Acceptable Loss

I was reading an internet article today about Bush's presidency, where he said that flawed Iraq intelligence was his biggest regret during his time in office. It's interesting that his biggest regret is something that he can technically pin on others. Silly me, I thought that a regret was personal. That certainly says a lot about our infamous leader. But I'm digressing.

The article also says that 4200 troops have died since we invaded Iraq in 2003. I'm going to take a shit-load of flack for this, but I'm going to call this acceptable loss. Hey, when we went to war five years ago, the overwhelming majority of Americans had swallowed the Kool-Aid that Bush's administration offered. We were somehow convinced that it would be a splendid little war, with a quick victory and little loss of life. We were half right... the loss of life has been quite low indeed.

As I write this, please let me once again reiterate that I was against going in to Iraq from the beginning... though it was primarily for strategic reasons. Opening a second front in a war has never worked historically... and going into Iraq was doing exactly that. My decision was correct, but I admit that I didn't arrive at that decision in the same manner as most objectors.

Anyway, back to my point. When it comes to the use of force, I am a pragmatist. Being a pacifist is great in theory, but in the real world it is an unrealistic view. And since the use of force is a distinct possibility, it stands to reason that there must be a loss of life. At some point, that loss becomes unacceptable, and we take our ball and go home. Up to that point though, the loss of life, while tragic, is a fact of life. That's called acceptable loss. To put this in perspective, the U.S. lost well over 6,000 men on D-Day. 58,000 Americans died during the Vietnam war. I'm not trying to minimize the loss of life in Iraq, I'm simply trying to explain that the loss of life is significantly lower. In fact, I'd say it's an acceptable loss.