Why, Why, Why?

Bob Herbert has a great column today:

The administration is not willing to commit to an all-out effort to defeat the insurgents in Iraq, and is equally unwilling to reverse course and bring the troops home. Most Americans are abandoning the idea that the war can be "won." Polls are showing that they're tired of the conflict and its relentlessly mounting toll. It's hard to imagine that the population at large will be willing to sacrifice thousands of additional American lives over several more years in pursuit of goals that remain as murky as ever.

Ask a thousand different suits in Washington why we're in Iraq and you'll get a thousand different answers. Ask how we plan to win the war, and you'll get a blank stare.

This is still the biggest question in my mind: How can people support a war that had no coherent explanation, and that people - even "suits in Washington" - have no idea what the objectives are. World War II was pretty simple - the unconditional surrender of the axis powers. Korea was disappointing in it's ending, but the objective and reason behind the conflict were pretty clear. Vietnam was more muddled still, but the objective - defending South Vietnam from Communism - was one the American people could at least write down in a sentence.

There's none of that clarity with Iraq. Increasingly, the only explanation seems to be that America went to war because it could. That this is a supreme war crime should be obvious.