Just Think.....

Last week, this nation recognized the ignoble fifth anniversary of our engagement in Iraq. Earlier this week, the country was stung by news of the 4,000th U.S. combat-death in Iraq. Indeed, the toll of the war in terms of blood and capital has been devastating. 4,000 U.S. deaths palls in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's who have been killed, displaced or wounded in the conflict. According to the National Priorities Project, http://www.nationalpriorities.org/, the total cost of the war to-date trumps $505 billion. It's a staggering figure. Broken down, that sum delineates to:

$4,681 per household.
$1,721 per person
$341.4 million per day

Counterfactuals have recently become a flashpoint for liberals everywhere. Questions like "what if Bush weren't elected to a second-term?" and "What if he weren't elected at all?" loom large. If we were never involved in this protracted and senseless conflict, would we be thriving in a utopian land of milk-and-honey? What could we have done with the half trillion dollars we squandered? Better schools, newer roads, safer cities? The problem with counterfactuals is that they are open for disagreement; impossible to pin-down. But, as the economy sours and bank accounts everywhere crumble, it's tough to argue that the capital we have invested in Iraq wouldn't have been of more beneficial use domestically.

Through five years of conflict, the insurgency rages on. Iraqi infrastructure remains inadequate, its political structures are stained by corruption, ethnic tension and lethargy, and its people continue to suffer through an inept and whimsical occupation. If our fifth-year anniversary in Iraq were refined to mere symbols, it would be best depicted by a series of dollar signs and question marks. We still don't have a clear exit strategy, Iraq remains on the brink of an all-out civil war and the millions of dollars we spend in Iraq every day, far from helping reestablish broken infrastructure, seem to disappear into the untraceable desert sands.

The fifth may seem bad, but without decisive action, the sixth, seventh, and eighth will be even worse. Let's pray there won't be a tenth, fifteenth, twentieth.....