As the President ponders his inimitable "Surge" ™, there are a few ways to recognize that a war has degenerated so far that, at last, it has become a total debacle.
One is when nobody can figure a way to end it.
Another is when solutions are proposed, but the best one is considered horrible.
Or when 75% of the American public agree that the policy is wrong. (75% of the American public can't even agree on whether the sun is good for you.)
Or if you turn on the news and just look.
Needless-to-say, there are many others, but perhaps the most basic way is this -
Realizing that if this was all just a bad dream and when you woke up everything would be exactly as it was before the war started, that that's the only good solution.
If you could make that wish - that things would be exactly like they were before the war started - would you? No troops in Iraq. No civil war. No 3,000 American deaths. No 46,800 American casualties. No $350 billion spent. No "Stay the Course."
If you could make that wish, then that defines a debacle.
If you can't make that wish, then you're in the fast-dwindling, tiny minority of the American public, braying into a hollow wilderness.
Mind you, I'm not saying that even this would be a good solution. (Forgetting that it's not even a possible solution, except in the movie version of the Iraq War. See, the Hollywood Elite are good for something!) I'm merely noting that when you're fighting a war and recognize that things as before would be the only good resolution, whatever they are, then that's as good a description of a debacle as there is.
Certainly, if life was the same as March, 2003, that would mean Saddam Hussein would be in power. It's sort of a soul-crunching thought. Yet, as horrific a concept as that is, even if many Iraqis would be sickened by such a thought, it's an equally horrific concept to recognize how many Iraqis would prefer even that to life in Iraq the way it is now. Between the civil war; daily bombings; limitations of electricity, water and human services; complete loss of stability; an estimated 55,000 civilian deaths and so much more, it's a cruel existence, with no end in sight.
From the purely American perspective, however, if we time-traveled back four years and had a do-over, we know now from many investigations that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq when we attacked. So we wouldn't be facing that as a threat to the U.S.
We know now, too, from the Senate's own study and others, that Saddam Hussein not only had not been working with terrorists, but viewed them instead as a hated menace to his power. So that wouldn't have been a threat to the U.S. either.
We know from the White House itself that Saddam Hussein was not trying to buy yellow cake to build nuclear weapons. So that wouldn't be a threat.
We know that a strong Saddam Hussein always stood as a deterrent against Iran and its development of nuclear weapons. So, Iran would not be a threat. Which they now are.
We would have all the American troops home from Iraq and fresh, to be on vigilant alert against real threats to America and to fight actual terrorism.
And we would have $350 billion in the American treasury to use to protect America against terrorism: port security, first-responders, airport protection, at-risk communities and more. And still have a great many billions left over to balance the budget, boost the economy and make America more livable with improved social services and programs, like funding No Child Left Behind.
Again - having Saddam Hussein in power is a despicable concept.
And again - getting in Mr. Peabody's Way-Back Machine and returning to the past is not a viable alternative. (Although, since neoconservatives claim to create their own reality, perhaps it's not as far-fetched as one might otherwise think...)
None of this is a proposal. What it is is an impossibility.
But merely the simple thought of wishing that America would be in such overwhelming better shape, in probably just about every conceivable way, in probably the only way, if the War in Iraq never occurred - that shows what an utter, pathetic debacle this entire fiasco is.
"We'll stay in Iraq until we win." "Stay the course." "I can see into his heart." "I'm the Decider." "We don't cut and run." "I'm a Uniter, not a Divider."
Well on one thing at least, the President got it right - he's united the country. When 75% of the public can agree on what a disaster the War in Iraq is, you have to take you good news where you can find it.