A surprising thing seems to have happened in the recent two military engagements of our side against the Islamic radicals – the Israel/Hezb’allah War and the Iraq War.  Neither Israel nor ourselves defined our objective in our respective wars as “victory.”  Rather than victory we both seem to have opted for attempting to secure the good opinion of our enemies.  This, after all, was the gravamen of the war coverage of the Israelis – that they were doing things that their enemies did not approve of and ipso facto they were in the wrong.In our own case, to the extent we have/had a political strategy in Iraq, it has been for our forces to provide an interval for the Iraqi forces to take over and then they would finish the war with an Iraqi solution.  Whether this was ever a valid idea, it has failed.  So we need a new strategy, and that strategy must include victory.What would victory look like in Iraq?  Unfortunately, over the...(Read Full Post)