American casualties in Iraq over 4 years are identical to those on Sept 17th 1862, on THAT ONE DAY, and yet we cannot sustain them.
On Sept 17th 1862, after repeated numerous significant lost battles, destroyed campaigns, and inept planning, execution, and abysmal failure, George McClellan, having been gifted with Robt E Lee's exact plans wrapped around some lost cigars, went out and actually attacked him on Northern soil, near Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg, MD.
By day's end, there were 3650 dead, and 22,750 casualties. That represent 25% of all men engaged that day.
Since we conquered Iraq we have, according to CNN, 3,749 american dead, and 25,549 wounded. In 1500 more days, we have sustained as many casualties, yet a large majority of americans wants out of Iraq.
By the time Abe Lincoln wrote himself a letter (August 1864) predicting his own defeat in November because americans, he believed would not support a war to free slaves, there were ~850,000 casualties. HE thought that since the war had morphed from a war to preserve the Union to one of freeing the slaves (at his urging) he would lose
But it's not the Civil War, you say.
Well, THAT wasn't viewed in the way it is now, then either. No less than Horace Greeley said, let the "wayward sisters depart in peace". We see how consequential it all was today. Well many today, who view Iraq as part of the World War feel that way now. Most however do not.
But as (arch Reaganite) Peggy Noonan expressed today her separation from the admin:
The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation. This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me.
That mission's theory in which our security is guaranteed by democracy's spread is exactly the issue of what others see as the neoconservative ideal, as Ms. Noonan does.
Has this failed because it must, because it is wrong or cannot be?
Or has it failed because THIS TIME americans have lost faith with the underlying idea (as apparently we would have had Sherman not taken Atlanta, and then gutted Georgia).
Continue reading "'Neoconservative' foreign policy and Sept 17th 1862" »
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