We can't have a failure in Iraq, but we also can't be there for

Host: The desert air was heavy with dust and heat, the kind that blurs the horizon until the earth seems to dissolve into light. In the distance, the remnants of a city lay quiet — concrete walls painted with the ghosts of slogans, windows shattered into mirrors of memory. The wind carried a faint metallic hum, a whisper of engines and history, of something once loud and righteous now gone tired and thin.

In a makeshift military outpost, where the flags hung limp and the radio static murmured, Jack sat on an overturned ammo crate, sleeves rolled, sand clinging to his boots. He was staring out toward nothing in particular, his face hardened but not cold. Jeeny, wearing a tan scarf loosely around her neck, sat beside him, her notebook open, her pen unmoving.

Jeeny: “Dennis Ross once said, ‘We can’t have a failure in Iraq, but we also can’t be there for the next ten years because if we are, it’s going to become, I think, a failure in and of itself.’”

Jack: without looking at her “That’s the curse of intervention, isn’t it? You stay, you fail. You leave, you fail differently.”

Jeeny: softly “The paradox of power. You can build stability or dependency — never both.”

Jack: smirking faintly “And either way, someone calls it peace.”

Host: A helicopter droned faintly overhead, the sound fading into the vastness of the sky. The heat shimmered off the sandbags stacked like tired sentinels. A few soldiers moved in the distance, shadows in slow motion, carrying crates, water, fatigue.

Jeeny: “Ross was right. Ten years becomes a lifetime out here. The mission changes. The enemy changes. And after a while, even the reason changes.”

Jack: “Yeah. You start with ideals — democracy, freedom, the greater good — and end with just trying to keep things from falling apart.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what all wars become — management instead of meaning.”

Host: A gust of desert wind whipped up, scattering dust into their eyes. Jack squinted, covering his face, then looked out again toward the burnt horizon.

Jack: “You ever think about how long a decade feels when you’re the one living it — not the one writing policy about it?”

Jeeny: “I think about it every time I see another mother waiting at an airport for a coffin draped in a flag.”

Jack: quietly “Ten years. And we still talk about success like it’s a clean word.”

Jeeny: “Success isn’t clean. It’s survival with paperwork.”

Host: The radio crackled, a man’s voice announcing coordinates, then silence again. The flag stirred once, listless. A flock of birds passed overhead, black shapes against the burning blue.

Jeeny: “You know what I think Ross meant by failure? Not military failure — moral fatigue. The kind that comes when you stop asking why and start asking how long.”

Jack: leaning forward, elbows on knees “And the longer you stay, the blurrier the line gets. Occupation, liberation — same map, different slogans.”

Jeeny: “And both written in the same ink — fear.”

Jack: bitter laugh “Fear of losing control. Fear of admitting you already have.”

Host: The sun began to dip, the desert turning the color of rust and regret. The wind calmed. The stillness settled like dust, heavy but sacred.

Jeeny: “You know, when people say ‘we can’t afford to fail,’ they never say what failure looks like. Maybe it’s not defeat. Maybe it’s the blindness that makes us think we can’t.”

Jack: “So the real failure isn’t losing. It’s staying too long to avoid it.”

Jeeny: nodding slowly “Because then the mission stops being about change — it becomes about justification.”

Jack: “And justification’s just another way of saying we’re scared to go home.”

Host: The sky darkened, streaked with amber clouds and smoke from some far-off burn pit. Jeeny closed her notebook, pressing her palm against its worn cover like it contained something fragile — maybe truth, maybe silence.

Jeeny: “You think the people who send soldiers here ever come to see what’s left behind?”

Jack: without hesitation “No. They visit when the cameras do. After that, it’s all briefings and statistics. Easier to count victories than consequences.”

Jeeny: “Because consequences don’t fit neatly in a report.”

Jack: “No, but they live here. In the dust. In the faces of the kids selling bottled water at checkpoints. In the silence between gunfire.”

Host: The evening call to prayer rose in the distance, haunting, beautiful — a sound older than war, softer than victory. The wind carried it through the camp, and for a moment, both of them fell quiet.

Jeeny: after a long pause “You know what I think the real tragedy is? That we keep calling it rebuilding — when what we’re really doing is relearning the same mistake.”

Jack: “History’s favorite habit.”

Jeeny: “And humanity’s worst addiction.”

Host: The light faded completely, the world now caught between the glow of campfires and the stretch of endless night. Jack stood, brushing the dust from his pants, and looked at the horizon one more time — that eternal, unreachable line.

Jack: “Maybe Ross was right. Maybe staying too long becomes its own kind of defeat. Because sometimes, holding on isn’t strength — it’s fear of letting go.”

Jeeny: “And letting go isn’t weakness — it’s wisdom.”

Host: The night wind picked up, carrying the scent of earth and oil, of memory and exhaustion. Somewhere, a radio played a broken fragment of a song — something hopeful, something old.

Jeeny: “You know, Jack, I think every nation — every person — has to learn when to stop fixing and start healing.”

Jack: “And that’s the lesson we keep failing to learn.”

Host: The two of them stood side by side in the fading light, the sky vast and merciless, the ground still warm from the day’s heat. Around them, the desert stretched endless — a mirror of every empire that tried to outlast its own reflection.

And as they walked back toward the tent line, their footsteps silent on the dust, the words of Dennis Ross seemed to linger in the air like smoke:

That there are two kinds of failure —
the one that comes from leaving too soon,
and the one that comes from staying too long.

And between them lies the hardest victory of all:
the courage to know when enough is enough,
and when peace requires walking away.