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James Fallows has a sober, and sobering, look at Iraq that takes opportunity cost into account, as apparently Bush did not—amazingly for anyone with an MBA—when choosing to invade Iraq.

Since the article is only on the newstands, and not yet online, I typed excerpts from it in. But go read the whole thing. It's essential.

James Fallows, "Bush's Lost year: How the war in Iraq undermined the war on terror," The Atlantic, October 2004

Over the past two years I have been talking with a group of people at the working level of America's anti-terrorism efforts...

"Let me tell you my gut feeling," a senior figure at one of America's military-sponsored think tanks told me recently, after we had talked for twenty minutes about details of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. "If I can be blunt, the Administration is full of shit. In my view we are much, much worse off than we were than we went into Iraq. This is not a partisan position. I voted for these guys. But I think they are incompetent. Whatever tactical victories we may gain along the way, this will prove to be a strategic blunder."

This man will not let me use his name, because he is still involved in military policy. He cited the experiences of Joseph Wilson, Richard Clarke, and Generals Eric Shinseki and Anthony Zinni to illustrate the personal risks of openly expressing his dissenting view. But I am quoting him anonymously—as I will quote some others—because his words are representative of what one hears at the working level.

Professionals argue that by the end of 2002 the decisions the Administration had made—and avoided making—through the course of the year had left the nation less safe, with fewer positive options. Step by step through 2002 America's war on terror because little more than preparation for war in Iraq.

Because of that shift, the United States succeeded in removing Saddam Hussein, but at this cost: Afghanistan was left to fester, as attention and money were turned toward Iraq. This in turn left more havens in Afghanistan in which terrorist groups could reconstitute themselves. ...

A full inventory of the costs of the war in Iraq goes on. Bush began in 2002 with a warning that North Korea and Iran, not just Iraq, threatened the world because of the nuclear weapons they were developing. With the United States preoccupied with Iraq, the other two countries surged ahead. ... Because it lost time and squandered resources, the United States now has no good options for dealing with either country. It has fewer deployable soldiers and weapons; it has less international leverage through the "soft power" of its alliances and treaties; it has even worse intelligence, because so many resources are directed toward Iraq.

Before America went to war in Iraq, its military power appeared limitless. Now the limits on our military's manpower and sustainability are all too obvious.... Because of outlays in Iraq, the United States cannot spend $150 billion for other defensive purposes. Some nine million shipping containers enter American ports each year; only two percent of them are physically inspected ... Fewer than a quarter of 231 major cities under review had received any of the aid they expected. An internal budget memo from the Administration was leaked this past spring. It said that outlays for virtually all domestic programs, including homeland security, would have to be cut in 2005—and the federal budget deficit would still be more than $450 billion.

Worst of all, the government-wide effort to wage war in Iraq crowded out efforts to design a broader strategy against Islamic extremists and terrorists; to this day the Administration has articulated no comprehensive long term plan.

And here is the startling part. There is no evidence that the President and those closest to Him ever talked systematically about the "opportunity costs" and tradeoffs in their decision to invade Iraq. No one has pointed to a meeting, a memo, a full set of discussions, about what America would gain and lose.

The Administration apparently did not consider questions like "If we pursue the war on terror by invading Iraq, might we incite even more terror in the long run?" and "If we commit so many of our troops this way, what possibilities will we be giving up?" But Bush "did not think of this intellectually, as a comparative decision, I was told by Senator Bob Graham, of Florida, who voted against the war resolution for fear it would hurt the war on terror. "It was a single decision: He saw Saddam Hussein as an evil person who had to be removed."

A man who participated in high-level planning for both Afghanistan and Iraq—and who is unnamed here because he still works for the government—told me, "There was absolutely no debate in the normal sense. There are only six or eight of them who make the decisions, and they only talk to each other. And if you disagree with them in public, they'll come after you, the way they did to Shinseki."

"How will history judge this period, in terms of the opportunity costs of invading Iraq?" said John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.Org, when we spoke. I think the opportunity cost is going to be North Korea and Iran."

The strong working-level consensus is that terrorists are "logical," if hideously brutal, and that the steps in 2002 that led to war have broadened the extremists base. ... As violence surged in occupied Iraq, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London, reported that Al Qaeda was galvanized by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As of mid-2004 Al Qaeda had at least 18,000 operatives in 60 countries. "Al Qaeda has fully reconstituted [and] set its sights firmly on the USA and its closest Western allies in Europe," the report said.

"I have been saying for years, Osama Bin Laden could never have done it without us," a civilian adviser to the Pentagon told me this summer. "We have continued to play to his political advantage and to confirm, in the eyes of his constituency, the very claims he made about us." The claims are that the United States will travel far to suppress Muslims, that it will occupy their holy sites, that it will oppose the rise of Islamic governments, and that it will take their resources.

To govern is to choose, and the choices made in 2002 were fateful. The United States began that year shocked and wounded, but with tremendous strategic advantages. All that was required was to think broadly about the threats to the country, and creatively about the responses.

The Bush administration chose another path. Implicitly at the beginning of 2002, and as a matter of formal policy by the end, it placed all other considerations second to regime change in Iraq. It hampered the campaign in Afghanistan before fighting began and wound it down prematurely, along the way losing the chance the capture Osama Bin Laden. It turned a blind eye to misdeeds in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and to MD threats from North Korea and Iran far more serious than any posed by Saddam Hussein, all in the name of moving toward a showdown with Iraq. It overused and wore out its army in invading Iraq—without committing enough troops for a successful occupation. It saddled the United States with ongoing costs that dwarf its spending for domestic security. And by every available measure [the Administration] only worsened the risk of future terrorism. In every sense 2002 was a lost year.

If Kerry can condense this down to a sentence, he wins. The debate and the election. The concept of "opportunity cost" lets us look at Iraq as a "kitchen table" issue. The issue is not, Was invading Iraq a good use of our resources. The issue is, Was invading Iraq the best use of our resources? We've had two years to find out, and the answer is No.