http://slate.msn.com/id/2107517/How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
That's what it all comes down to--this debate, this war, this election. For all the differences between Iraq and Vietnam, the awful question John Kerry posed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 is the same one hanging over us now.
This time, however, Kerry isn't raising the question. His opponent, the president of the United States, is raising it. Why? Because Iraq is different from Vietnam. We were attacked on 9/11. We thought Saddam Hussein was behind it. We thought Iraq posed the next threat. We don't want to believe that we were wrong, that we've committed $200 billion and sacrificed more than 1,000 American lives in error. We can't imagine asking thousands more to die for a mistake.
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That's how Bush judges the war's worth: not by costs and benefits, but by character. It shows our nobility. It shows we did our duty. He used the word "duty" seven times tonight. Kerry never used that word, except to refer to "active duty" troops. Eleven times, Bush called the mess in Iraq "hard work." To recognize error would be to abandon that work and shirk our duty. Again and again, he framed the acceptance of bad news as moral failure. Will. Resolute. Steadfast. Uncertainty. Weakness. Supporting our troops.
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