We have lost

We’ve lost Iraq.

We lost the minute we walked into the country. We lost, because there was no way to ‘win’. It’ll take 2 to 5 years for anyone in a position of power to admit this, because we don’t lose, in America. It’s not in our interest, as the last Superpower, to lose, so it’ll be later, rather than sooner, before we can admit that we’ve lost. And then we’ll face the long task of trying to find meaning in the deaths of our sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers. There will be claims by some that if we’d just followed this course, or that one, that we’d have somehow succeeded, but the dead soldiers, and their families, and the damaged survivors, will know the truth.

We were lied to by our leaders. And it would be nice to say that it was entirely their fault, but we, the people, listened to their lies through a haze of fear. We, the people, listened with the small, evil places inside us, and we said nothing. And some had the courage to look with clear eyes and see that we were headed down a dangerous path, and we, the people, didn’t care. We, the people, decided it didn’t matter if their weren’t Weapons Of Mass Destruction in Iraq, that it was actually better that there were none, because Hussein was an evil man, and if the WMD’s didn’t actually exist, that just made it easier for our boys to take him and his whole damn country. And we marched for 21 day, and watched the little man, in front of his huge ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner, chatter about how well we’d done, and we found Hussein in his little hole.

And not one of the dead or wounded was worth any of it.

And we condoned ‘torture-lite’. And we let the little man’s Secretary of War make his cold, soulless little speeches. And we watched as a little more of the promise of our fine country was destroyed, as more of our national soul was corrupted, as the next generation of those who despise and will work to damage us was created.

We watch, as the reports of battles, and the rising death toll, move farther and farther away from the headlines. We accept it as this small nasty war becomes part of the status quo. And still, those who putatively control the situation lead us deeper into the quicksand.

We brought this on ourselves. We were frightened, it’s true. We were angry, and wanted nothing more than to seek revenge for thousands of the dead, for the horror that came from a clear blue sky. But fear and anger mean nothing to the dead, be they American or Iraqi. The tin-eared rhetoric of the small man in the Oval Office means even less. And it’s the dead that we’ll have to answer to. It’s the names that will go on the inevitable monument to this nasty little war that will shame us. It’s the memories of the surviving enemy that will bring the true price home to us. And it will be brought home to us, to we, the people, not the little man in the shadow of his father. The little man will look back in pride. After all, he finally got to play soldier, and no one can say he ran away, this time.

We’ve lost Iraq.

And not one of the dead or wounded was worth any of it.