I give Bush no credit for this, other than for being too bull-headed to back down from a fight – any fight. A part of me still wonders if he saw Iraq as a blotch on the Bush family honor and if that played a role in starting the war. I didn’t see any reason for us to get involved in Iraq, but it has turned out much better than I had expected. We’re winning in Iraq and in the Arab world in general. If Iraq can be compared to Vietnam, it’s Al-Qaeda’s Vietnam, not ours. They’re the ones losing the war of public opinion. The US can afford to lose the support of the Arab street (what else is new?). Al-Qaeda can’t.

Man, talk about non-sequitors. And poor arguments. Even if the analogy made the slightest bit of sense – which it doesn’t on its own terms – one is in pretty poor shape when one’s argument becomes “if we hadn’t attacked Iraq, Saddam might have started to aid Al-Qaeda.” Yes, that’s a great reason for treating Iraq as an imminent threat and throwing most of your military resources at it.

Are you seriously endorsing this as deep thinking on the War on Terror?

As you know, Lincoln was subjected to awful criticism throughout the war, including all sorts of Congressional meddling. I’m sure that made things difficult. On the other hand we finally got Grant and Sherman and Sheridan.

That set-piece tank battle on open European plains, the replay of Kursk, is looking more and more remote every day. Might as well clear that playbook off the shelf.

None of that, for better or worse, brings Iraq truly closer to stability, of course. But I remain confident that that country has a critical mass of people who are determined enough to make it work to, well, make it work.

Michael, if it was just you and I and a box of beers, I’m sure we’d agree on most things. But I have an emotional notion that while the war is still on, the criticism of the chieftain is not as important as persisting in the fight. I am not trying to say my way is right or that it’s even rational. I’ll have a post on all that someday. I don’t think criticism is treason (just to head off the inevitable counter-post from the inevitable misreaders). But for me, I know what feels right. Maybe it’s the Scots-Irish in me. Maybe it’s the German.

In Iraq, same pattern, with the twist that we start off with no sttrategy at all because we had fooled ourselves into believing that Iraq would be France in 1944. We transitioned to a strategy of denial — the insurgents were a handful of dead-enders. Then we shifted to Vietnam Stage One: attrition. And now, finally, we are moving to a “take, hold and build” strategy using indigenous troops. The correct strategy. Too bad there is no indigenous army.

The problem with the “as they stand up, we stand down” slogan is that in order to stand up Iraqi troops we have to shift more of our people into training missions, which means they aren’t available for combat missions, which means the security situation deteriorates, so that we have even more desperate need for Iraqi troops and around and around we go. Bottom line: we ddon’t have a big enough army. As it is we need to draw down in order to preserve thee integrity of our force, while somehow training ever more Iraqis, even while the security situations spirals down.

That’s the problem here, in military terms. We never had enough men. We hit upon the correct strategy about two years late. And now we are in a trap.

And that’s not even getting into the political mess.

Vietnam was not the fault of the media — we had 500,000 men in Vietnam at the peak, and stayed for a decade. It was the fault of a hidebound military that did not get counterinsurgency warfare until far too late. The US military was configured for a tank war at the Fulda Gap in Germany, not for counterinsurgency.

Iraq is not the fault of the Dems or the media, it is the fault of ideologues and theorists — politicians and Pentagon civilians — who deliberately refused to heed our own vast experience with counterinsurgency warfare.