The conventional wisdom….

Is many times, actually correct.

Phib had a post a couple of days ago, taking Newsweek to task for supposedly promoting defeat:

I’m angry. Why angry? Because the media like Newsweek did everything it could to undermine our victory during the most difficult times mid-decade. They took every chance to push the bad – yet are well over a year late with the good. Too angry to blog on a subject? Yes, too angry.

Angry? Yes, because most who paid attention called victory back in NOV …. NOV ’08.

Umm……that’s not exactly correct.  In November of 2008 17 Americans died-that same month over 325 Iraqis were killed. This was in spite of a surge that was supposed to buy time for the Iraqis to come up with a political solution.  And while it was true that casulties were down from the previous year ( In November of 2007 40 Americans lost their lives in Iraq)-the Iraqis were no closer to solving any of their problems.

Now fast forward to 2010-the Iraqis have had an election-and they still can’t tell who is in charge. That’s hardly a big suprise-its par for the course for the Iraqis.

As Foreign Policy magazine pointed out in its lastest edition, the conventional wisdom-and reporting-on Iraq may have been actually correct all along:

While few are shedding tears for Saddam Hussein, there’s not much evidence to suggest that his removal made the world safer — or that ousting him in this manner was worth the exorbitant cost in blood and treasure. The other two charter members of the axis of evil — Iran and North Korea — are still ruled by anti-American autocrats with fast-developing nuclear programs, and Iran, if anything, has been strengthened by the replacement of its archenemy with a reasonably friendly Shiite-dominated government.

The war has not exactly created a tidal wave of democracy either. Democracy has actually declined around over the last three years, according to U.S. NGO Freedom House. Early hopeful developments in the Middle East have not panned out either. Following the much-vaunted Cedar Revolution, Lebanon’s government has returned to its normal state of dysfunction. After some overtures, Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi has resumed his provocations. And the bloodshed continues in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The bottom line is that thousands of American lives and trillions of dollarswere spent to turn one admittedly barbaric dictatorship into a semidemocracy addled by sectarianism and extremist violence. Doesn’t seem worth it.

Herman Wouk once wrote, that victory only has meaning if its effect produces the desired result for the future.  Using a cost vs benefit metric-focusing solely on benefit for the United States-proves that the naysayers actually had a point. Furthermore-when precious American lives were at stake-it can be argued that news media and other outlets had a moral duty to speak out.

The simple truth of the matter was that the war-created its own story. Poorly begun is poorly done and if it were so important to have gone into Iraq, then it was worth doing full bore from the start. E.G. declaring war on the nation of Iraq, using the number of troops called for by the original war plan, and dispensing with the notion that there were good Iraqis and bad Iraqis-all Iraqis were our enemy until such point as they unconditionally surrendered.

The people who wrote about-simply reported the picture as they saw it.

However if you judge it by the standard of -did it do any good for the US? Well, then victory is not a word that comes to mind. As for did it do good for the Iraqis-well the jury is going to be out on that one for a long time to come.  Given the track record of Arabs as a whole-I’m not optimistic.

But the cost-the real cost in lives, money, and national interest squandered-was never, ever, worth it.

And in that regard, the conventional wisdom was right all along. So Phib may be angry Newsweek never put lipstick on the pig until now. I’m angry that so many people let themselves be deluded into lifting a finger to put the pig in the pen in the first place.

My anger makes more sense.