I don’t believe nation-building the ‘graveyard of empires’ Afghanistan to a post-WW2 standard was a realistic expectation. Our best hope there was a ‘clear and hold’ and leaving something in place that wouldn’t allow the Taliban to come back. So I partially agree with you there.

However, I disagree with you on Iraq. Iraq was doable long-term. At the point that Obama bungled the SOFA negotiation, Iraq was settling into a familiar pattern, like our Korea mission. The Korea mission is called the forgotten war, but it was also a very unpopular war in its time.

It never became popular, it just slipped off the radar. That was the case with Iraq. Unpopular, but largely slipped off the popular radar at the point Obama bungled the SOFA.

Ike stayed the course with Korea despite campaigning against the Korean War. By the same token, Obama could have stayed the course with Iraq.

Iraq didn’t require a perpetual Surge anymore than Korea required a perpetual Korean War. The Iraq mission was already changing shape and cooling down. The Iraqi-Americans relationship was finding its rhythm, just like the Koreans and Americans figured it out. Our troops were reporting boredom in Iraq and how the mission had become routine.

Iraq was doable for us. Obama just made a choice to stop doing it.

The US public isn’t even aware of the daily casualties in Afghanistan. Which is actually high.

But they would have been aware of the Iraqi casualties for US forces from fictional 2011 to 2014?

“Americans” do as they are told, believe as they are told, and do their job as they are ordered to do so. They follow “orders”. Propaganda orders. Military orders. Economic orders.

I believe Natan Sharansky and W were right that all humans have a longing to live their lives in freedom, and if given the opportunity would choose it, but they were dead wrong in their estimation of the American people. We want instant gratification, and we want results, now.

The people of Iraq and Afghanistan know that about us. They know that in a matter of time we will leave. They also saw the feckless leader we replaced W with.

Above everything, they also know all too well the patience and persistence of the extreme Islamists.

Iraq is difficult to govern because of the historic absence of nationalism and nationalist identity within the Arab world generally, and the patchwork sectarianism common to much of the Middle East (and largest in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, probably in order).

This always made Iraq vulnerable. PM Maliki used the military as a crony sinecure. This has fatally undermined much of the military’s security in the North. Elsewhere? We will see. But I expect much more pushback.

Furthermore, if Obama failed to cordon off Syria and let it fester too long, Iraq was always vulnerable to it spilling over. And this, precisely, what’s happened (into Lebanon, too). With Obama on the guilty Sunni side.

Obama shares blame here too – maybe most!

Still a lot of British loyalists in America. Iraq has 3 separate cultures?

How many pieces do you think the Disunited States of America will break off into, since we have how many cultures here and religions?

Don’t ever think armchair decisions for Iraq, won’t come back to bite Americans in America.

As I often say, our Founders were Marxist-method activists before there was a Marx.

They fought for it. They also fought their neighbors for it. They didn’t win their liberty because they ‘chose liberty’. They won because they defeated the enemy in combat. If they had lost, then no liberty, choice or no choice – and history teaches that it was a close shave against an enemy that wasn’t nearly as vicious as Iraq’s enemy.

There are a lot of folks in Canada descended from a lot of folks who were American colonists who were chased from their homes and reviled America’s founders as criminals, much like folks here view the Left activists on the march.

If Iraq falls, it will be have been taken by force in competition, not by people’s choice. If Iraq stands, it will be saved by force in competition, not by people’s choice.

Whether war as politics by other means or politics as war by other means, the activist game is the only social political game there is.

It is a grand vision – the idea of exporting the values and capabilities of the West to the wider world. In truth, such a project is of gargantuan proportions. Wherever you have tribalism, you have the zero-sum mentality and the inability to see how the economic pie can be expanded. How private property protected by law and courts leads to a more orderly, prosperous place for all.

I haven’t been everywhere, but I’ve seen maybe 75% of the world up close and personal. I always ask myself what makes the country work or, in most cases, not work. It’s always the same for the places that don’t work. No protection for private property and tribal values that end up in tyranny, oligarchy, theocracy, or communism.

We can never assume that people everywhere are yearning for liberty and self government. It just isn’t true. The radical jihadis yearn for a theocracy of such inordinate intolerance of humanity that it can only maintain itself through murder. We are not a shining city on a hill because most of the world has no idea how we got to where we are. Too many of our own population don’t understand why we are rich and powerful. In their eyes it’s just, you know, like magic or something, you know? 🙂

The betrayal of Vietnam should have been a lesson for this country, but it wasn’t because the commies in our midst (The MSM, academics, democrats) saw it then, and still see it, as a win not a loss. They have no clue about ISIS or the implications of radical Islam. Obama always likes to say, “Iran is a tiny country, they can’t hurt us.” Or. “Those who commit ‘man caused disasters’ are no threat to us.” The many attacks we have absorbed are of little importance to the man who has the primary duty of defending against ‘”man caused disasters.” As long as he has Air Force One, a phone, and a pen it’s all good.

We must work to elect more Republicans to the Senate in November. And don’t forget to write/call your Congress critters and tell them how the loss of Iraq resemble the loss of Vietnam. We’ve got to use our phones and e-mails.

Thanks, but I’ve not only read the Sorley book, I’ve written about it many times on this blog.

See this.

Excellent book.