great post, great analogy.
Mistakes will be made but we need to keep moving South.
The total US casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom is almost 900 since the US went into Iraq, and yet that number is eclipsed by the Iraqis killed by terrorists in the past year. The latest car bombing that killed Nine people many of them policemen and recruits is an example. The news story includes a picture that just shows the immensity of the bombs that terrorists are throwing at the Iraqi people, police, and the Iraqi officials. Looking at that huge crater, I wonder "only 9 lost their lives?" and I understand the weariness of many Iraqis:
Lesson: Don't underestimate the lethality of the enemy. And understand that if terrorism didnt work at some level, it would have been defeated already. Despite the losses, which are heart-breaking, the real war of attrition here is the attrition of the spirit. That is what the terrorists want to do - wear US and the Iraqis down to giving up on making the new Iraq a better place. The terrorists' goal is to make us give up, like this man wants to, on liberating Iraq. Wrong answer!
We must remember Churchill's words - in 1942 - when tens of thousands of British civilians and soldiers had been killed already, with Britain defeated at Dunkirk, Norway, Singapore, Burma, North Africa, and advancing nowhere, with the British Isles ringed by German U-Boats sinking Britain's lifelines of sea cargo. To some it seemed hopeless, yet Churchill said this: