Quote:
Originally Posted by wintersprings  "nature of the war that it's hard to assess how well it's going."
are you hiding in a hole? The good news is every where, but mainly on the bloggs. Even the French now say we won (That made CNN).
So where do you get your news? When Bagdad is safer than DC, I think you got your answer. |
I'm not hiding in a hole. It's just that progress now is a matter of judgment rather than a matter of lines on a map. It's the difference between a judged competition, like gymnastics, and one with clearly defined win conditions, such as baseball. In baseball, you win if you score the most runs at the end of the game. In gymnastics, it's a judgment call.
When you go to war against a nation, typically the capture of the capitol or the seat of government ends the war. When you go to war against a rebellion, you win when they surrender to you or when you've eliminated their ability to fight you. They come to the table with their hats in hand on their knees, and you sign the papers. They gave up.
You can observe progress in a conventional war by the amount of land captured and secured. When their soldiers start to surrender and drop their weapons, and you know they've only got so many soldiers left, you are winning. You know when you've won campaigns or battles.
This one has been hard to judge. You make progress - and then you lose a lot of troops in a month. You clear out an area - and come back later to find it infested again. You kill the enemy - but he keeps reappearing. It's been like a huge game of Whack-A-Mole.
I'm not saying we haven't been winning - I'm saying there's not an easily quantifiable means of observing win conditions. Seems like we declare we've won when the smoke clears and we don't hear anything for a while.