You fight wars in order to achieve some national policy goal, war is "the continuation of diplomacy by other means". By this definition, we got our ass kicked. What were our national goals? Find the WMDs? There weren't any. Defeat Al-Quaeda? Al-Quaeda wasn't in Iraq until after we showed up. A permanent American base and a US puppet state in the Middle East to help keep the lid on our enemies. Not likely, we've been desperately trying to disentangle ourslves from that place since long before Obama's election. And have we assured the flow of oil to the West? Judge for yourself.

What about those goals we made up after we got there, in order to cover our ass for not finding a good reason to be there in the first place? Stopping terrorism? After 6 years of war terrorism is still a growth industry. Intimidating Iran? We have empowered and encouraged Iran, when we could have played Iran and Iraq off against each other instead! Stopping ethnic violence? Hell, Saddam had that under control long before we showed up. Overthrowing a local tyrant and a regional bully? OK, I'll give you that one. But we've essentially just replaced him with a kinder, gentler tyranny that we have to prop up and Iraq's neighbors like us being there even less than they did him. And did we succeed in introducing freedom and democracy to the Middle east, and make it overall a more friendly place for American interests? Admit it, in your heart, you know I'm right.

Winning a war doesn't mean defeating an opposing army. That is a very adolescent view of statecraft. Victory means getting something you want out of the conflict that was worth fighting for in the first place. We have gotten nothing out of this war except proven our armed forces could defeat their armed forces. Was there ever any doubt about that? The only surprises we really got were how easy it was to prevail, and how little good that did us.

There are only three national interests that were served by the 2nd Gulf War. Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran had their single biggest foreign threat eliminated. THEY won the 2nd Gulf War, not us. And not one of them fired a shot, spilled a drop a blood, or spent a dime.

************************************************************

You know, it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, to look back and criticize others for having run the wrong plays and having made colosssal blunders. I'll be the first to admit, I was not a critic of the war at the beginning, and I probably would have made a lot of the same mistakes that others made if I had been in charge.

But at least, Monday morning quarterbacks have the sense to see the game was lost, and that the plays didn't work the way they were supposed to. We need to get past this and for the future's sake, start arguing how we could have won that game if we had played it differently, not whether or not it we won it in the first place.