Bad Logic, Mr. President

This AP story bothers me. I have been hearing this logic a lot: we should not leave Iraq because of our prior losses.

This is erroneous. Let's talk about money instead of lives for a moment. It is less emotional.

This is just a human version of an economic fallacy: we should put more money in Project A because we have already spent so much.

If Project A will cost $50,000 in the next 6 months but has shown zero benefit, why does its make sense to look at the $300,000 already spent.

The logic fails because prior expenditures tell us nothing about the project. If the logic is changed slightly, the fallacy can be removed. Take an example of an outdoor, Indiana, water park in late September. If the construction of a new park ran 6 months behind schedule, it makes infinite sense to spend the $50,000 maintenance costs to make it through spring of the following year. If you don't spend for maintenance, the foreclosure or eviction would put the project back to zero. You would have to spend the construction costs again with added expenses of having lost credibility as profitable builder.

The prior deaths in Iraq should not be wasted, but the proper way to express this argument is that withdrawing now will lead to more aggressive acts against America throughout the world. Then any future need to tame a terroristic Iraq would potentially require a whole new war and investment of 1,000's of American lives and billions of American dollars. The loss of withdrawal is the re-investment, not the honor of past lives.

Build memorials to the everyday heros in the military. Pray for them. Tell their stories. Inspire the troops there and here to live up to the valor shown already shown in Iraq. Calculate the cost of getting back to where we are today, but don't calculate on previous expenditures alone.