It’s been said that the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in 2003 serves as the perfect metaphor for our presence in Iraq.

Some Baghdad residents started hacking at the base of the statue, but U.S. troops took over and pulled it down with their military equipment. Then came the deception. Images of the scene were presented to make a small crowd appear large. To extend the metaphor further, it was probably billed as a turning point—one of many, many turning points that have come and gone.

War supporters seem to see nothing but success in Iraq, but success on whose terms? Certainly not for the Iraqi people. A month passes with fewer American deaths and it’s seen as progress.

Meanwhile, the war that some Americans are cheering has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis—some estimates say hundreds of thousands. Millions more have been displaced and are refugees either in their own countries or neighboring lands.

These facts don’t seem to be acknowledged by those who still look for victory in Iraq. Their cheers for a military solution appear blind to what a war brings.

Politicians will continue to return from visits to Iraq with glowing reports of progress. Probably none of those updates will mention the ethnically-cleansed neighborhoods surrounded by giant concrete blast walls. There will be no report on the mountains of trash, the lakes of mud and sewage, the lack of electricity and clean water, the difficulty of finding public transportation and good health care in a city of several million people.

What have we learned in our five-year adventure? Probably very little because in this conflict, most war advocates have little invested in what they’re supporting. No family members involved, no economic hardship resulting from a war effort—just an insulated indifference to what’s become of life in Iraq.

As one former supporter recently wrote, it’s true that Saddam was a monster, but war is a monster, too, and few people seriously weighed the moral consequences.

When vice president Dick Cheney was recently asked about the large percentage of Americans who don’t think the effort was worth it, his answer was: “So?”

Our shock and awe continue.