Never Start A Project You Can Not Finish
There is an old axim that you should never start a project that you can not finish. The American People do not have the patience for this:
Insurgencies, such as the one the U.S. is fighting in Iraq, last an average of more than 10 years, according to a database commissioned by the Pentagon.
For the U.S., the good news is that rebels lose more often than they win. Chances for stopping an insurgency improve after 10 years.
Stopping the violence in Iraq will take years, Pentagon leaders have said. However, there have been few efforts to analyze and quantify insurgencies in order to draw conclusions about Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The violence in Iraq is going to go on a minimum for at least three or four more years and in reality another five-plus years,” said Christopher Lawrence, director of The Dupuy Institute, which is conducting the study.
I would suspect this would be a good addition to the Weinberger Doctrine.
— Oak Leaf