Choices

Harry Callahan: "A man's got to know his limitations.
[Magnum Force, (1973)]

... and so must a nation.

Some choices are easy:
"It might help, it can't hurt, and it doesn't cost anything."
Do "it", whatever "it" might be!... this is an easy decision-rule!

Other choices are harder, boiling down to "the lesser of two evils" or "the greater good."

We screwed up in Iraq. Yes, our intentions were noble (or at least it doesn't hurt to pretend that our intentions were noble)... but we screwed it up.

When we signed up for the war, we were told...
... Iraq posed an imminent threat to the U.S.

Condoleezza Rice [then-Nat'l Security Adviser]"... we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
[CNN LATE EDITION WITH WOLF BLITZER, 8 Sep 2002]

We were told it would be cheap...
... in manpower:

"Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, 'wildly off the mark.' ",
[Paul Wolfowitz, 28 Feb 2003
(... because, you will recall, "Iraq has no history of ethnic strife"!)]

... in $:

"There is a lot of money to pay for this. It does not have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction."
[Paul Wolfowitz, 27 Mar 2003]

We were told it would be short:

"It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
[SecDef Rumsfeld, 7 Feb 2003]

None of this was true.

We have now spent close to 4000 American servicemen's lives, and $488,000,000,000 in Iraq.

Our economy is on the verge of recession. Our debt - much of it held by China - is ballooning. Our infrastructure is crumbling.

Yes, it's a hard choice... but it's the ONLY sane choice: it's time to leave Iraq. Now. Today.

Stop the madness!