The costs to those who soldier on
A FORMER student dropped by my office last week, recently having returned from commanding his platoon through a tour of duty in Iraq. I remembered our conversation the day he completed his Georgetown ROTC training. He wanted to pursue a career in the Army, preferably in Special Forces. He looked forward, with natural trepidation, to service in Iraq, even though he had doubts about the wisdom of the war. A good student, a good guy, a good soldier.
Now, he told me about his experiences in a suburb of Baghdad. About leading his soldiers on foot patrols where improvised explosive devices made it too dangerous to ride their Bradley fighting vehicles and Humvees. About seeing Iraqi militia standing on the corners protecting their neighborhoods, in the near absence of a police presence, from the attacks of enemy militia -- much the way kids rely on their gangs in urban US jungles.
His mission, he said, came down largely to trying to keep his platoon alive. And it was one of the few in his area that suffered no fatalities.
But the personal costs were still high. Almost one third were wounded, some severely. And of 14 who were married, 10 are divorced or separated.
I asked what we should we do in Iraq. "Get out," he said. Not all at once. But soon.
Despite this sense of hopelessness, he will soon begin to train a new platoon he will lead in another tour of duty in Iraq later this year. Why? It's his duty as a soldier, although he is questioning his commitment to a long-term military career. If he can't help win a war, he will try to keep his soldiers as safe as possible, he said in a quiet voice. His determination certainly exemplifies West Point's commitment to "duty, honor, country."
I told him that the depth of my disagreement with the war was equaled by my admiration for those who are fighting it.
He nodded, but asked why some who supported the war were arguing that we must persist because we could not afford another "defeated army " of the kind we had seen after Vietnam. Here is what I told him:
Their argument is wrong in fact and unintentionally unfair to our troops. Our Army was never defeated in Vietnam. They were not driven out of Vietnam. They won their battles. The fault lay not in their performance, but in their civilian leaders in Washington. They were given an unattainable goal. "Success" in Vietnam could only be achieved if we could leave behind a Vietnamese government that could survive on its own -- a political goal. And even after the longest war in our history, it was unattainable. Lacking enough support by its people, the government in Saigon became more and more dependent on the United States -- further limiting its political support among a highly nationalistic Vietnamese people.
Similarly, our troops are not being defeated in Iraq. Yes, despite fighting a war that has lasted longer than American participation in World War II, we are further than ever from success. Our soldiers performed brilliantly in defeating Saddam Hussein. But their subsequent mission has not been accomplished because they were given a mission impossible. As in Vietnam, our civilian leadership failed to understand the internal divisions and nationalism of a foreign society. You cannot fix another country's politics and resolve its internal fractures primarily through military means, coupled with floundering political, economic, and social programs that create as much dependency, corruption, and resentment as progress.
Among the many costs of this tragedy -- in losses of our men, women, and resources, in providing a recruiting poster for terrorists, in diverting us from the Afghanistan war we should have prosecuted more fully, in increased Iranian influence -- is the fact that we are asking my young friend and his comrades to soldier on in a conflict that more and more of them recognize as misguided. A recent Military Times poll found that "only 41 percent of the military said the United States should have gone to war in Iraq in the first place."
These men and women deserve, all the more, to be honored for meeting their responsibility to fight on. And, all the more, the nation must meet its responsibility to begin a phased redeployment of our troops from Iraq -- strengthening our armed forces for future missions while pursuing more vigorously a war in Afghanistan that is not yet lost, but hangs in the balance.
Anthony Lake, a former national security adviser, is a professor at Georgetown University. 
