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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (188580)	6/6/2006 4:27:33 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

When you march through a country with your troops and force all resistance to go underground then I'd say you "won" the war, but maybe it's just semantics. The thing that happens after a country displaces another's conventional military force is not "war" but rather resistance to occupation. And that is, to some degree, inevitable. There will always be resistance when foreigners with guns attempt to impose their will on a population. If the resistance is strong enough it will rise to the level of insurgency. When that happens the choices for the occupier are expensive politically, economically and in terms of lost life. Insurgencies will make you reevaluate your cost benefit analysis as they increase in momentum. Assuming you initially had a cost/benefit basis for the occupation there may well be a point when the costs outweigh the benefits and you should leave. I think we were at that point before we invaded but, regardless, we're long past that point now. And the longer we stay the worse it gets. Only pride, stupidity and gutter political motives prevent those in power from recognizing or admitting that the only reasonable option is to cut and run. The American people are figuring it out but they won't call it cutting and running. We are, after all, Americans so we'll call it "their fault," whoever "they" are and keep that feel-good thing about how noble our efforts were and how all those kids died for a good cause. Sometimes being stupid has its rewards. But we "won" the war. Like my old man/young wife analogy, we had the wedding but the ensuing marriage has been an painfully tragic voyage doomed to end in disaster. And of course all those loyal but long ago rejected friends who told the old man, "don't be a fool" were 100% right. Ed