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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120601217.html
It's Not Whether You 'Win' or 'Lose' . . .
By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, December 7, 2005; Page A25
In recent months it has become common practice to talk about what it will take to "win" -- or what it would mean to "lose" -- the war in Iraq. Recently the pace of that talk has accelerated. Just last week President Bush published a "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," presumably a follow-up to the speech in which he talked of "defeating the enemy." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has also assured Congress that "we are not losing this war." Both were responding to politicians such as Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who worried out loud a few months ago that "we're losing in Iraq," as well as the experts who voice the opinion, as one did in Foreign Affairs, that "the ongoing war in Iraq is not one that the United States can win."
But what 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.
I hasten to explain that the comparison between Iraq and Korea does not come from nowhere: It has been suggested, implicitly and explicitly, by the Bush administration itself. In a speech last year, Vice President Cheney spoke of Harry Truman, the president who took us into Korea, as a model of "the kind of leadership required to defend freedom in our time." Rumsfeld has also pointed out that Truman, like Bush, suffered from low popular approval because of the Korean War: "Back then a great many people questioned whether young Americans should face death and injury in Korea, thousands of miles from home, for a result that seemed uncertain at best. And today the answer is the Korean Peninsula."
Well, yes -- but actually it isn't all that clear that "the Korean Peninsula" really represents a slam-dunk victory, to use Bush administration terminology. Certainly in 1953, when the cease-fire was signed, no one thought so. More than 33,000 Americans died -- more than 15 times as many as have died so far in Iraq -- and more than 103,000 were wounded. Gen. Douglas MacArthur had defined "victory" as "the unification of the Korean Peninsula," but in fact the war merely preserved the status quo. The South Korean government was independent, but too weak to survive without an American military presence. Red China, as we then called it, was probably strengthened by the war, as was the tyrannical North Korean dictator, Kim Il Sung.
Fifty years later, the picture is indeed more nuanced: South Korea is a democracy, an economic success, and proof that it was right to fight communism and prevent it from spreading. And yet North Korea, which we didn't manage to push back, not only remains one of the world's most repressive and paranoid dictatorships but has also become a nuclear power that poses a continuing threat to its neighbors. Good things came out of the war. Bad things came out of the war as well.
Iraq is not Korea, of course, and the Middle East is not Asia. But it is perfectly possible that the two conflicts might eventually resemble one another in the ambivalence of their conclusions. Although both the administration and its antiwar opponents speak as if there must be an either/or solution for Iraq -- either democracy or Islamic fascism -- it is perfectly possible that we end up with both. We may indeed create the first truly democratic Arab regime, with independent media, real elections and a relatively liberal political culture. But we may also, simultaneously, strengthen al Qaeda and its radical Islamic allies, in Iraq and the entire region. We may create a more entrepreneurial, globally integrated Iraq that can inspire economic reform throughout the Middle East. We may also create a deep well of international anti-American resentment that hampers our ability to conduct everything from trade negotiations to counterintelligence for decades to come.
It is even possible, in the end, that we really will help bring into existence a new generation of democratic Arab reformers across the Middle East -- and that we will need to keep troops in the region for five decades to defend them. Would such an outcome mean the war was a "defeat"? Not necessarily. Would it mean the war was a "victory"? Not exactly. Can we, the nation that invented the Hollywood happy ending, live with such a conclusion? Hard to imagine, but we might not have a choice.
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It is even possible, in the end, that we really will help bring into existence a new generation of democratic Arab reformers across the Middle East -- and that we will need to keep troops in the region for five decades to defend them.
Psychoblues said:Applebaum certainly intimates her desire for an ongoing war. She further calls into question rather abstract, obscure and not as yet seen attitudes and circumstanses. Her article is pretty much for entertainment and a sense of perceived profit, don't you agree?
Psychoblues
LuvRPgrl said:Did you say something?
