Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Neal Stevens
I do remember, however, you predicted (loud and often) that the Iraq war would end badly for the US (quagmire, insurgents, Viet Nam 2.0) but that hasn't panned out for you.
|
No? What else is it than just this: a quagmire, insurgents still bombing their way around, and your country not one single step closer to a clear miliztary victory, by any means? Not to mention the unimaginable costs and follow-up costs now counting already in 3-5 trillions?
If this is not a quagmire, then I hope I am no longer alive once there is an event that you would agree to call a quagmire. The operational and political goals of the war that you once had for Iraq, are not and will never be acchieved, that simple - and that defines what a military failure is. Your war gets judged by the standards of what you claimed you want to achcieve, and that was a stable American-style democracy serving as an example form others and stemming the tide of Iranian influence. Both you won't get. And I even do not talk about the WMD-claims before the war here.
Why I remind people of when I predicted something? Because I got so often accused over the years, and attacked, to have predicted something wrong, and to have wished for something wrong, and that I would celebrate if it then goes wrong - and then I got proven right nevertheless. That gives some late satisfaction that I was right at the time back then when insisting on that the negative outcome of something could have been seen in advance indeed -
if only one would have looked close and careful enough at it. Even Patreus admitts that he is not sure the relative improvement in security he acchieved will last. In past weeks, the frequency and scale of bombing assaults has seen an increase again, for example. The government still is deeply corrupt, and not master of the house. The Iranians lay in wait to let the dust settle a bit. And that all should be a "convincing success"...? Please...
Please don't tell me you consider this status in Iraq anything else but a desaster, after five years and many tens if not hundreds of thousand dead, and many tens of thousands of US troops killed, physically wounded and mentally severly wounded. I count psychological effects on troops due to their often severe social and individual conseqeunces as regular woundings, like if being given a bleeding wound. It is manipulation of statistics to leave those numbers out, and the loss and suffering it could mean for the individual victim can become very, very high and existence-crushing - and often does.