Thanks SCII. It was wrong. Especially the smiley face at the end. I hope and pray none of his friends or family have read my attempt at a poor analogy. Totally stupid of me.

If you mean “exit strategy’, then name the person who coined this in relation to military strategy. Hint: The baloney-ous notion is younger than most readers here.

In all of mankind’s history, there has never been such thing as an exit strategy, until the Clinton Admin made it up to convince voters that we could safely venture into Bosnia because “we have an exit strategery”, to get out after 1 year. After 1 year is right, 12 years later, we’re still over there picking up the pieces and holding the peace. Go figure.

I’m not against the Iraq war. I’m against incompetence. Managers get fired in a civilian job for planning this badly and we all know it, and seen it.

The differences is big screw-ups only costs money in civilian life, and there are no firings for loyal screw-ups in political life.

See a trend here? OTOH…

–Iraq vs Iran – mainly a fight between Iranians and Iraqis. Radical Muslims from all over the world not interested in one cause or the other.
–Iraq vs Kuwait – mainly a fight between Iraqis and Kuwaitis until the coalition formed to run Saddam out. Radical Muslims from all over the world not interested in one cause or the other.
–Syria vs Lebanon – mainly an internal power struggle between government and national radical Muslims. Radical Muslims from all over the world not interested in one cause or the other.
–Algeria vs Algeria – mainly an internal power struggle between government and national radical Muslims. Radical Muslims from all over the world not interested in one cause or the other.
–Egypt vs Egypt – mainly in internal power struggle between government and national radical Muslims. Radical Muslims from all over the world not interested in one cause or the other.

Therefore, hitting Al Queda in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq would logically draw radical muslims from all over the world to fight us on our terms, no? By drawing them out, they’re fighting on a battlefield of our choosing as opposed to them planning and scheming to hit us at home on their timetable.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the 9/11 commision conclude that by striking back, a coordinated West Coast attack was stillborn due to our disruption of their chain of command.

But Michael, the problem wasn’t the attack. That
went off pretty much as planned. The problem is a gross miss-understanding of the extent of on-going resistance one could expect to find for a Western presence in an Arab land.

Iraq is now a magnet for every rebel Western hater in the Arab world, and we cannot let them win. But Rumsfeld’s and Wolfowitz’s failure to
understand and plan for what a novice would know would be at least a 50/50 chance of happening after the attack is hard to excuse.

The reason Shinseki was run out was that he commited the Army to a bunch of feel good projects (cool berets made in China/Army of One) and his assertion that more troops were needed was a way of trying to sandbag the OIF.

AMEN… the problem La Shawn is that we now use “public opinion”, “poll numbers”, “peopl’s emotions” and what other countries think (or the UN) to dictate how we fight a War (as opposed to just going in kicking butt and getting the job done regardless of what everyone else says). As people’s emotions rule the day (and man’s perverted concept of peace… which is a figment of his own imagination), we will never seriously “win” any war.

I agree with your comment 100%. We should have had the manning in the beginning to do this. Shinseki stated that, and had the riot act read to him. I think that we should give our General Officers, especially the Cincs, more decision makin power.

P.S. Marine and Soldier are always supposed to be capitalized. The Marines had this in their official writing style before we did, but now the idea has caught on for us Soldiers as well. Have a good one!

The longer, more detailed answer is “never”.