The Washington Post recently asked a bunch of people if they thought that Senator Reid was correct that the war in Iraq was lost. (He didn’t actually say that - he said that if we continue as we have that the war is lost.) But anyway, only three people disagreed with Senator Reid - a Bush national security adviser, the guy who came up with the idea of the surge, and an historian. Here is the historian’s quote:

No. The war is not lost — no more than it was in winter 1776, July 1864, December 1945 or November 1950. The challenge is winning back hearts and minds at home, rather than in Iraq, where brave thousands join us each day to fight an evil sort the likes of which we haven’t seen in recent memory.

– Victor Davis Hanson, military historian, Hoover Institution

The Winter of 1776 saw American troops win the battles of Trenton and Princeton. Maybe he meant the Winter of 1777 - Valley Forge? In July 1864, Union troops were 3 miles from Atlanta and 20 miles from Richmond. In December 1945, World Was II had been over for 4 months. The last one makes the most sense and the best comparison to Iraq. In November 1950, the US had driven the North Korean army back into North Korea and could have declared victory. But we pushed towards the Yalu River and pulled China into the war resulting in a war of attrition that caused the deaths of thousands more American troops. Had we halted our invasion and negotiated with the North Koreans and Chinese, three useless years of war and the resulting casualties could have been avoided. Imagine how different things would have been in Iraq had we declared victory after capturing Sadaam, determining there were no WMD’s, and finding no Al Queda bases.