Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.
The Mahablog
Politics. Society. Group Therapy.
Riverbend & I agree. I thought the U.S. lost the war when the looting began.
The war was lost the moment the invasion began.
Maybe the war was lost the day that the Supremes appointed W, if you want to get back to basics.
I was just blogging about this yesterday. By any measure you care to use, the Iraq war was a horrible defeat. Its cost has been too high, the objectives are still not met, it has damaged the United States far beyond any gains that we could receive. (Note that I’m arguing pragmatically, as if we could ignore the moral question of “is it okay to kill thousands of people if we think it will bring good benefits to us and others”)
It sickens me that there are those who will talk about “one final push for victory”. Convince me Bush recognizes he lost, and that he earnestly wants to clean up the mess he created, and then I’ll accept that he’s not so incredibly blind that he has a chance of succeeding – not at *winning*, he’s already lost, but at cleaning up the mess he made.
But the current situation?
“Look, I’ve shoved a whole bunch of our troops into the meat grinder, now, if you just let me keep shoving them in, everything will be fine! Yes, I know, I said this over and over again for four years, but this time is *different8, because… well, because I *said* so, and I’m the decider!”
I agree with Ken Melvin’s comment at #2..
The war was concieved of lies, and there’s nothing in man’s power that could ever turn that to victory. And stupid is what stupid doesdid!
Every time Riverbend goes this long without commenting I worry that she is dead. I am glad to see she is still there and being the “Howard Cosell” of Iraq–telling it like it is.