It’s looking like 2013 was the year that we lost it. But Obama and the Dems got what they wanted, an “end” to the war. They never want to win wars, except against their domestic enemies.
[Update late morning]
How Al Qaeda terrorized its way back in Iraq.
I’d say we lost both Afghanistan and Iraq wars before we started.
Bush wanted a “humanitarian mission”, not a war we could win. That would requires the moral confidence to visit the horrors of war upon our tormentors and assign all blame to them, which Bush lacked. I think Rumsfeld started things off mostly right, as much as he was allowed to (hard and fast destruction of the enemy’s ability to attack us and our interests), but both missions became efforts in glorifying the sacrifice of Americans in the military to bring slightly less pitiable lives to non-Americans in backwards countries. Which we can do ad infinitum, so of course we did, until 2013… Not that it ended well at all, but at least it is mostly ended (for now). The sunk cost fallacy is not a good argument for continued idiocy (a la Sen. McCain’s laments).. Strangely enough even with all our sacrifices our enemies didn’t change their minds and start considering us altruistic heroes and friends, just morally weak “paper tigers”. Again. Go figure.
Our explicit moral case for our prolonged ‘war’ was essentially “love (and sacrifice yourself for) your enemy”, riding on the legitimate initial mentality that swept most of the nation: “kill those evil bastards for what they did to us”.
The problems in Iraq are bad, but it is still better than having Saddam Hussein in power. Chemotherapy is very stressing, too. But, it is better than the cancer.
The road to recovery is often painful and long. But, I remain of the opinion that taking out Saddam and his demon spawn was a prerequisite for any long term solution of the problems of the Middle East, and I believe that will become manifest over time.