I am all for starting something I set out to finish. However, if I set out to dig a flower garden in my back yard, and the action of digging starts a giant sinkhole opening up that threatens to engulf my house, I might rethink my positioning of the garden plot and put it, instead, on the other side of the yard and fill the hole I had started digging with cement.
The president set out to disarm Saddam Hussein, depose the butcher of baghdad and receive the adulation of the Iraqi people, bestow upon them the blessings of liberty and jeffersonian democracy, have a few statues erected in his honor and march off into the history books as a great wartime president. It didn't work out that way.
In my youth, my father would make me memorize poetry and recite them to him after dinner. One poem that sticks out is "Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.... the section that seems germane:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
I think it is safe to say that someone blundered in deciding to invade Iraq instead of concentrate on confronting Islamic extremism. Once that blunder has been recognized, it would seem that many would just as soon let the light brigade continue charging rather than call them back and have to admit they fucked up.
