The war has been over since after the first few weeks of hostilities. We’ve been fighting to stablize the government and the peace for several years.
Quick war. New government. New economy. Functioning socieity. Power handed over to the locals. Small numbers of well funded locals and foreign infiltrators distablizing things and scaring the large majority in the middle who want stability and fear the great power abandoning them prematurely.
How many times in history has this been done? How many times has a nation of similar size and power been toppled and replaced with as little death and destruction?
Bush and the U.S. deserve lots of credit.
Very, very few. That's part of the problem, actually. Many (not all) Dems are ideologues for whom the narrative is everything, that is, a more or less coherent story with themselves as the heroes and their political opposition as the villains. The Vietnam narrative (and not the actual events) was irresistibly attractive to them for this reason, which was why so many clung to it desperately and still do.
This isn't that, and it turns out that an attractive narrative is indispensable during an election year, so the choice is between clinging to the old story line and furiously denying evidence to the contrary or coming up with a new storyline, i.e. the war was won because of some Democratic policy or other. The problem with the latter is that Obama has already chosen to cast himself as the fellow who was against the war from the beginning, and his claiming credit for the victory is a stretch even the NY Times might find hard to swallow. Not to mention She Who Must Not Be Named lurking in the background with an "I told you so" smirk on her face.
Victory will be recognized as soon as it becomes advantageous for the ideologues in control of the media and the Democratic party to do so, and not until then. It may be grudgingly admitted to before that, which is what is happening now. Very grudgingly indeed, at least until that new narrative can be constructed.
Yep. We agree, taking somewhat different approaches. After Fallujah, they could not destabilize the military situation any more. They could still destabilize the government.