What strikes me is that we are constantly redesigning the military to do something it already does pretty well. I mean, I think you heard from the last panel that breaking the organized resistance in Iraq, even though it may not have been the greatest army in the world, was done extremely well. We've very proud of our troops and very proud of the way that was executed and led. But it wasn't enough.
"Whatever blood is poured onto the battlefield could be wasted if we don't follow it up with understanding what victory is."
At the end of the third inning we declared victory and said the game's over. It ain't over. It isn't going to be over in future wars. If we're talking about the future, we need to talk about not how you win the peace as a separate part of the war, but you've got to look at this thing from start to finish. It's not a phased conflict; there isn't a fighting part and then another part. It is nine innings. And at the end of the game, somebody's going to declare victory. And whatever blood is poured onto the battlefield could be wasted if we don't follow it up with understanding what victory is.
There's only one time in our history that we really, truly understood that. Harry Truman and George Marshall understood it. Woodrow Wilson tried to get us to understand it, but we refused and we were doomed to fight again in a second great war. We didn't understand it after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And we have failed in Vietnam, in places like Somalia; and we're in danger of failing again, to get it and to understand it.
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