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Originally Posted by Mazer
To prove that the US has lost this war, you'll have to prove that a) there are in fact more terrorists then there were before and they're more capable of attacking us, b) our military has been weakened, to do that you'll have to do more than cite recruitment statistics, c) show exactly how our image is hurting us in the eyes of other nations, ignoring general sentiment and citing actual economic and political evidence, and d) convince everyone that peace between Iraq and Iran is bad.
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actually, i think it's more of a stalemate, but to address your points:
1)the number of terrorists attacks world-wide, and obviously in iraq, are higher and dealier than ever (google the reports, but they've been linked here before), therefore it would be reasonable to assume there are more of them and they are better at it.
2)anecdotal, but telling: i was at Fort Bragg, NC last month, home of the 82nd Airborne - there are aging pot-bellied civilian rent-a-cops at the gates. they simply don't have enough active duty personnel to guard the base. there are lots of reports and stats, but you can google them as well as i can.
it is also questionable whether we currently have the resources to sustain a second war, long held to be the benchmark of our military capabiliies.
3)ask any American who's travelled overseas in the last year (i spent T-Day with a bunch of them) - the dislike for Amerca is palpable, the hostility often overt. extrapolate that into dollars lost for Americans who don't want to go back there, and foreigners who don't want to visit here. anecdotal as well, but a sea change nonetheless - we are simply no longer the beacon that we used to be.
4)"peace between iraq and iran"? i suppose that's one way to look at it - another way might be that one leg of Bush's "axis of evil" has now expanded it's sphere of influence to include a large part of iraq. this is a good thing?