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Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms, “War is not won by victory.”

It’s an appropriate observation as the United States military leaves Iraq in this Christmas season with millions of jobless Americans straining to be cheerful.

Despite George W. Bush’s infamous banner, the mission in Iraq was not accomplished after the quick, victorious invasion in the spring of 2003.

The war dragged on until this month, 4,484 American soldiers dead, the last of which was a 23-year-old, a former high school linebacker from Greensboro, killed by an I.E.D.

It was the same, unstoppable cheap and simple weapon that accounted for many of our 33,186 wounded.

Iraq is one of those wars you don’t want to think about too long or too deep.  We all are proud of our soldiers and their courageous sacrifices.  It’s good to stop there.

But history will remind us that the Iraq War was the concoction of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and a cabal of neo-conservative boosters.  They based their actions on a radical “pre-emptive war” foreign policy, selling an unnecessary war with false information.  They sold it to a public eager for a fight after the Nine Eleven terrorist attack.

It was a war that was not a war but an “operation,” Operation Iraqi Freedom.  There was no act of war declaration from a cowed Congress. 

The same Congress, now so hell-bent to balance the federal budget, willingly spent a trillion dollars on the war without raising one cent to pay for it.

It was a war of unprecedented media coverage, news that often was censored or suppressed in times past.  There was much valiant reporting about brave fighting but also coverage that shoved stories such as Abu Ghraib in our shocked civilian faces.

America witnessed its first drawn-out conflict that was fought by mercenaries, namely our own volunteer army.  It is they who carry the brunt of the deaths and wounds, physical and mental.

We see now how too many of us become easily detached from the sacrifices of our military who increasingly are living lives apart from the American mainstream.

In this season of prayers and reflection, let us look more closely at those who now boast blindly of making war again in Iran and elsewhere.

Especially when it’s so uncomfortable to look back on the Iraq War, ended this month in 2011.

Merry Christmas.