Losing wars is always bad. One of the major reasons for America’s current global predominance economically and politically is that America doesn’t lose wars very often. It seems likely, however, that the American people are about to be told that they have to decide to lose the Iraq war, that accepting defeat is better than trying to win, and that the consequences of defeat will be less than the costs of continuing to fight.
I'd like to remind the Kagans of the world that the main reason we invaded Iraq was to get rid of the WMD. There were none, so the main reason for the invasion has been fulfilled. A secondary reason was to cut the ties bewteen Saddam and Al-Qaeda. It turns out there weren't any real ones, so the seconday reason has been fulfilled. Finally, Saddam and his two evil sons are dead, so we won't have to worry about them anymore. Sounds like VICTORY to me.
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My friend, if you are trying to tease ultimate motives beyond protecting Israel out of Feith and Kagan, you are taking an unnecessarily circuitous route of analysis.
Sorry, but this isn't the most persuasive post:
"Three-quarters of Americans favored the initial decision in October 2002 to remove Saddam Hussein. In the wake of our brilliant three-week victory in April 2003 and the initial, relatively quiet months of the postwar occupation, the public maintained its strong support. This remained the case even after it became clear that we had not found arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), one of the chief reasons offered by the Bush administration for going to war.
By late 2006, however—after the Abu Ghraib scandal, the pullback from Falluja, the withdrawal of some members of the original coalition, and increased internecine violence between Shiites and Sunnis, and in the face of some 3,000 American combat fatalities—only about a third of Americans still thought the war was worth the price or favored its continuation. By late summer 2007, of the 27 Democratic Senators who had voted to authorize hostilities in October 2002, only one, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, was still on record as supporting the effort. Former President Bill Clinton, who in 2002 had boasted, “I don’t think it will be a big military problem if we do it,” and who reiterated his support in May 2003, announced last year that he had been against the war “from the beginning.”
But we appear to have entered lately into still another cycle of re-interpretation, clearly the result of a new array of converging developments. Among these, the successful “surge” of U.S. troops, the appointment of General David Petraeus as senior theater commander, and the tactical switch from counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency are no doubt the most salient. These days, although there is no great public elation at our improved prospects, or appreciation that al Qaeda by its own admission is in disarray in Iraq, we see or hear very little of antiwar groups like Code Pink or the Cindy Sheehan brigades, and none of Hollywood’s recent antiwar movies—Lions for Lambs, Redacted, Rendition, Valley of Elah—has made a dent at the box office. At the very least, many Americans seem tired of being told that the United States is the culpable party in the war.
As we see improved chances for an eventual U.S. victory and a stabilized Iraq, it is therefore worth returning to the most controversial issues of the war—not in order to re-fight it, but to gain some perspective on the relationship between battlefield developments and perceptions of the worthiness and achievability of American aims."
You should read the whole thing, at Commentary
AN writes "As we see improved chances for an eventual U.S. victory .."
There is NO chance of a U.S. victory, there is only a chance that the Iraqis will shape their own destiny.
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