Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Shoot first. Ask questions later

That's a good definition of our foreign policy by Matthew Duss and Michael Cohen. They remind us that yesterday was the 8th anniversary of the Iraq War. Their article is one more cautionary tale with regards to our actions with regard to Libya over the past week.

It is really a succinct summary of the results to date of our efforts in Iraq: 4,439 Americans killed, 32,000 wounded, 100,000 Iraqis killed, 4,500,000 displaced, a cost that will likely exceed $3 trillion, a lightning rod for terrorists.

The question that keeps coming to me is - would we be in the same spot if we did not have a volunteer army. I truly doubt it. It was one's knowing people who were wounded or killed in Vietnam or who moved to Canada that stopped that war. It was seeing the caskets containing dead young men being unloaded at Hanscom Airfield that stopped that war.

Nothing seems able to stop today's wars.

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