A Never Ending Mistake?

Just when you think you couldn’t get angrier about the utter stupidity of our military engagement in Iraq, another news item comes along to extend and enlarge the rage. This was a tidbit I ran across this morning in the English version of today’s Tehran Times. It reports that the speaker of Iraq’s parliament is in Iran now to discuss security cooperation between the two countries with an an eye toward checking any future incursions in the region by external forces. Like ours, for example.

Think of it. Think of what we’ve gotten at a cost of more 4,300 Americans killed, more than 30,000 wounded, and a financial cost that could end being anywhere from half a trillion dollars and up, in order to end up with this! End up with a corrupt, economic basket case whose new leadership (which we installed) is now moving ever closer to the country we currently see as our own primary adversary in the region.

And that’s today. I have this sinking feeling that this most recent example of unintended negative consequences when it comes to Bush and Cheney’s Great Iraq Adventure is not going to be the last — or the worse — upshot of their perniciously and preternaturally dumb attempt to reshape the world to accommodate the delusions of a bunch of second-rate intellectuals at Americas best-funded conservative think tanks.

As the Obama Administration moves to reshape its own Afghanistan policies, let us hope and pray they pay more attention to the realities of the place they mean to do war than the last group of war makers in the White House.