Psychoblues said:Applebaum certainly intimates her desire for an ongoing war. She further calls into question rather abstract, obscure and not as yet seen attitudes and circumstanses. Her article is pretty much for entertainment and a sense of perceived profit, don't you agree?
Psychoblues
Hobbit said:
Psychoblues said:OK. No what?
Hobbit said:You asked a yes or no question. I answered it. Is it really that hard for such an enlightened and educated veteran of 60 wars who was such a prodigy that he was not only in 1st grade at age 4 but remembers the political atmosphere back then to understand that concept?
Psychoblues said:You were not in this converstation when I asked the question. I ask again of you, OK, No what?
You may make fun of my life and my military experience. Let me be a friend and warn you. You only exemplify your own ignorance and intolerance of the ideals of Americans that I have lived and learned to love by your belligerence. But, on the other hand, you go right on. Republicans will love you for it and Democrats will appreciate you more.
Psychoblues
Go cry to someone who gives a damn about your pathetic life. I dont believe a damn word you say anymore. I bet your not even in the military and never have been.
insein said:Why is everything Dem vs Rep with you? This just leads me more to my opinion that your a troll trying to get a rise out of majority republican messageboard by making every issue a "Republicans are evil" thread.
Psychoblues said:You were not in this converstation when I asked the question. I ask again of you, OK, No what?
You may make fun of my life and my military experience. Let me be a friend and warn you. You only exemplify your own ignorance and intolerance of the ideals of Americans that I have lived and learned to love by your belligerence. But, on the other hand, you go right on. Republicans will love you for it and Democrats will appreciate you more.
Psychoblues
Hobbit said:I've known enough real people who have done a hell of a lot more for this country than you ever have to know a true patriot when I see one. I know more relatives with service medals than most people have living relatives. I know enough to know that you are a fraud. You will defame, lie, invent, insult, and ignore everything you have to to push your twisted, cowardly, anti-American agenda on us, but I can see right through you. Either war made you nuts, or you never fought to begin with, and every time somebody disagrees with you, you trumpet out your war record. So you supposedly fought in Vietnam...big...frickin'...deal. So did John Kerry, and I think he's a wussy, padering, penthouse, spoon-fed pretty boy who's completely out of touch with reality.
Every time you talk to me, you talk as though you're educating a 3-year-old. Well, I've seen quite a bit in my day, enough to know when some self-named big shot thinks he's a higher life form than everybody else, and until you come down out of your tower and talk to me like an intelligent human being, you get ZERO respect from me, so go condescend to somebody who cares.
LuvRPgrl said:I have come to that conclusion
I just read him as entertainment anymore.
NOBODY in this forum should allow him to do anything but make us laugh and smile. DONT take him serious at all. Its his ONLY goal, laugh at him and he will shrink.
If you get angry it pleases him
If you try to engage in intelligent conv. he ignores you
If you laugh and expose him, he shrinks at the sight of truth.
Hobbit said:So did John Kerry, and I think he's a wussy, padering, penthouse, spoon-fed pretty boy who's completely out of touch with reality.
Adam's Apple said:This is totally off the subject, but John Kerry is no "pretty boy" by any means. :tng: My nickname for Kerry is "Lurch." Do you get my drift?
Psychoblues said:You are so full of shit, Hobbit. First off, you ain't never seen me, so I can only conclude you wouldn't know a patriot if you were hit by one. Subliminal meaning there oh ignorant one, get it? I didn't think so. You could've told me that YOU had done something for this country, but, you only KNOW some that have? On the other hand, you're fairly typical.
Secondly, there ain't nothing about me coward. I've proven myself, earned my stripes and defend my position. What are you other than a name-calling chicken shit with innuendo a mountain high? I'd suggest that you grow up, do some genuine fighting for your ideals and your country and wipe that silly smirk off your face.
I never knew that "Psychoblues" was naming myself as some sort of "big-shot". And your remarks are not condescending? If not plain ass ignorant?
Psychoblues
