Bill Moyers and Andrew Bacevich discuss 'neo-con armchair warriors' and the futility of 'endless' war

To mark the nine-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, this week's episode of Moyers & Company featured a fascinating discussion with West Point graduate, Vietnam vet and scholar Andrew Bacevich.

Bacevich is the noted author of the best-seller The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.

Host Bill Moyers opened the episode reminding viewers what the Iraq War has cost us, adding "...here we are, nine years later, and once again the drumbeat sounds for war in the Middle East. This time the bull’s eye is Iran, and many of the bloodthirsty cries come from the same lusty throats that agitated a decade ago for invading Iraq. Now the neo-con armchair warriors call for hitting Iran before it builds a nuclear bomb to drop on Israel – a scenario that remains in doubt.

"Add to this potential nightmare Afghanistan, where the U.S. is still fighting more than ten years later, and where events just go from bad to worse."

The discussion that followed focused on the possibility of war with Iran, with Bacevich asking, “Are we so unimaginative, so wedded to the reliance on military means that we cannot conceive of any way to reconcile our differences with groups and nations in the Islamic world, and therefore bring this conflict to an end?”

Watch the full segment below, originally uploaded by Moyers & Company on March 23, 2012.