The Lessons of War: "The United States leaves Iraq having learned nothing."

Thus concludes Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a graduate of West Point, at the end of his recent New Republic article:

So the Americans are bowing out, having achieved few of the ambitious goals articulated in the heady aftermath of Baghdad’s fall. The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation, and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget. (Emphasis mine.)

Frank Rich points out some of the cost of the war in his op-ed column today:

For this sad record, more than 4,400 Americans and some 100,000 Iraqis (a conservative estimate) paid with their lives. Some 32,000 Americans were wounded, and at least two million Iraqis, representing much of the nation’s most valuable human capital, went into exile. The war’s official cost to U.S. taxpayers is now at $750 billion.