Killing Ourselves Over the Kremlin

Blood for the liberal international order.

Since the Twin Towers came tumbling down on Sept. 11, four times as many members of the U.S. military died by suicide than did in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. A staggering 22 veterans take their lives every day in a silent slaughter, America’s daily toll for the foreign policy establishment’s folly.

Nevertheless, we are on a war footing once more, with the looming prospect of sending more people into combat’s meat grinder. Of course, the establishment’s neoliberal and neoconservative hawks are exploiting American patriotism to goad the country into going along. But surveying the facts shows that this would be a uniquely irrational conflict, making our misadventures in the East seem sane by comparison.