Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
No Slap, not kidding. There is a vast difference between interstate combined arms war and instrastate insurgencies. "Winning" in one forum has little or nothing to do with winning in the other.. Only someone who had not been involved in the fight in Iraq or Afgahanistan over the last decade could think otherwise.

You forget that we made short work of the Iraqi Army in 2003-4, yet could not win in the long run. It is the long fight that matters, not the opening palys of the first quarter, as the Colonel likes to think
Curmudgy,
I don't think you had joined this discussion group at the time so you are probably not familiar with some of Warden's earlier comments that I posted from years ago when this Fiasco first started.

1- when we first went into Iraq he warned that we should be careful about being jubilant to soon because "All we have is a beachhead in the middle of 1 billion undefeated Muslims" turned out to be pretty accurate.

2-I posted a copy of a letter to the editor that wrote warning of the dire consequence that would happen when we decided to disband the Iraqi Army which would leave the entire country in an unstable situation. Again turned our to be pretty accurate.

3-But I agree he probably doesn't think much about the way we are thinking of insurgencies because it is not working! Whether we like it or not the " Enemy Is Still A System" and he is smart enough to know that we are not going to turn the Sunni into Democrats nor the Shia into Republicans and have a nice democracy in the Middle East. What is possible is to use American Airpower to support local Arab Armies to achieve our true interest in the region.