What do we owe our troops?

President Bush tells us we have to stay the course in Iraq because we owe it to those who gave their lives to stay the course and make sure that their lives weren't spent in vain.

That logic fails to fly, however, if there is no value in what we're accomplishing.

Even assuming we didn't know what we were doing had no value when we started, the logic is flawed.

Suppose you own a house which you think needs painting, because you haven't had it painted in 10 years. You don't have enough money to paint it all, so you decide you're going to paint one side of it each year for the next four years. After two years and two sides are painted, someone points out to you that your house has vinyl siding, and so doesn't require regular re-painting.

Does it make sense to continue the job, because to not do so would have made the spending of the money on the first two sides valueless? Or does it make more sense not to spend MORE money on a valueless endeavor? And if you were one of the dollars yet to be spent, how would you feel, having your value expended on a worthless pursuit, because you owed it to other dollars which were irretrievable?

President Bush’s logic presumes several things which many no longer believe to be true:

• That this war is winnable.
• That our goals in Iraq are worthwhile.
• That those goals are worth not only the lives spent, but the additional lives yet to be lost.

There’s an expression, “good money after bad”, and in this case, it seems like we’re spending good lives after bad. We can’t get back the lives of those who’ve been killed, but it doesn’t make their sacrifice worth anything more to pile more bodies on top of theirs in a fruitless and stupid pursuit.

Liam.