There Is No "Good" War

This Times of London story tells us that David M. Satterfield, currently our co-ordinator for Iraq (a lot more benign-sounding of a title than “czar” or “viceroy,” as Paul Bremer was called when he headed the Coalition Provisional Authority in that country), said recently that "Iraq may turn out to be America’s 'good war' while Afghanistan goes 'bad'."

Well, to date, we have sustained 3,931 casualties in Iraq, Mr. Satterfield (as noted here). And if that constitutes your definition of “good,” then I don’t want to imagine what you would consider to be “bad” (and I’m going to ignore the other “smoke and mirrors” stuff here implying that the Iraqi government may actually get its act together – looong past the time for that to happen).

And this Wikipedia article tells us the following about Satterfield…

In the indictment: U.S. v. Lawrence Anthony Franklin, Steven J. Rosen, Keith Weissman, USGO-2 is mentioned, and in a New York Times article: David Satterfield, deputy chief of the United States Mission in Baghdad, is identified as USGO-2. In early 2002, Satterfield discussed secret national security matters in two meetings with Steven J. Rosen. The meetings, on January 18, 2002, and March 12, 2002, were confirmed by classified documents. The indictment, however, did not accuse Satterfield of any wrongdoing.

I’m not alleging Satterfield did anything legally actionable here, but I just want to point out yet again how the names of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman keep coming up whenever the topic of real or alleged discussions of secrets involving people in our government makes its way into the headlines (such as with Our Gal Condi here).

And in case you’re wondering, I can find no trace of military service in Satterfield’s background, which is totally unsurprising (though his diplomatic service is extensive). I can’t imagine anyone who has ever been a grunt in combat finding anything “good” about Iraq.