The Year Iraq Was Lost for Good by Kelley B. Vlahos -- Antiwar.com: "As their fellow Americans indulge in the New Year’s holiday, perhaps pausing a moment from talk about Tiger, football, and dead celebrities long enough to speculate about our prospects in Afghanistan, the last Marine combat unit stationed in Iraq is preparing to come home.
It doesn’t need to be said there will be no ticker-tape parades or long, hot-winded excursions by Tom Brokaw about today’s 'Greatest Generation.' Instead, these Marines will reenter our consciousness much like a husband, home from the office, walking into a cold house with no one about and maybe a scribbled note on the refrigerator door.
It’s been a long while since anyone has even debated whether 'victory' was applicable to the U.S.-led invasion and subsequent seven-year occupation of Iraq. But 2009 was the year that the war’s sad fate in the history books was assured, no doubt leaving hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women to feel as though their sacrifice, and that of their comrades, has been largely unfulfilled by anything remotely resembling 'one of the great achievements of mankind.'"
It doesn’t need to be said there will be no ticker-tape parades or long, hot-winded excursions by Tom Brokaw about today’s 'Greatest Generation.' Instead, these Marines will reenter our consciousness much like a husband, home from the office, walking into a cold house with no one about and maybe a scribbled note on the refrigerator door.
It’s been a long while since anyone has even debated whether 'victory' was applicable to the U.S.-led invasion and subsequent seven-year occupation of Iraq. But 2009 was the year that the war’s sad fate in the history books was assured, no doubt leaving hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women to feel as though their sacrifice, and that of their comrades, has been largely unfulfilled by anything remotely resembling 'one of the great achievements of mankind.'"
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