The Operation Was a Success But the Patient Died...

Joshua Micah Marshall gives us his diagnosis with a mean medical metaphor:

The fact that we could probably stay in Iraq just like this for twenty years as long as we don't mind burning through our military (which might come in handy if we ever faced a security threat outside Mesopotamia) and our sons and daughters isn't really the point.

Unfortunately, I don't think we're in a position to just pull up stakes and leave the place. We're in a position something like that a surgeon might face if he started an operation only to realize once he'd cut the patient open that the operation should never have been attempted. But now the patient's gone critical and he's got to stabilize him and close him up without having him die on the operating table.

In that situation, why the operation started in the first place or whether it should have been attempted at all is sort of beside the point. The issue is keeping the patient alive.

If the trauma wasn't so dire, this cynical swordsman would be in stitches...