Maggie's Farm

Winning and Losing

All credit to Pennywit-Multifaria for highlighting this quote by Ann Applebaum, arguing in the Washington Post that "Iraq may turn out to be a mixed bag":

"[W]hat if all of this vocabulary -- winning, losing, victory, defeat -- is simply misplaced? There are, after all, wars that are not actually won or lost. There are wars that achieve some of their goals, that result only in partial solutions and that leave much business unfinished. There are wars that do not end with helicopters evacuating Americans from the embassy roof but that do not produce a victorious march into Berlin, either. There are wars that end ambivalently -- wars, for example, such as the one we fought in Korea."

Right. But what are our goals? 1. Get rid of Saddam. 2. Kill a bunch of terrorists. 3. Establish some political freedom in the middle east (hopefully friendly with the US). Three out of three ain't bad. Maybe we already "won," and just don't know it. Mad bombers breed like rats in the middle-east - you can never get rid of all of them - they are part of life. Witness Netanya.