It Can Always Get Worse

Debra Saunders's latest starts out with what looks like it could almost develop into a grain of sense:

THE MOST NAIVE sentence in the English language is: It couldn't get any worse.

Yup, that's about right.

If she stopped there, it would be her Best Column Ever. Sadly, she doesn't:

That's an argument many who have protested the war give for getting out of Iraq -- that nothing could be worse than 3,000 U.S. troops killed as the Iraq insurgency has grown stronger.

There she goes with those voices again. Do you know anyone who made that argument? Neither do I. In fact, I recall people making the opposite argument.

And yet she forges ahead:

There is something worse: Some 3,000 U.S. troops dead, followed by the collapse of the Iraqi government, thousands of Sunni Arabs dead, Iraqis who worked with the coalition forces assassinated and their families butchered, and thousands more refugees swarming across the Middle East. Something worse would be 3,000-plus U.S. troops dead after a defeat that has emboldened jihadists, who want to kill Americans, and have become convinced that if they do, the United States won't fight back -- not for long, anyway.

Yup, that's worse, all right. But you know what's even worse than that? All of the above, with 5,000 U.S. troops dead (or 4,000 or 10,000 or however many have to die before we pull the plug).

And additional U.S. casualties are just a small part of the equation. The longer we stay, the more human lives and money and national prestige we invest throw away in Iraq, the worse it will be when we lose--for us, for Iraqis, for stability in the Middle East.

So yes, Debra, it can always get worse. That's why we need to leave now.

[That's all, folks]