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ORIGINAL: DelightMachine

A lot of people on these message boards think that because you can hit the mark with a criticism against a govenment fighting a war, that means either we never should have fought the war or we're losing, or we're winning a Pyrrhic victory.

Well, you could do the same with any war. Here's how one writer imagines World War II could have been criticized in just the same way:

"May 21, 1945—After the debacles of February and March at Iwo Jima, and now the ongoing quagmire on Okinawa, we are asked to accept recent losses that are reaching 20,000 dead brave American soldiers and yet another 50,000 wounded in these near criminally incompetent campaigns euphemistically dubbed 'island hopping.'
 
"Meanwhile, we are no closer to victory over Japan. Instead, we are hearing of secret plans of invasion of the Japanese mainland slated for 1946 or even 1947 that may well make Okinawa seem like a cake walk and cost us a million casualties and perhaps involve a half-century of occupation. The extent of the current Kamikaze threat, once written off as the work of a 'bunch of dead-enders,' was totally unforeseen, even though such suicidal zealots are in the process of inflicting the worst casualties on the U.S. Navy in its entire history."

The whole thing is worth reading:
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MzRjMGE2MGViZGE3NDcyMmZhYzY3MWJjOTc1OTc3YmQ= 

My point: You have to put EVERYTHING in the mix when looking back and judging whether it was worth fighting a war. All the results, all the things that you no longer have to worry about because you fought the war, the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful.

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ORIGINAL: DelightMachine

A lot of people on these message boards think that because you can hit the mark with a criticism against a govenment fighting a war, that means either we never should have fought the war or we're losing, or we're winning a Pyrrhic victory.

Well, you could do the same with any war. Here's how one writer imagines World War II could have been criticized in just the same way:

"May 21, 1945—After the debacles of February and March at Iwo Jima, and now the ongoing quagmire on Okinawa, we are asked to accept recent losses that are reaching 20,000 dead brave American soldiers and yet another 50,000 wounded in these near criminally incompetent campaigns euphemistically dubbed 'island hopping.'
 
"Meanwhile, we are no closer to victory over Japan. Instead, we are hearing of secret plans of invasion of the Japanese mainland slated for 1946 or even 1947 that may well make Okinawa seem like a cake walk and cost us a million casualties and perhaps involve a half-century of occupation. The extent of the current Kamikaze threat, once written off as the work of a 'bunch of dead-enders,' was totally unforeseen, even though such suicidal zealots are in the process of inflicting the worst casualties on the U.S. Navy in its entire history."

The whole thing is worth reading:
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MzRjMGE2MGViZGE3NDcyMmZhYzY3MWJjOTc1OTc3YmQ= 

My point: You have to put EVERYTHING in the mix when looking back and judging whether it was worth fighting a war. All the results, all the things that you no longer have to worry about because you fought the war, the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful.

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ORIGINAL: NeedToUseYou

To me it's nearly a useless game. Well, if we didn't enter this war or that war it would of been better or worse. Who knows what effect not entering Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, or WWII would have had. I know it would of had a effect, but doubtful the world would be laid out the same. It would have changed our political leaning in the world some good some bad. We wouldn't have learned our weaknesses, etc... So, ultimately you go to war when it appears it is required. 

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ORIGINAL: DelightMachine

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ORIGINAL: NeedToUseYou

To me it's nearly a useless game. Well, if we didn't enter this war or that war it would of been better or worse. Who knows what effect not entering Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, or WWII would have had. I know it would of had a effect, but doubtful the world would be laid out the same. It would have changed our political leaning in the world some good some bad. We wouldn't have learned our weaknesses, etc... So, ultimately you go to war when it appears it is required. 

But how else do you judge whether or not it's "required" unless you consider the potential good and bad? Of course these are all estimates, and you can be wildly off base in trying to predict anything, especially with war. But I don't know any other way to judge whether you should go to war or not. We can't just wait for others to attack us, because now or soon from now they can bomb entire cities as a first attack. It's the same in judging past wars -- look at all the pros and cons, and try not to leave any out.

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ORIGINAL: ArtCatDom

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ORIGINAL: DelightMachine
My point: You have to put EVERYTHING in the mix when looking back and judging whether it was worth fighting a war. All the results, all the things that you no longer have to worry about because you fought the war, the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful.

I don't feel the comparison is at all apt.

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Iraq did not attack us.

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Iraq was not engaging in drastic expansionism.

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Iraq had not aligned with other enemies with similar levels of aggression and expansion.

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To compare a war rooted in a very real and direct threat to one based on vague suppositions, jumps to conclusions and selective attention is a weak arguement. You're right, you have to take the full context into consideration. In full context, the comparison doesn't hold.

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ORIGINAL: NeedToUseYou

Hmmm, I'm just talking about looking back at history and using that as basis on whether to wage current wars.

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 It should just be based on need and ability versus opponents strength. [SNIP] ... War shouldn't really be a choice, it should be something you need to do.

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ORIGINAL: ArtCatDom
I do agree with your idea about the slanted presentation of the war however. The media pounds a rapid drumbeat of gloom and doom, both leaving out most truly relevent negative news and neglecting most positive developments. Unfortunately, from reading a wide variety of media, it doesn't seem like any of them are fair and balanced at all. The few reputable alternative sources seem to either turn it into a vast complicit right wing conspiracy or try to make it sound like Iraq will be the land of milk & honey if we wait just a little longer.

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ORIGINAL: JohnWarren
War is sometimes necessary, but leaders should think long and hard not only about "can we win" but about "what will be the cost."  While they are thinking about that I'd recommend their having the corpse of a burned little girl in one corner, a wheelbarrow of  "renten-marks," the amount needed to buy a loaf of bread in 1925 Germany in the other.

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It should not be because a minority president wants to "make his bones."

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ORIGINAL: SirKenin
The American people spoke, Bush and team are in, deal with it as far as I am concerned.

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ORIGINAL: DelightMachine

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ORIGINAL: NeedToUseYou

Hmmm, I'm just talking about looking back at history and using that as basis on whether to wage current wars.

Well, I also don't think that's useful and that's not the point I was making. The only point I was making was that if you want to judge either a past war or a present one, look at as many of the ramifications as possible, don't just look at a few and, if things aren't going well in particular areas, don't judge the whole war on that basis. You wouldn't judge World War II only on the errors we made in it.

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 It should just be based on need and ability versus opponents strength. [SNIP] ... War shouldn't really be a choice, it should be something you need to do.

Except where you were misreading what I said, you make excellent points, as you constantly do.

But I was talking about how, once you are in a war, some people start bemoaning the costs and suggesting that the costs are so high that either we shouldn't have gotten into the war in the first place or that we should follow some path short of victory -- cutting and running, for example, or possibly negotiating a settlement. When things aren't going well, it's certainly justifiable to re-examine whether the beliefs and calculations we made before we started were wrong and whether the outcome of the war so far shows that we made a mistake.

I think just about any war we got into as "necessary" is something we could have cut short with a defeat or compromise (except maybe the American Revolution). We might have declared a truce at some point and let the Confederacy, Imperial Japan or Germany survive, for instance. The world would have been a much worse place, but we could have done it.

But if you decide to do it, you don't do it because, for instance, tens of thousands died at Iwo Jima. You do it if you now think there would be a better result. And the only way to judge that is by looking at the broad picture. I don't think many opponents of the war are doing that. That was my point.