It's About Effing Time

Slowly, ever so slowly, the realization that America cannot win in Iraq is percolating in to respectable circles. For the latest, see John Kerry's op-ed in the New York Times.

WE are now in the third war in Iraq in as many years. The first was against Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction. The second was against terrorists whom, the administration said, it was better to fight over there than here. Now we find our troops in the middle of an escalating civil war.

Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion.

Indeed, it would be immoral. But Johnny, you've got the wrong tense. It has been immoral. It is immoral. The entire war has been a colossally immoral waste of human life on all sides.

I'll keep saying it until the war is over: This war was never - ever - going to end well. The US was never going to achieve its goals, the Iraqis were never going to be "liberated" in any reasonable sense of that word, and there were never going to be any WMDs to find and destroy. The only notable accomplishment of the US Government in Iraq has been to kill at least tens, and possibly hundreds of thousands of people.

For nothing.

I'm reminded of something Billmon wrote in April of 2004, agonizing over supporting Kerry:

Am I the only one who finds this incredibly ironic? That John Kerry, who launched his political career as an angry veteran protesting a disastrous, unwinnable war, is now a presidential candidate glibly endorsing a disastrous, unwinnable war?... But I do have one question I'd like to ask -- even if it gets Whiskey Bar delisted from the Kerry campaign blog. It shouldn't be too hard to answer, since I know he's heard it before.

So please tell me Senator: How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?