Or maybe the goal was to sustain the war, not win it. If people start feeling victorious they might feel that an end is within reach. Thus the spin of the press and the political decisions that bound the hands of the military.
Why?
Do you know how many people made money off the Vietnam war? Do you know how deeply these people have ties into the power handles of our country?
It's worse now.
Sure LBJ made alot of money off the war, through his wife's holdings.
It was a liberal who decided to have our forces fight with one hand tied behind their back, shakles on their feet and Marques of Queensburry rules along with micro mangaement from the oval office.
My step dad flew over there durring the end of LBJ and the begining of Nixon, says it finally felt like a war under Nixon, you could actually bomb stuff that mattered.
It's very possable the whole thing was a mechanisim to show the Soviets that we would spend blood and treasure to stop their associates and if need be themselves. It also let us develope aireal warfare and equipment to a much higher level than the Soviets. We showed them that we could penatrate the nastiest air defense system they could conjure up, at will, they never got the same practice (allthough the old man claims he heard lots of Russian and Polish voices in singnals intercepts, so we flew against their best and still demonstrated the superiority of our tactics and equipment.)
Then again the US rarely does anything for just 1 reason, there is usually alot of reasons we do things.
I dont think the Iraq war was just about possable WMDs and I support the war there. It was alot of reasons both obvious and not obvious.
Note the geography, we hold Afghanistan, we hold Iraq, who is the meat in the sandwich? Iran. It put them in the box, they will screw up and bring war down on them soon enough, and I beleive that's a good thing, the Iranian goverment and it's apparatuses should be destroyed, they can not have nuclear weapons, their past behaivior shows them to be suorters of terror.
Then there is the theory of making Iraq a democracy and giving them middle class problems. Democracies tend to not go to wath other democracies and people with middle class problems tend to not rock the boat to much.
There is also the fact that we ran over the Bully Boy for the regeon, showing all Islamic nations that directly challenging us means the end of your goverment and military with blindiong quickness.
If Rumsfeld did not screw up the occupation so badly (and Bush stand by him for so damn long.) only the far left would be crying foul and most American would not care. The press would not beable to take the kernal of bad truth and turn it into a field of propaganda and disinformation.
I think maybe the biggest problem is that civillians have to much control over the Military at war. I beleive once the civillian govt. gives the marching orders, they should let the Military have complete control of operations, stratagy and any press in theater. I think we would all be amazed at how much better things go for us.
(Sure more collaterals might suffer but eggs and omlettes and all that, we killed far more civillians in WW2 but it contributed to the victory and after war prosperity and role as Hegemin, a role we have earned and would be fools to give up. No "Son of " nation that will cover our world retreat like we did for the Brittish for us.
Being number 1 causes alot of problems but if we fall below number 1 we will suffer harshly. Us and them, I vote us.)
The Polititians should have control of when to unleash and when to leash or forces but let the dog walk itself, it knows better than anyone where and how to bite. That's a lesson from the South East Asian conflict and from the Iraq war.
