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Is the Iraq War unwinnable? Indeed, what is winning?

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domer:
I ask these questions in all sincerity, and as I do, I note one of the lessons of Vietnam: a "strategic defeat" can usher in an overall victory (the Soviet Union falling some 15 years after our withdrawal from Vietnam). Would anyone care to discuss this in realistic terms?

sirs:
what is winning?

Winning the "Iraq war" (vs the War on Terrorism) is the Iraqi Government & it's military/police forces working independently without any further serious American Military Intervention, be it as a defacto Iraqi Army or as Governmental Security forces, etc.  Winning is the Iraqi Government telling us to "please leave now, we can take it from here"

The above needs to and is occuring on their timetable, not ours.  Any arbitrary timetable we try to apply will only make the case for the enemy & insurgents to just hold out a little longer...that the Americans are going to"run away like cowards as they ususually do"

Michael Tee:
I would discuss the prospects of winning it in realistic terms, but you have always persisted in looking at the real objectives of the invasion in unrealistic terms.  If you can't accept that the real objectives are to secure the oil wells as a strategic as well as a possible economic asset, then the whole exercise becomes one of assessing whether the US can achieve a "stable" and "democratic"  and "independent" Iraq, which just begs the question of whether the US should win or not.

domer:
That parroting of the party line does nothing for me. Maybe I've been affected by my formative years. When I was not quite 18, I witnessed "the college game of the century," from the sidelines, on a dank November day in East Lansing, Michigan. My coach "settled" for a tie in that game to give us a better opportunity at the "prize," the national championship, which would be (and was, in our favor) decided by the next week's game. Maybe we have a nation that elevates Pickett to greatness because of his reflexive "courage," but I prefer a MacArthur returning to Bataan after an "ignominious" retreat.

sirs:
Strange, I thought a serious question was being posed.  My bad

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