Opinion: In today’s pages: What we’ve lost in six years
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The editorial board reflects on six years of the war on terror:
[T]he decision to invade Iraq has proved, in our view, a distraction from the struggle against radical Islamist terrorism, and it has cost us dearly. More than 3,700 American soldiers have lost their lives on foreign sands. Another 27,000 have returned home with injuries, many of them life-altering. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or wounded and about 4 million forced to flee, half of them to uncertain foreign refuge. Their scars will mar the future as anger over the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and its injustices at Guantanamo Bay breedsnew enemies. Those are harrowing consequences of a war waged by an administration that has misunderstood its enemy and its place in history. But the price of this president’s military and domestic overreach has been highest in the loss of faith in America itself, in the values and institutions that have historically defined this nation.
The board offers more reasons why the country needs a federal shield law, and why the Catholic Church’s settlements will cost it more than just assets.
Columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that the blowback that created Osama bin Laden came from Russian troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, and our withdrawal would have a similar result. Graham Allison and retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan say the U.S. has no choice but to withdraw given our struggling troop numbers. George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley thinks Phil Spector was right to use highly paid expert witnesses. And Eric Weiner advocates slacking.
Readers discuss government response to the mortgage crisis. Los Angeles’ John Hutton asks who the government is going to bail out, noting, ‘There aren’t financially irresponsible borrowers, only financially irresponsible lenders.’