Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Well, I’m afraid I’m still not with you, sir, because, I mean, if a Russian attack was not in progress, then your use of Plan R – in fact, your order to the entire Wing… Oh. I would say, sir, that there were something dreadfully wrong somewhere.

General Jack D. Ripper: Now why don’t you just take it easy, Group Captain, and please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater, and help yourself to whatever you’d like.

[Mandrake snaps to attention and salutes]

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: General Ripper, Sir, as an officer in Her Majesty’s Air Force, it is my clear duty, under the present circumstances, to issue the recall code, upon my own authority, and bring back the Wing. If you’ll excuse me, sir.

[He finds the doors locked]

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I’m afraid, sir, I must ask you for the key, and the recall code. Have you got them handy, sir?

General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No, I don’t think I do, sir, no.

General Jack D. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

I’ve noticed a dispiriting fact recently while observing the phalanx of retired talking-head generals parade before the cameras of our corporate political programs. Whether it is Gen. Batiste, Gen. McCaffrey, Gen. Zinni, or Gen. Downing, they all respond to every question with the same mantra.

Russert shows a graphic that Iraq is losing the economic equivalent of the city of Detroit every four weeks (due to emigration). McCaffrey says, “Well, the important thing for the American people to understand is the importance of victory and the catastrophic implications of defeat.” Never mind that these responses are always non sequiturs. The salient point is that the Generals have no answers. The only thing they seem to agree on is that we must keep trying, keep fighting, and keep dying. They are not very good at explaining why we must do these things. They do not hash out the likely downside to American interests if we suffer ‘defeat’. Rather, they just declare that defeat would be bad, perhaps very bad.

Sometimes they take a stab at it, deploring the resultant ‘loss of prestige’, for example. Or they might declare that defeat will ’embolden the enemy’. What they don’t do is explain how fighting for six more months, or eighteen more months, will lesson the fallout from our defeat. In fact, by framing the alternatives as binary (all or nothing, victory or defeat) they wind up offering no plan for mitigating the fallout. It’s as if they have been dumbed down to the level of a Karl Rove political talking point.

And I wonder what the point is of them making television appearances if this is the best they have to offer. They seem to be proving Clemenceau right, that war is too important to be left to the generals. One wonders whether they think the ‘terrorists’ are going to sap our precious bodily fluids.

We just had an election, and it will be two years before we have a chance to have another. But, if the Washington Establishment doesn’t begin to engage in some serious introspection, not just about the Iraq War but about the last fifty years of consensus foreign policy, the next election will be considerably more hostile to incumbents than the last one (and to both parties). There are consequences for failure, for overextension, for fiscal mismanagement, for becoming a rogue nation in the eyes of the world. The midterms were a mere canary in a coal mine.

Iraq is not Vietnam. We will not just take a mulligan. Our standard of living is going to suffer. Our ability to travel is going to suffer. And hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people are going to die (think Cambodia on steroids) as a result of the broken state of Iraq. I know there are no easy answers. But we need some people to grow up and act like adults. Talk of victory is empty drivel, utterly beside the point. What we need now is talk of mitigation. How do we limit the fallout? How do limit the bloodshed? How do we prevent major economic shockwaves?

The threat of terrorism, even on a 9/11 scale, pales in comparison to the economic and humanitarian risks unleashed by our invasion of Iraq. The neo-conservative vision has failed totally. It has not failed in part. It has not failed due to a lack of forces, planning, or resolve. It failed strategically, and it failed utterly. And in failing, it disturbed and unraveled our entire post-World War Two foreign policy posture and strategic thinking.

Talk of victory is just insulting.