March 27, 2008 - 12:00am
On Sunday night in Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed four American soldiers. The casualties made it 4,000 American lives lost since the United States invaded Iraq five years ago, a figure that's sure to grow in the coming months. Even for a country by now used to the consequences of prolonged military conflict, the mounting casualty count has become hard to swallow.
The tragedy of American involvement in Iraq is rooted less in the loss of American lives, though, and more in the ill-conceived logic for American military engagement. Over the last five years, unilateralism and misrepresentation have alienated the United States from the rest of the world. American foreign policy under the Bush administration has demonstrated a startling impatience for diplomacy, and perhaps even more worrisome, a "shoot first" mentality that has embroiled this country in a seemingly counterproductive foreign conflict.
