Six Years On

This week marks the sixth year of the Iraq War. Over 4500 American lives have been lost. At least 100,000 Iraqi lives have been lost. Arab extremists have a bloody shirt to wave and the invasion cost us precious credibility and about $9 billion a month. Every single prediction we were given about the war, its length, outcome and cost, has been wrong

Someday we will be out of Iraq. Someday Iraq may have a working government that at least superficially glosses over the ethnic and religious tensions in the country. At that point, someone will declare victory and try to tell us that it was all worth it. There likely will be flags and soldiers in the background. His or her words will fill us with pride over our tenacity.

At precisley that moment, someone needs to ask this person what defeat would look like. Because if this is a victory, then the bar has been immeasurably lowered.