Jacob Weisberg delivers four unspeakable truths about the fight (and I tend to agree with them):
1. The war was a mistake.
2. Our soldiers are as much victims as heroes. "People join the military for a variety of reasons, of course, but since the Iraq war turned ugly, the all-volunteer Army has been lowering educational standards, raising enlistment bonuses, and looking past criminal records. The lack of better choices is a larger and larger factor in the choice of military service. Our troops in Iraq may not see themselves as cannon fodder or victims of presidential misjudgments, but that doesn’t mean they’re not."
3. American lives lost in Iraq have been wasted.
4. America is losing or has already lost the war.
Chaim Amalek writes:
Yes, he does (my reading comprehension skills are in steep decline). But the $100,000,000,000 question is, given that we ARE in Iraq, HAVE deposed Saddam, and ARE engaged with some fairly wicked people, what do we do? Pull the plug and leave those Iraqis who sided with us to their predictable fate? Cede a third of the country to Iran, with the rest going to Syria?" Now that we are there, we should protect the oil fields and those areas that are of most strategic importance for the United States. Aside from that, we should pull our troops out of harm’s way. We should conduct ourselves in Iraq in the same way we should run our immigration policy — in our self-interest. If immigrants have needed skills and money, we should let them into our country. If they don’t, we should not. If the benefits of us controlling certain parts of Iraq exceeds the cost, then we should do it and keep doing it until the cost exceeds the benefit. We should primarily think about the self-interest of the United States and how we can achieve it at the least cost (in lives and dollars).
