As of today, America has been involved in the war in Iraq longer than we were in world war two. As of yesterday American forces will have been in Iraq for 3 years and 8 months. A comparison to other wars:

• The Revolutionary War lasted for 8 years and 2 months.
• The American Civil War lasted 4 years, ending on April 9, 1865.
• The Spanish-American War began on February 15, 1898, and ended in the same year, on July 17.
• World War I lasted 4 years and just under 5 months.
• The U.S. role in World War II started in December of 1941; it ended with the Japanese surrender in 1945.
• The U.S. involvement in Vietnam lasted well over a decade, until Saigon fell to North Vietnam on April 30, 1975.

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Today, the US will mark its 1,349th day in Iraq. With one of the worst 24-hour periods of carnage since the US-led invasion in 2003 – more than 170 people were killed from Thursday to Friday – Washington has no quick solution in mind.

In fact things have only gotten worse day by day since American forces have invaded Iraq. With no clear justification for our involvement many wonder when or how we can leave. The US Army’s current strategy looks like this: The military offensive in Baghdad, which has ended neither violence or chaos since August, should continue another four to six months. Abizaid claims there have been successes in successful targeting of the Shiite death squads. Abizaid wants to build the Iraqi army into a 320,000-strong force that can prove more trustworthy than the militia in providing security. In the eyes of the US army, the problem is less the training of Iraqi soldiers than it is cultivating loyalty to them.

The reality is that because the Americans are confined to a selected area while the rest of the country has, through a series of brutal daily slaughters, separated into ethnic groups in separate neighborhoods. This allows both sides to use larger mortars and rockets to fight each other without the worry of hitting mixed neighborhoods. Look for an escalation in large scale attacks that rely less on accurate weaponry to increase.

Make no mistakes, a civil war is going on in Iraq, and American forces are smack in the middle. We have the unenviable position of trying to keep all sides from killing each other, while at the same time defending against attacks from all sides.

Chuck Hagel said it best in a Sunday Washington times editorial

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation — regardless of our noble purpose.

So as this conflict draws on and on, we have to ask ourselves several very hard questions. What was the reason we went to war in Iraq? Why are we in Iraq? How will we leave? When will be leave? What constitutes victory in Iraq? As of right now we have no good answers to any of these questions.

The Iraq conflict has become a grinding, brutal death trap. We are thrashing helplessly while a civil war rages around us, killing our troops and the people our troops are supposed to be helping. America has no good options. If we leave more people die, if we stay more people die, if we do nothing more people die.

I do not profess to know what the best course of action is. But in the end we have to learn from our mistakes. We have to hold people responsible for this disaster, we have to make sure this never happens again.