Why Iraq is lost is summarized in your delusions. 4 quick steps. a primer.
If I see a fish swimming, I know there is water.
If I see a successful insurgency, I know there is popular support. (Everyone from Chairman Mao to the US Special Forces will acknowledge this.)
Therefore, if I see someone denying a successful insurgency has popular support, I know there is delusion.
And where there is delusion, a lack of grounding in reality, an effort to avoid dealing with the world as it is rather than how one has deluded oneself into wishing it were, there is failure.
As in Iraq.
Arf