It's not the winner who decides when a war is over. The loser does that

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21855-2003Oct26.html

Winning Badly

As our casualties continue to mount, America's leaders could do themselves and us a favor by calling things by their right names. What's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan today is not nation-building. It's not postwar reconstruction. It's not pacification. It's war.

It's not war just because both nations are crawling with troops. So are others. Nor is it war just because people continue to die violently. That happens every day in every city in the world. Nor is it war just because some of the victims wear uniforms. That too is not uncommon even in peacetime.

It's war because our undefeated enemies say it is and behave accordingly.

In that stubborn resistance lies a fundamental truth that seems too often to have eluded American political leaders since World War II: It's not the winner who typically decides when victory in a war has been achieved. It's the loser.

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[w13rd0]

1. Absolutely on target...

...but Bush would have us believe that it's desperation because the reconstruction will be completed tomorrow if he just gets everything he asks for without question...

[DeathvadeR]

2. Beautiful Header...........n/t

[welshTerrier2]

3. You Gotta Love the Latest Spin

the message is: don't believe anything you see or hear, just believe what we tell you ...

Bush and his cronies are actually trying to convince us that, because there have been more attacks against U.S. targets and because those attacks have become more severe, we should all believe that the U.S. is succeeding in its mission in Iraq ... the logic for this idiocy is that the "terrorists" have become so desperate that they are making one last assault ...

Bush should be forced to cast this position in stone ... he should be forced to go on the record with a statement that the attacks will not continue for more than another month or two ... then, he should have this propaganda shoved down his pretzel-hole during next year's election ...

Is this the same guy that promised us scenes of little school children handing out flowers to their American liberators ?? Does this seem like the allies marching back into Paris ??

[izzie]

4. The Fr in Russia in 1812?

There sat the ruler of Fr with his army in Moscow but the Czar was not ready to say it was over. We know from history who won.

[denverbill]

5. Never thought about that, but it's true.

Vietnam. Korea. WWI & II. The Russians in Chechnya. The Russians in Afghanistan. The leftists in South America.

Unfortunately, there is no 'govt' in Iraq to surrender, as with Germany and Japan in WWII.

[Fovea]

6. I believe the traditional formula is 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'

Note the the Iraqis are not turning either in, or on the 'foreigners' that are in country causing mayhem.

That is because even the moderate Iraqis are becoming very angry
at our abysmal occupation of their country, which we deprived of
justice by chicken-shitting out on in 91 and tortured with sanctions
until we finally invaded them again, without managing to restore peace or civil society. They are not Saddam enthusiasts, they are America haters. Even Walid Jumblatt weighed in on the matter, and not many of us here probably remember the North Carolina shelling his Beirut neighborhood into oblivion with Missouri Class 16" guns, do we?

We are on the verge of getting the mother of all blowback -- American's dismal, cynical, sometimes genocidal policy in the Middle East is about to rise up and bite us in a tender spot. Historians, assuming we get out of this in one peice, will point to Bush's 'Bring 'em on!" speech as the match to the fuse.

What Iraqi in their right mind would support what we are doing there now? It is already Vietnam... all except for the strategic hamlets, and I am sure they are in the pipeline, as it were.

Diem Chalabi has only the traitors, the greedy, or the westerners working for Pax Americana Iraq, everyone else is going to the other side, out of anger or fear... in the end what difference does it make really?

We have lost control of Iraq if we have lost the center of government/business... because to the NeoCons, what is the differnce anyway?

[cosmicdot]

7. that's oil, folks

[NashVegas]

8. A Tactical Advantage

For the leader of either side in a war is to be aware the war is (unofficially) over before your foe does. This more or less amounts to knowing when *your* guys are ready to call it quits, regardless of whether things are going your way or not. That's when it's time to negotiate.

With Saddam dead or in hiding, and no one chosen by the opposing side as his successor, the US has no one who can truly represent Iraq to negotiate with. The war will continue at least until that changes.

Everything I know about global politics and warfare, I learned in Utopia.