http://nytimes.com/2004/09/10/opinion/10herbert.html?hp

How Many Deaths Will It Take?
By BOB HERBERT
To what end? You can wave goodbye to the naïve idea that democracy would
take root in Iraq and then spread like the flowers of spring throughout
the Middle East. That was never going to happen. So what are we there for,
other than to establish a permanent military stronghold in the region and
control the flow of Iraqi oil?

The troops who are fighting and dying deserve better.

http://nytimes.com/2004/09/10/opinion/10herbert.html?hp

How Many Deaths Will It Take?
By BOB HERBERT

Published: September 10, 2004
[snip]

http://nytimes.com/2004/09/10/opinion/10herbert.html?hp

How Many Deaths Will It Take?
By BOB HERBERT

Published: September 10, 2004

It was Vietnam all over again - the heartbreaking head shots captioned
with good old American names:

Jose Casanova, Donald J. Cline Jr., Sheldon R. Hawk Eagle, Alyssa R.
Peterson.

Eventually there'll be a fine memorial to honor the young Americans whose
lives were sacrificed for no good reason in Iraq. Yesterday, under the
headline "The Roster of the Dead," The New York Times ran photos of the
first thousand or so who were killed.

They were sent off by a president who ran and hid when he was a young man
and his country was at war. They fought bravely and died honorably. But as
in Vietnam, no amount of valor or heroism can conceal the fact that they
were sent off under false pretenses to fight a war that is unwinnable.

How many thousands more will have to die before we acknowledge that
President Bush's obsession with Iraq and Saddam Hussein has been a
catastrophe for the United States?

Joshua T. Byers, Matthew G. Milczark, Harvey E. Parkerson 3rd, Ivory L.
Phipps.

Fewer and fewer Americans believe the war in Iraq is worth the human
treasure we are losing and the staggering amounts of money it is costing.
But no one can find a way out of this tragic mess, which is why that
dreaded word from the Vietnam era - quagmire - has been resurrected. Most
Washington insiders agree with Senator John McCain, who said he believes
the U.S. will be involved militarily in Iraq for 10 or 20 more years.

To what end? You can wave goodbye to the naïve idea that democracy would
take root in Iraq and then spread like the flowers of spring throughout
the Middle East. That was never going to happen. So what are we there for,
other than to establish a permanent military stronghold in the region and
control the flow of Iraqi oil?

The insurgency in Iraq will never end as long as the U.S. is occupying the
country. And our Iraqi "allies" will never fight their Iraqi brethren with
the kind of intensity the U.S. would like, any more than the South
Vietnamese would fight their fellow Vietnamese with the fury and
effectiveness demanded by the hawks in the Johnson administration.

The Iraqi insurgents - whether one agrees with them or not - believe they
are fighting for their homeland, their religion and their families. The
Americans are not at all clear what they're fighting for. Saddam is gone.
There were no weapons of mass destruction. The link between Saddam and the
atrocities of Sept. 11 was always specious and has been proven so.

At some point, as in Vietnam, the American public will balk at the
continued carnage, and this tragic misadventure will become politically
unsustainable. Meanwhile, the death toll mounts.

Elia P. Fontecchio, Raheen Tyson Heighter, Sharon T. Swartworth, Ruben
Valdez Jr.

One of the reasons the American effort in Iraq is unsustainable is that
the American people know very little about the Iraqi people and their
culture, and in most cases couldn't care less. The war in Iraq was sold as
a response to Sept. 11. As it slowly dawns on a majority of Americans that
the link was bogus, and that there is no benefit to the U.S. from this
war, only endless grief, the political support will all but vanish.

(This could take awhile. In a poll done for Newsweek magazine this week,
42 percent of the respondents continue to believe that Saddam Hussein was
directly involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.)

We've put our troops in Iraq in an impossible situation. If you are not
permitted to win a war, eventually you will lose it. In Vietnam, for a
variety of reasons, the U.S. never waged total war, although the enemy
did. After several years and more than 58,000 deaths, we quit.

We won't - and shouldn't - wage total war in Iraq, either. But to the
insurgents, the Americans epitomize evil. We're the crazed foreigners who
invaded their country and killed innocent Iraqi civilians, including women
and children, by the thousands. We call that collateral damage. They call
it murder. For them, this is total war.

President Bush never prepared the nation for the prolonged violence of
this war. He still hasn't spoken candidly about it. If he has an idea for
hauling us out of this quagmire, he hasn't bothered to reveal it.

The troops who are fighting and dying deserve better.