Dear Editor:
This is in response to Robert Haslag's July 13 letter about the war in Iraq. Haslag continues the same "shoulda, woulda, coulda" song that all Monday Morning Quarterbacks have always sung about wars. It's easy to look backwards.
His reference to Bush's war just drives the point home even further, as he conveniently forgets that this admittedly costly piece of American history had the blessing of a bipartisan Congress.
Years of slogging through Middle Eastern tribal politics trying to win peace and freedom for a people that barely recognized when it was finally attained and so naïve to their country's potential at peace as to let it slip through their fingers when challenged by this latest gang of ISIS thugs and returned internal bickering.
If we choose to fight again it needs to be a matter of national resolve and media importance; not something to watch on the news over a microwave dinner like a reality show.
As a military Vietnam era veteran of 22 years, I think our nation's regret in Iraq is not that we waged the Iraq War in the first place but that we failed to close the deal again. So hell-bent were we to wash our hands of this unholy, sandy, hot place and declare the political victory for the low information voter crowd at home that we walked away from Iraq at the worst possible time.
Ignoring the advice of countless military experts and historians, we failed to leave any military presence and let the mission go "back to the jungle." Our experiences in WWII in Europe and Japan, followed by Korea, should have been our textbooks, but we failed to read the lesson, prepare for the test and consequently have wasted so very much. A peaceful, free Iraq could have been a great success.
War costs a great deal. There were just under 700,000 deaths in our own Civil War. Many people wrongly assume the Union prevailed because more Confederates died during those five horrible years. The truth is more Union soldiers died. Combat casualties were twice as high among the victorious Yankees.
By this measure was the War Between the States worth it? I think so because I live in the greatest country on earth. Not so much if today I lived in the Confederacy or what used to pass for the Union.
We'll probably never know what could have been for Iraq because we walked away and left it to diplomats.