Let's Not Forget the Cost of War

A Washington Post journalist suggested that a “showdown” with Iran could help the US economy; now a key GOP senator wants to “go beyond sanctions” and “neuter that regime.” Seeing a blinded, one-legged veteran makes Roger Cohen wonder: Have we forgotten the cost of war? It’s “the stimulus package from Hell,” he writes in the New York Times.

The US “cannot afford another war in a Muslim country," or "fighting across a 2,000-mile front stretching through Arab, Persian, and Central Asian worlds.” Besides, we have “no conclusive evidence” of an Iranian WMD. “It would be tragic to ignore the lessons of Iraq” and “stumble onto a war train armed with flimsy evidence,” Cohen notes. “The pressure on Obama from Congress is going to grow”—but “a third US war is inconceivable.”