The real significance of 2,000 dead in Iraq

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We keep hearing how the casualty count in Iraq is historically very low, as if this would quell any doubts we have about the wisdom of "staying the course." I'm surprised that this McNamara-esque focus on body counts has been wheeled into service again, so many decades after it was totally discredited.

But I digress...

Did you see Saving Private Ryan? In the movie, Tom Hanks is ordered to take an entire platoon and rescue Private Ryan, the last surviving son of a family that had already lost several other sons in battle. Along the way, the platoon suffers enormous losses. And at one point Hanks' character says this:

This Ryan had better be worth it-- he better go home and cure some disease or invent a longer-lasting light bulb.

Later, with his dying breath, he says the same thing to Ryan himself. It haunts Ryan for the rest of his life.

So, the real question isn't how many tens of thousands of people, soldiers and civilians, have shed their blood to this day. The real question isn't how many hundreds of billions of dollars of our treasure have been spent.

The real question is, "Will the result in Iraq have been worth it?"

I can hear some of you saying, of course it was worth it -- Saddam needed to be taken out. And I would agree -- the world is better off without him.

But there's more to it than just toppling a dictator.

Lincoln, at Gettysburg, said this, in consecrating the memory of those who fell in battle:

...[W]e here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

I hope the Iraqi people can pull this off, but knowing what I know about their constitution I'm not optimistic, to say the least. Of course, in one sense, that's their business -- the Iraqi people deserve whatever government they choose.

But please don't forget: we bought that constitution for them with our blood and treasure. And that's why I feel pretty strongly that what we got was not worth it, whether the death toll was 2 soldiers, or 20, or 200, or 2,000 or 20,000.

Having come to this, I have to conclude that it was a gigantic, tragic boondoggle.

Not only that --

If it turns out (as I believe) that Bush lied or exaggerated in making the argument for war, if it turns out (as I believe) that he spun the facts to sell his case, if it turns out (as I believe) that senior White House officials attempted to destroy their "enemies" in order to pave the road to Iraq, then we must conclude that this administration betrayed the public trust, and Bush has diminished the credibility of his office and our country.

And then we'll know the bitter truth: that what we lost was far, far, far more valuable than what we gained.