"If you mean, by ‘military victory,’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible"
And in the next he says this:
"...that a hasty withdrawal from Iraq would have “disastrous consequences,” leaving not only Iraq but neighboring countries with large Shiite populations destabilized for years"
Source: Henry Says
If you analyze these statements together you'll see that "quagmire" is the word that binds them coherently.
What should one do in a quagmire?
Bottle up and go. I like a timed withdrawal because it gives Iraqis a better chance of "standing up".
The lessons that people should learn from this are embodied in a document Colin Powell authored called The Powell Doctrine.
Maybe next time?
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