How The United States Lost The Second Iraq War

[Draggingtree]

The Federalist: How The United States Lost The Second Iraq War

We are losing Iraq for the same reason we lost Vietnam: we are fighting one war, while the insurgents fight another.

By Stanton S. Coerr JUNE 8, 2015

In September 2010, “I visited the troops in Ramadi, the scene of some of the most vicious fighting of the war.

 

“The reporters accompanying me asked if the war had been ‘worth it,’ and I responded – in ‘markedly anti-triumphal remarks,’ as they would write – that while our troops had accomplished something really quite extraordinary here, how it all weighs in the balance I think remains to be seen.

 

“It really requires a historian’s perspective in terms of what happens here in the long run.” —Robert F. Gates, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, “Duty.”

 

The long run has ended. We are losing the war in Iraq for the same reason we lost the war in Vietnam: we are fighting one war, while the insurgents fight another.

[Cyber_Liberty]

 

We are losing the war in Iraq for the same reason we lost the war in Vietnam: we are fighting one war, while the insurgents fight another.

 

The politicians are fighting the war like they do politics: In politics, one answers the questions one wants to answer, not the ones that are asked. They implement the policies they like, not the ones that fix the problems. It's the same thing with wars that last for more than five years. The Democrats are fighting the war they want to fight, not the one that's really happening.

 

It's a modified "Declare victory and get out" strategy, and it works every bit as well (which is to say, "Not.").

[Valin]

@Draggingtree

 

 

The long run has ended.

 

The long run has ended? Really? For someone who purports to be an historian that is a particularly silly thing to say in June of 2015. Iraq in particular and GWOT in general has just begun.

In every war there are always ready to declare all is lost. Historians should be very careful when pontificating on recent (20 year old) events.

 

 

We cannot know when they have won. But we will know when we have lost.

 

 

See the above and double down on it.