Ghastly Errors

Andrew Sullivan writes about the lessons he's learned from 9/11 and what followed. His third lesson is that imperial adventures like our Iraq and Afghanistan wars are a big mistake.

The third is that nation-building and counter-insurgency in countries which
are barely nations and failed states is a century-long enterprise. Occupations
that long are imperial ventures. Imperial ventures can become self-sustaining.
They are harder to end than government programs, because they are, in part, a
government program. Unless they can be shown to drastically reduce the terror
threat to the West, they can be ghastly errors. The war in Iraq remains such a
ghastly error. The war in Afghanistan, alas, now another. A great power with the
debt levels of the US right now is not Britain in the early 19th century; it's
Britain in the early 20th century. Empire has to be paid for. And we have long
since run out of money.