What Winning Looks Like

Today's New York Times published two war articles , neither among the day's news offerings, but taken together, offering a look at the broad impact the war has.

In one, a Special Forces major articulates his opinion about the possibility [and nature] of winning the war. In the other, we get a look at the effects, on family members, of caring for damaged returning war veterans. Thinking about our involvement in foreign wars requires that attention be paid to multiple aspects, and that evaluations based on single sources, even if compelling, be rejected.

One would expect an active duty officer, upon return from a productive year of deployment, and still subscribing to the mission, to be dismissive of those who see our involvement as a losing proposition. In this we are not disappointed, as he disparages the "...wonks, politicos and academics..." offerring their grim sound bites "While sipping their Starbucks." But after relating anecdotal accounts of progress on the ground in the area of his deployment, he concludes that the success or failure of the war can only be determined by what happens after we leave. I am left wondering exactly what his dispute is with those who have been saying all along that we can't win the war.

For a wife whose horizon has narrowed to the task of caring for for a returning veteran with a traumatic brain injury and PTSD, the war is only beginning. The several families profiled in this article offer a sobering look at the sacrifices we exact from our volunteer armed forces. One can't help wondering what life will be like for them, and the thousands of other severely injured war veterans and their families in twenty or thirty years. It is something to consider when budget cuts are debated - that no price was too high to pay for our security on 9/12/01 - that our obligation to those who went over there for us [whether or not we supported the invasions].

History is short on international disputes being successfully resolved by armed conflict, but nations seem unable to resist resorting to warfare. Military intervention can possibly be prevented only by vigilant attention being paid to all of the costs. The Defense Department's charge is logistical and political, and they can't be expected think in preventive terms. Moral and human direction must come from us. If we cede analysis to "the experts," we risk paying a high cost for not too much benefit.