And they have.
Every "conflict" that we have been in since joining the United Nations, we have not "won".
As long as the U.N. is involved, we will never actually "win".
And since the Iraq war is our involvement in enforcing a U.N. mandate, we won't "win" there, either.
The UN mandate was the pretext.
It was not the reason.
And the Iraq war is just a battle in the great war.
As far as I’m concerned we won the Iraq War when Saddam’s government fell. After all, that was what the objective of the invasion was. Does anyone really think that we can ‘win’ the war now that we continue to allow the UN, media, and leftists change the conditions of victory? Of course not, they would love nothing more than to see us bankrupt ourselves there, hence their insistance that we always need to do more.
My point is that we need to decide which is more bearable, continuing our involvement in that country and drive ourselves into bankruptcy, or letting the people of Iraq finally take responsibility for their own security and potentially allowing that country to fall into the hands of extremists. Given those choices I would rather avoid bankruptcy due to the obvious implications.