A Decade of War ‘Not Worth the Effort’

As jingoists condemn critiques that the veterans have not been fighting for our freedoms (much the opposite) on this here Memorial Day, consider this passage surprisingly printed on the front page of today’s New York Times:

Broadly, the question is what the United States gained after a decade in two wars.

“Not much,” Col. Gian P. Gentile, the director of West Point’s military history program and the commander of a combat battalion in Baghdad in 2006, said flatly in an interview last week. “Certainly not worth the effort. In my view.”