Perhaps you ought to go back and re-read the post, which is primarily aimed at avoiding another war (as Podhoretz wants us to bomb Iran, and bomb it now).

And there is a very real issue of what “winning” would look like. It is one thing to say, vacuously, that we need to “do our best and win this thing” but what does that mean at this point. And again, Podhoretz is asserting that it has already been a success.

We got to where we are because of fuzzy thinking and sloganeering, and if we don’t properly assess the situation and deal with the realities, it will only get worse. And then there will be 1000s more dead and 10,000s more wounded and somebody else can say how we need to double down and “win” it for those soldiers.

This isn’t “whining” and “bitching” as you so poetically put it.

Can you please enlighten me, then, as to how we are going to “build a stable country so that freedom and liberty can flourish”? I would love for that to happen, but one has to deal with reality as well.

I believed there were WMD in Iraq prior to the invasion. Also, we did destroy many of his weapons after the first Gulf War. The issue was whether he had resumed production.

And just because Syria may also have some chemical weapons does not mean, not by a long shot, that they came from Iraq, or that if they did that they were the mythical ones we went to war over.

Face facts: the alleged WMD weren’t there.

And in regards to battle deaths: are you suggesting that the only way to measure success is the relative number of deaths?

Sorry, but we have to measure the event against what we said the war was about in the first place (e.g,. WMD, a stable, democratic Iraq, a reliable ally in the region, etc.) as well as how the situation is evolving, and not just in terms of battle deaths.

I can see someone arguing that it will be successful at some point (although that is a strain, IMHO), but to argue that it is a success is near-delusional.

We must also remember that the Clinton administration believed Iraq to possess chemical weapons and chemical weapons were used against Iraqis in previous years. So where did those weapons go? Syria is a reasonable answer any way you look at it.

With losses less than 1% of WWII we could call the war a success. With the establishment of something if a democracy in Iraq we could call the war a success. With the removal of Saddam we could call the war a success. By establishing that the United States is not afraid to act we could call the war a success.

Is it a success? I’m not sure, but it is a defensible position to take. Calling it “near delusional” is not a fair assessment.