Today's quote

Mark A R Kleiman sums up the geopolitical costs of quagmire nicely.

A successful occupation of Iraq leading to the installation of a powerful and friendly government there might indeed have increased our influence over the region. But a long counterinsurgency campaign that ties up so much of our military capacity that we can't credibly threaten ground action anywhere else in the world, and the creation of 130,000 potential hostages should we do anything that sufficiently annoys Iran, has the opposite effect.

Of course, who could have predicted that we would have such problems?