But they are losing, as we've noted time and again, because the Sunnis of Anbar finally decided they had enough of those lunatics, and to get rid of them.
You speak as if this happened by itself, without the efforts of the Americans or the Iraqi Army. Faced with nobody but those lunatics - those well armed and well financed and highly murderous lunatics - the Sunnis of al Anbar would have had no choice but to knuckle under to them or be killed.
Once again you speak as if balance of forces doesn't come into play, as if some law of nature runs the war in Iraq. A most convenient proposition when one is counseling surrender.
And you "understand what war is," don't you?
I certainly understand the main point, which you consider yourself too civilized to recall: winning brings important benefits, but losing is very very costly. Ah, but it's mostly Iraqis who will die, and they can be blamed on George Bush, so who minds really? The NYT has just forseen carnage up to the level of genocide, and it's the course they prefer.
You of so many "tipping points" over the years that I can't even count them. Cute. How many predictions can you make that turn out to be wrong before you acknowledge that you were just wrong about this war?
There have been many tipping points in this war, in both directions. It has morphed many times, and is morphing again. The outcome was not and is not predetermined, but is shaped by the choices and the willpower of all the players.
The US's chief mistake was in not forseeinng the marriage of Baathist cash and al Qaeda jihadis, and being too slow to react with a counter-insurgency strategy that works. The Sunni Arabs' chief mistake (like many other Arabs) was to believe so firmly in their delusions of grandeur that they based their political decisions on the fantasy that they were a majority, when they were really a small minority. |
