Frank, I think you confuse winning with simply taking out an opponent's army. When I speak of winning I'm talking about the long term political ramifications that the war causes. I won't argue with you that overwhelming force can break another country's military strength. What I got from your post was that somehow Iraq and Vietnam can be won in the sense that I'm defining it. I don't believe any amount of force or the size of the occupying army could've accomplished that.

In both cases you had a fundamental flaw of inflaming the local population against what you believe is good intentions. No matter how we handled either of those incursions, there was simply no way we could win the hearts and minds of the citizens of those countries. First, there are huge fundamental differences in cultures and secondly, people simply don't like other more powerful countries telling them how to run things even if their current methods are flawed beyond belief. I'm afraid Frank that the insurgency we're seeing is endless as long as we're there just as it would've been in Vietnam.

Art