Iraq: We won war but lost the Occupation.

[Homer12]

This is a syman tic and term issue that pisses me off from the news and other people.

The US military won the WAR against Saddam Hussein's army, but has lost the Invasion/Occupation of a Foreign Nation.

As long as it is termed as "WAR" people put it in winning/losing terms and does not reveal exactly what the US is doing their (i.e. sitting ducks in a civil war and sacrifices for the Bush/Cheney war machine.)

[spanone]

1. That is called 'losing the war'. IMHO

[Nikki Stone1]

2. Oddly enough, a friend of mine who's a Vietnam vet told me "we'll win the war & lose the occupation"

back in 2002. Whether it's a semantic game or not, this is why he was opposed to the war to begin with.

[NNN0LHI]

3. Wars have historically been "won" when the loser capitulates and sues for peace

I don't remember hearing anyone in Iraq admit they lost. Just Chimpy claiming Mission accomplished!, which doesn't count.

Don

[HereSince1628]

4. It's about the Cheney's & Bush's psychic organization not semantics.

Bush and Cheney are extreme conservative personalities and respond to perceived losses very strongly.

Set aside the issue of war for a moment, and realize that the Cheney-Bush administration is simply PATHOLOGICALLY AVERSE TO LOSS. Fear of loss drives their world-view as well as their individuated existential needs.

It is each of their innate personality's pathologically strong universal response to fear-of-loss of ALL TYPES that have led them into the fallacious reasoning used to justify continued US military participation in the conflict(s) in Iraq. That reasoning is so irrational that it borders on madness.

The fancy term for this state of affairs is "sunk cost fallacy" decried by economists as irrational and used by psychologists to help explain gambling addiction. Research in business psychology has shown that those who feel "responsible for the loss" are MOST likely to manifest this behavior in executive decision making.

We must accept that the Cheney/Bush administration and much of their rwing conservative supporters are psychologically INCAPABLE of dealing with the concept of loss. If we keep talking about LOSS (the war, the occupation, lives, treasure, national image, personal prestige, etc) we are simply pounding on the button that triggers their pathological response.

These guys really truly need to be put in the equivalent of a room with rubberized pink walls and talked down just so someone can get close enough to tranquilize them and put them in straight jackets so they can't hurt anymore people.

To end the war we must give them a rhetoric that doesn't provoke the very behavior we are trying to squelch. As perverse as it sounds one solution to ending US military involvement in Iraq's chaos is to quit talking about Cheney/Bush responsibility in losses of all types and give their besieged personalities a way out of their existential crisis.

The alternative is to continue to build upon a situation where we are forced to deal with them like rabid dogs, and to figuratively put this administration out of its misery through impeachment.

Unfortunately, Pelosi and Reid have foreclosed that option.

[Bluerthanblue]

5. Kerry said it but no one listened! :

(this was my sig line for years)



'Mr. President, do not rush to war, take the time to build the coalition, because it's not winning the war that's hard, it's winning the peace that's hard.'" John Kerry Jan 2003