There has been a fury of writing lately (mostly in neocon land, some in SCLM land) about how awful it was that Senator Harry Reid said that we'd lost the war in Iraq. A number of Democrats, as well, have been trying to backpedal from what Reid said (without trying to look like they were backpedaling, of course). Reid was right, of course, but there's something he missed in his statement - when the war was lost.
We lost the day we invaded. The second the first soldier's foot touched down on Iraqi soil, the war was lost, irrevocably and forever. There was never anything that anyone could have done to turn that instantaneous defeat into victory. We invaded a country based on lies, a country which had not attacked us (and could not have done so, even if there were any indications that it had intention to), and diverted our attention from the real enemies - the terrorists who had actually attacked us and the governments and financial enterprises which made their attacks possible. No "success" could erase the stain of what our country did in the name of fear, hate, ignorance, and greed. No false argument about freedom and democracy can hide the facts. We have killed many, many people and ruined the lives of countless others, people from all over the world, based on lies. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, money which hurts our nation's power worldwide and money which could have been used to make the lives of millions of people better, based on fear and hate.
We lost the day the war began. Every day since then (and for decades to come), we have been serving our punishment.
Impeach.
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3 comments:
I see this slightly differently.
Asking when we lost the Iraq war is very much like asking when we stopped beating our wives. It assumes a fact not in evidence, namely, that this is a "war" at all.
This is logical fallacy.
What's going on over there is an "occupation," and occupations are neither won nor lost. They end either in withdrawal or annexation of the occupied territory.
Since we aren't going to make Iraq the 51st state (though that would be entertaining as hell), the only possible end here is withdrawal.
It's a semantic point, but a really critical one in my view.
Well, we lost something the day we invaded. There was a war, for a very short time, but you're right in that it is an occupation now.
I agree, we certainly lost something that day - our moral standing.
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