Four Unspeakable Untruths

Slate has four unspeakable truths about Iraq. They are: The war was a mistake, the soldiers are victims, the war dead were wasted and the war is lost. The big question here is, are these "truths" really true?

The first one is now a matter of faith among the left. With Saddam dead and gone, it is easy to forget what the circumstances of the war were. First, Saddam had already started two wars and was likely to start more as soon as he re-armed after the sanctions were lifted. He was already bribing other countries to push for lifting the sanctions. The left ignores it but it was well-documented that he planned to re-establish his weapons programs as soon as possible. The sanctions were the main reason that he had not already rearmed. We had also spent over a decade in open hostilities with Saddam. An unbiased observer with a long memory has to admit that a war with Saddam was very likely. The big question was if it would be on his terms or ours?

If the war was not a mistake then it is hard to insist that the war dead were wasted lives. Even if the war was a mistake, most of the dead have come from the insurgency. Everyone this side of John Murtha admits that our troops are the only thing stopping a bloody civil war - something much worse than the low-level conflict going on now. The wasted lives argument holds that a single American life is more important than dozens of foreigners.

The soldiers as victims argument just doesn't match reality. It holds that recruits are forced into the military by poverty. This was thoroughly disproved after Kerry's "joke".

The final point - have we already lost? This is not the real question. Unfortunately, insurgencies last a long time. It could take a decade to really pacify Iraq. The real question is if we have the resolution to stick it out? If not then we have lost. Unfortunately, this is the most likely "truth". The real lesson of Viet Nam is that the left will mobilize against any war that lasts longer than a few weeks or has more than a handful of casualties.