by Lee Stranahan
Wars are analog, not digital. Sometimes 'victory' is nebulous and hard to define. For instance, I'd say that America lost the War Of 1812 because our enemy met most of their objectives plus burned down the White House. But that's not what I was taught in elementary school in the 1970s and it's still a subject of debate now. In wars, both sides have some victories usually, no matter who 'won'.
So, we lost Iraq. I'm not sure who we lost it to because it wasn't our military that lost. Iraq was more like a golf game for Bush, where his primary opponent was himself and he ended up setting fire to the back nine. The war helped bring on the biggest economic disaster of our times, erased our budget surplus, destroyed our reputation in the world, displaced / killed large numbers of the civilian population were we supposed to be liberating, and so on.
Whether or not you think the U.S. lost in Iraq it's for sure that Bush lost Iraq, period full stop forever. If you drive your Corvette at high speeds into a brick wall and then it's towed to Pep Boys and repaired, you don't get to saunter back into Hooters and say "Hey, y'all! I fixed my car!!!".