What Iraq Cost

“America’s ‘combat mission’ in Iraq may be over, but the combat is not. Neither is the mission, which now amounts to little more than holding on until the end of next year, when, by agreement with the Iraqi government, such as it is, the last of the remaining fifty thousand American troops will be gone. The President, so far, is keeping his promise to extract us from this war. And he is keeping his promise to prosecute another war more vigorously—the one that might have been over by now if his predecessor had not robbed it of resources and attention. The prospects of that war are unknowable, but there is a sense of foreboding.”