...the great costs of staying must, experts (and contractors) insist, in the end outweigh the unknown perils of departure.

Until we once again fear the unknown consequences of aggressive action, even more than we currently dread the unknown results of disengagement, the pattern formed by our self-deluding double nature will remain intact.

It might be more specific than that. It's not that we fear to leave, period. It's that we fear to leave without having achieved particular — unachievable — goals.

The Gulf War was a success, militarily, because it had clear objectives at the outset, the objectives were not counter to what we could accomplish with a lot of killing power, and the objectives didn't change.

Specifically, our goal was to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, and smash Saddam's army. This we did, with startling efficacy.

And then we left.

We left the Marsh Arabs to be stomped on, we left the Kurds to be kicked around, we left the whole country to be ground under the Baathist heel once again.

In other words, we drew a line where whatever our interest was ended, and someone else's problem began, and we didn't cross that line. That is to say, we deliberately didn't repeat our mistake in Vietnam.

By contrast, the actual invasion of Iraq was doomed to failure in the strategic sense because we insisted on bringing Vietnam with us when we went.

Specifically, we repeated the central conceit of Vietnam, which was that what our hapless invadee most needed was a strong central government capable of maintaining law and order, rather than a just one capable of providing for general welfare, liberty, and other such vaguely familiar concepts.

Basically, while the Viet Cong were promising the people land reform, equality, and peace, we were promising them Diem the corrupt autocrat, forced migrations, and fire. The outcome was inevitable.

In Iraq we did the same thing. And we're doing the same thing now in Afghanistan — when McChrystal declared that the US was going to change its strategy from defeating the Taliban to bolstering the credibility of the central government, it was clear that his tune is just a variation on the same stupid.

Military action is fundamentally destructive. It can't ever be any other way, by definition. But something about our mentality over the past half century has particularly compounded that fact. It's as though the American policy elite, having grown disenchanted with democracy from all the frustrations of having to deal with limited government, have lost touch with the basis for civil society in any sense.

There is some vast overarching theory buried in there, waiting to be excavated, linking the recent financial panic with our failed education system, with an inability to defeat progressive grassroots activism, with a stupid incomprehension of how the internet is able to erode monolithic media — and yes, an inability to take al Qaeda seriously, or anticipate popular unrest in Iraq or Afghanistan.

It's like once you've indoctrinated yourself deeply enough in the belief that little people don't matter, that failure accompanies you everywhere you look, no matter if it's a bunch of ragtag Wahabists or a bunch of people flashmobbing on Twitter.

But that is a bit off topic. Agree or no, this:

Wars now are always sold as another Desert Storm (the sizzle), but Vietnam remains the depressing template for the harsh reality (the blackened, inedible steak) waiting once the active, conventional fighting is over.

...is a special kind of awesome all its own. Making dinner will never be the same for me.

The real peace came when Reagan won the cold war.

Yes, under Reagan the Soviet Union became just a distant memory.

I so miss the days when we used to put tyrants down like rabid dogs.

Yes, like...

Um...

What dictators did Reagan put down?

Pinochet? Oops no, and he achieved nuclear capability on Reagan's watch, too.

Argentina under Galtieri? Oops, no, they got nuclear capability too.

Well how about apartheid South Africa? No, no, it turns out they not only thrived but also actually built a nuke.[1] What are they odds?

Somoza? Castro? Qadafi? Khomeini? Zia? No, no, no, no, and no, but at least they didn't build any nukes.

Oops, except Zia did. Heh heh. Him too.

Well you've got to hand one thing to Reagan though — he loved him some cowboy tales, and he did send a bunch of Marines to their Alamo in Beirut.

Yessir, he sure showed those dictators.

The history of the USA is a microcosm of world history...

Yes, the world began when it staged an armed revolution against its overseas rulers, after which the world killed off its indigenous peoples, seized their empty land, and proceeded to populate it with immigrants from all over .. the ... um. World.

Let's try a different angle. The world ended the 20th century with a series of carrier fleets with which it patrols the world? The world has a massive trade deficit with the rest of the world? With all the other worlds, maybe?

Okay, maybe not such a microcosm.