I recently rose from a slumber to discover that many of the learned had risen up to declare the U.S. war in Iraq not only a failure but also a misbegotten undertaking that no person of minimal intellect would have undertaken. There are two dangers in this view. The first is that there is a class of warriors who went into harm’s way and now carry the bitterness of the dead. The second is the bitterness of those who didn’t go into battle yet held fragments of knowledge, enough to mislead.
Obviously, all have a right to discourse, but judging anything as complex as wars mere decades after they were fought risks misunderstanding and rubbishing those who were there. The war’s veterans can distort the facts too, but they are owed the benefit of the doubt that they were not fools and that their memory carries with it a measure of truth. I have children who fought in Iraq. They have the right to be bitter if they choose. Those who judge a war whose real truth will not be known for centuries – and even then it will be debated – are peering into the dark.
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