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Comment by locknitpicker | Hacker News Reader

> Is it just me, or are we taking the beginning of Iraq War v 2 very calmly?

Iraq war is not a suitable comparison. That event was a decisive US victory that resulted from thorough planning, extensive international support and collaboration, and total commitment from all parties.

Trump's wars are none of the above. Mobilizing a couple thousand troops here and there for a war that can be orders of magnitude more intensive than Iraq War V2 and without any semblance of support is a clear sign of starting a war while signaling their own impending defeat.

Let's not fool ourselves: the only parties benefiting from this nonsense is Russia and China.

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> Iraq war is not a suitable comparison. That event was a decisive US victory that resulted from thorough planning, extensive international support and collaboration, and total commitment from all parties.

I think you mean the Gulf War in the early 1990s. The Iraq War, 2003 - ~2011, had relatively little international support, was poorly planned (they promised no more than 6 weeks, had no plans for occupation, etc.), and was spent fighting Iranian-backed militias and ISIS.

Not to mention the first gulf war had UN support. (Back when the USA respected international law).

Including USSR!

The 2003 Iraq war was a pretty decisive military victory for the invaders. Iraqi command and control destroyed in the opening stages. About a month to complete occupation of the country.

The subsequent years were a complete clusterfuck. Largely because of a missing theory of victory, the inept neocons the administration selected to run the civilian side, and the lack of strategic military-civilian coordination.

What you say is essentially accurate and we're debating semantics, but about those semantics:

Wars end with political solutions (otherwise, people keep fighting), and the US didn't achieve a political solution the first month, and never achieved a particularly desirable one. One step they took was dissolving the Iraqi army or military, and those people reformed into militias that continued fighting the US. Was the war really over?

The US won initial battles, as expected. The war lasted much longer.

Granted! But that's insurgencies vs wars IMHO. In one, you have irregulars trying to bleed an occupying power. In the other, you have regular military forces.

The US is great at winning the latter, but sucks at winning the former (largely because of a lack of coherent political-diplomatic-military fusion on the US side).

> The US is great at winning the latter, but sucks at winning the former

Also, enemies aren't suicidal. Why would they take on US tanks, fighter planes, missiles, satellites, etc. for more than five minutes? They know they can't win that way so they quickly abandon it for what does have some success, irregular warfare / insurgency.

I think this war has been planned copiously and the fact that the front man makes it look stupid and takes all the blame is part of the plan

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