Iraq, the ongoing presence of US troops is being discussed by both the Iraqi and US governments.

“Iraqi government will determine the level of the American presence and its nature for the next phase,” Saad al-Hadithi, the Iraqi government spokesman, told CNN.

With President Donald Trump seemingly on the verge of war with North Korea, Iran, and whomever- as a society we have learned far too little from the last 15 years.