1 Boring Old Man

How does one measure a war? Would it be measured in loss of life, or cost, or winning or losing? Perhaps measured in terms of what was created [Revolution] or perhaps, what was prevented [World War II]. One thing for sure – America has certainly had its share of wars in our brief 230 years in existence, so we ought to be experts in making this kind of evaluation.

We’ve been fighting in Afghanistan for five years, and in Iraq for three and a half years. We’ve lost 340 soldiers in Afghanistan and 2809 soldiers [as of today] in Iraq. The amount of money spent in these two wars is staggering – $337 billion in Iraq alone to date. As important as these numbers are, their importance is dimmed by looking at the table. World War II, for example, was a bloodbath, but that’s not how we think of it. It was the price we paid for winning a war that could not be lost. On the other had, the Civil War was pretty terrible, given that only Americans were fighting in it. It was a war that some think didn’t need to be fought – in retrospect. On the other hand, given the stakes, it may have been our most important war.

But these two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq, must be evaluated in a different way. We had little choice with Afghanistan. The country housed al Qaeda who attacked us. We had to fight that war. Iraq? Certainly no reason to rush to war there. We’d already beaten them once. Bush was right to insist on inspections. He was beyond wrong to invade their country. He had no solid intelligence to support his stated reason to go there. The unstated reason, the Bush Doctrine, was a piece of foreign policy filled with pitfalls. But mostly, everyone with any sense predicted that it would destabilize the country which would disintegrate into a sectarian civil war. It was a war entered with lies, a war doomed from the start, a war badly executed with no exit plan, and had nothing to do with our military goals. We’ve run up an enormous debt, alienated our allies, and played into our enemies hands.

So how do we measure this war? It’s worse than a failure. The loss of life, loss of face, loss of money, is only the start of things. We now have to deal with the world we’ve created, a bigger problem that we had when we started. I cannot personally imagine anyone voting for a Congressman who still supports the War in Iraq. It’s already the most expensive blunder in our history by any parameter one can think of. The only thing to do is to change directions radically.

World War I was an absurd war that made a lot of noise and ended badly. Many think that the cause of World War II was World War I and its ending. Our only task, at this point, is to put an end to the Iraq War that doesn’t make it the nidus for a second, more disasterous conflict, or, if it is inevitable, we approach the next war like we did World War II – hell bent on winning. If that means eating some crow right now, let the feast begin.

But there’s one measurement in this war that’s crystal clear. Get this arrogant dufus Donald Rumsfeld out of Washington yesterday! [see ThinkProgress]. If he were a football coach, he’d have been run off a long time ago. And if Bush were a University President who couldn’t fire a losing coach, he’d go first…