In
today's Washington Post, a staff writer takes a look at American strategy in Iraq:
"In war, we have to win," said Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.
This was on television about 20 years ago, a PBS series about the war in Vietnam. Giap was sitting behind a desk, as I recall, a picture of lethal ease. He seemed amused to think he knew something that the Americans still hadn't figured out. He added: "Absolutely have to win."
For me, a former Marine corporal who'd heard some Viet Cong rounds go past at Chu Lai, Giap spoke and the heavens opened -- a truth seizure, eureka. I finally had a useful, practical explanation for why we had lost after the best and brightest promised we were going to win. And nowadays, thanks to Giap, I have a theory, no more than that, about why winning is so elusive in Iraq...
Allen believes that the Bush administration doesn't know how to win, and concludes:
This war is not working out the way our leaders thought it would. We could lose. If we lose, we'll be humiliated, we'll be the schoolyard hotshot who picked a fight and then got whipped. I'm tired of our leaders putting me and my country in this position.
I'm not saying I want to fight no wars, or even saying I want to win more wars -- I'm just saying that I want us to win the wars that we fight. And I'm worried that Iraq was never one of them because it was started by people who knew everything except how to win -- who have yet to learn that in war we absolutely have to win.
