This Memorial Day, the day set aside to honor those who died in America's many wars, we find ourselves still debating the last war we fought, arguing over what the nation consented to in 2003 and what its leaders delivered. Just imagine if George W. Bush had come before the American people then and said, "I want to invade Iraq, and here's what's going to happen. The war will last over eight years, during which time just short of 4,500 American servicemembers will die. It'll cost us a couple of trillion dollars, and the justifications I'm offering for the war will all turn out to be false. It will result in a huge wave of anti-Americanism, and it will greatly increase Iran's influence in the Middle East. After my successor finally gets us out, Iraq's government will be so fragile and riven by corruption and sectarianism that it won't be able to stop a terrorist group from taking over large portions of the country. So what do you say?"
We know what Americans would have said then, because it's what they say now: That sounds like a terrible idea, one of the worst any American president has ever had. And as we try to figure out what to do next, where should those 4,500 lives weigh in our thinking?
There are some who find in their sacrifice reason to go right back to Iraq, to make sure that what they gained there is not lost, or once lost might be regained. John McCain, for instance, who has barely ever met a foreign nation he didn't want to invade, says that he wants to send thousands of troops into Iraq to fight ISIS. The people running to lead his party aren't so sure; as The New York Times detailed on Sunday, the Republican presidential candidates talk tough and quote from action movies when the topic of ISIS comes up, but when it comes time to say what exactly they think we should do, they suddenly grow vague and noncommittal.
That's probably because they're smart enough to realize that advocating a reinvasion of Iraq would be poison at the ballot box, or maybe they actually learned what ought to be the primary lessons of our disastrous experience there: that there are some problems the United States military, for all its strength and skill, cannot solve; and that a large American military action in the Middle East will always have enormous unintended consequences.
But those candidates are still Republicans, which means they're committed to the idea that what matters in foreign policy is "strength," and strength means the willingness, even the eagerness, to send other people's children to fight and die in foreign lands. They look at Barack Obama's obvious reluctance to start new wars and restart old ones, and they see nothing but weakness. But how can you show strength against ISIS without going back to Iraq, which the public doesn't want?
There may be no good answer, and there may be no good way to redeem the American lives that were lost there. I don't know if those thousands of families whose loved ones died in Iraq would feel better if they thought the war was worthwhile and successful, if that would reduce their terrible pain. Perhaps it might. The problem is that we have little reason to believe that returning to Iraq in force would produce a result much different than the last time. We might drive ISIS out only to be left with a situation just as likely to produce further instability. And then what?
No one seems to know. But if there's one thing we do know, it's that America will fight more wars, whether in Iraq or someplace else. Politicians like to flatter the American people by saying that we're a peace-loving country, that when we fight it's only because we have no choice, when our own safety and that of the entire world demands it. We're not the first country to tell itself this tale-men and women dying by the thousands for the cause of their leaders' stupidity and hubris is a story as old as civilization-but it could hardly be less true. In reality, we can't go more than a few years without taking military action against somebody somewhere; what has distinguished Democratic from Republican presidents in the last few decades (with the exception of genuinely peace-loving Jimmy Carter) is only the more limited nature of the engagements the former launch.
One day, we may build a memorial to the 6,840 Americans who died in Iraq and Afghanistan; for now, if you want to see their pictures and learn their names you can go here. And what will it say? It won't say that they came "to restore freedom and end tyranny," as an inscription at the World War II memorial reads. It may be a quiet and powerful testimony to the lives that were lost, like the Vietnam memorial-each an individual, each a tragedy. Perhaps that's all we'll be able to agree on: that these men and women were sent there, and they fought, and they died. One way or another, more will surely come after them.
