The War is Lost!

Or so say some prominent conservatives such as William F. Buckley and Newt Gingrich, Barnett digs a little deeper in an excellent defense of the war. check it out
Here is a brief quote:

Saying we “lost the war” in Iraq is simply saying “I want a return to the old days of the Powell Doctrine,” which only got us 9/11 and the rising Occidentalism of the Salafis who think American “staying power” is defined by helicopters fleeing over the horizon with their tail rotors between their legs.

The Powell Doctrine was perfect for the old Neocons, because it was a strategy of limited regret, limited impact, limited success and guaranteed long-term reliance on military arms to do nothing more than maintain a declining status quo.

But the Bushies went beyond those limitations on Iraq, which I thought and still think was completely necessary. Yes, it exposed a lot of bad thinking, bad planning, bad force structure, bad doctrine, bad operations, etc. in the U.S. military, but all those exposures have led to necessary change--and change long-delayed at that.

As for the Iraq situation dragging on, it’s so weird that the conservatives can listen to the insurgency experts talk about needing a good decade to defeat such an effort and yet declare, just three years into the intervention, that all is obviously lost. Where these guys’ sense of history is, I do not know.

Wehner points out that “One might hope our own democratic development--which included the Articles of Confederation and a ‘fiery trial’ that cost more than 600,000 American lives--would remind critics that we must sometimes be patient with others.”

Me? I just like to remind everyone of the UN’s own estimate that we killed about 50,000 Iraqis each year for 12 years with our pointless sanctions between Desert Storm and OIF. Makes for a nice round number, doesn’t it.


I would be lying to say that I do not think about the viability of the War constantly. Although there is no clear cut answer, I believe we should have some more patience.