THAT is the question...

As the administration continues to spin the yarn that somehow the war in Iraq is over, The American Conservative magazine reviews the past 90 months... and asks a key question:

Six months before the invasion of Iraq, Taki Theodoracopulos, Scott McConnell and this writer launched a new magazine, The American Conservative. Goal: Convince our countrymen that invading Iraq would be imperial folly.

In the first column, in mid-September 2002, I wrote:

“If Providence does not intrude, we will soon launch an imperial war on Iraq with all the ‘On-to-Berlin!’ bravado with which French poilus and British Tommies marched in August 1914. But this invasion will not be the cakewalk neoconservatives predict. …

“(For) what comes after the celebratory gunfire when wicked Saddam is dead? …"

The cost: 4,400 dead, 35,000 wounded, $700 billion sunk...

And as America was tied down in the Long War, China emerged as the world’s No. 1 auto producer, No. 1 manufacturer, No. 1 exporter and No. 2 economy.

Meanwhile, the Washington Times reports,

“The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.”

What does it profit America if we save Anbar and lose Arizona?