A Grim Milestone

We knew as long as US troop strength in Iraq remained constant, sooner or later we'd reach 4000 Americans killed. That the latest deaths occurred on Easter Sunday ought to amplify the calls to get US troops out of the country. It's less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the start of this sorry and unnecessary war. It's as good a time as any to take stock.

Over the past three months or so, we have been fed a steady diet of "the surge is working" from the president and his minions. That line is then parroted  by much of the media. In fact, the violence had died down. We should not have been fooled. The insurgency never gave up control of the tempo of this conflict. They chose when to ramp down hostilities, and they can choose when to escalate them as well.

Does anyone think the recent spate of rocket and mortar attacks aimed at the "heavily fortified Green Zone" are happening by accident? The Bush Administration has its own way of spinning this latest violence. "The surge is working, but the enemy is resilient", they say. That, in plain English, is a rationale for endless war. Endless, because there is absolutely no clue as to what constitutes victory. There's no game plan beyond containment of the insurgency. They won't tell you this, but they can't defeat it.

It also means, by conservative estimates, that thousands more Iraqi civilians will join the nearly 90,000 killed since this obscene war began. These are people who will never taste the fruit of American imposed democracy. Many living Iraqis are doubting whether they will either.

The Iraq war has lately taken a back burner to legitimate concerns about the American economy. Few people see that the war is in fact a drain on the economy, one that we can ill afford.

But above all else, we should no longer tolerate an unjust war.