Good after Bad

It's been a while. Probably no one is still reading this. Still, I'm lying awake tonight and I have a burning question, and so far no one has been able to answer it for me.

Well, that's not true, I've gotten answers, and the ultimate answer is that people want life to have a purpose, but still...

I honestly want to understand why it is considered by some to be "disrespectful to the troops" to want to protect them from what one considers an invalid, improper or wasteful use.

I absolutely understand the urge to want to believe that any cause that our brave servicemen and women give their lives for is noble and worthy of that sacrifice. But wanting to believe it so does not make it so, and is it REALLY doing anyone (in the service or otherwise) any good to conflate some nonexistent nobility onto a fool’s errand rather than admit the folly and get out?

The problem, of course, is that we get very emotional and not at all logical when it comes to human life (as well we should), but let’s take a look at it using something we get less sentimental about: Money.

If the war in Iraq were waged entirely with money, if no lives had been lost or stood to be, would anyone be saying that we weren’t “supporting the money” if we pulled out now? Would anyone be saying that we “dishonored the sacrifice of the money already spent if we refuse to spend more”? We might debate the merits of the war, but no one would argue that we had to stay in it regardless of the outlook in honor of the dollars already lost.

When we’re dealing with money we have a saying: don’t throw good money after bad. Most of us try to follow it. When a project goes bad, you reach a point where you cut your losses and accept that the money spent was wasted. You do so because you know that any additional money would continue to be wasted, that the chance of a favorable outcome is slim or that the outcome could unlikely be considered favorable enough for the money yet to be spent, and you write off your losses and go lick your wounds.

What a horrible thing to think about our lost troops, that they’re “losses” to be “written off”, but the fact is, they are already lost. Do we really do their memory proud by adding to their number needlessly? Or do we simply fill up the graveyards with more of our youth, destroy more of the remaining ones’ lives and bodies and minds, rather than admit that we made a mistake? Is it honestly worse to admit a mistake claimed the lives of 3000 than to refuse to acknowledge the mistake and watch that number climb to 4000, 5000 and who knows how many more?

And is it any less a mistake if we refuse to call it that out of some noble sense of duty to those fallen and those irreparably damaged, or is it further dishonoring the future memory of those who will fall tomorrow and next week and next month and next year that they fell not for an honest mistake made with good intentions, but for the continuation of a mistake we could and should have recognized? Does it somehow spread the dishonor thin enough that no one is overtly slimed if we just get enough dead to each take a tiny share of it?

Is the war in Iraq a mistake? You may not agree. But understand that I think it is.

I think it is a distraction from the good and necessary work we started in Afghanistan, tracking down the al Qaeda monsters who attacked us five and a half years ago, and who (according to recent reports) are now plotting to blow up a nuclear device on our soil. And who (according to other recent reports) we’re now actually FUNDING in the guise of aid to Sunni insurgent groups fighting against the Shiite insurgents who are fighting against us in Iraq. Yes, if reports are true, we’re actually sending support to al Qaeda aligned groups to aid them in fighting a group of their enemies we started a war with on the basis of attacks perpetrated by al Qaeda. Are we stupid?

Nevertheless, you don’t have to agree that the war in Iraq was or is a mistake. But if you did agree with me, if you felt in your innermost heart that this war was a huge mistake, both from the start and now, could you honestly feel that you were supporting the troops NOT to speak out against the war, NOT to want to bring them home before any more of them died or were maimed and scarred for life than could possibly be prevented?

You don’t have to agree with me about Iraq. And you can debate with me whether we’re doing good there or not, whether we’re aiding our country there or not, whether we should be there or not.

But don’t tell me that I’m not supporting the troops when I say I want to pull them out of there. Because until you convince me that the Iraq war isn’t just a colossal screw-up by a President who is at best incompetent and at worst so unfeeling as to send all of these troops to their deaths for political or personal gain, then my stance on the troops is the only possible stance to have and still be able to look myself in the mirror and say “I support our troops.”

Anything else is spending good after bad. But not money. Lives.

Is it REALLY worth the price, just to avoid admitting a mistake?

Liam.