At a news conference:
Q: "Mr. President! Mr. President! Do you think we're winning in Afghanistan?"
A: "I don't know, lady; it's not like there's a f^&#ing scoreboard. What do you think this is? A basketball game? Like 'They're committing more fouls than we are and I think we can beat them from the free throw line'?"
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Which one of the reasons I liked Rumsfeld at the start of the 2nd Iraq war.
A couple of times he actually told off some of the stupid press gang.
Me, I'd like to hear "Bang!" anyone else have any stupid questions?
Clemenceau said a lot of things about war, but the one I like is:
"War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory."
Supposedly said to W. Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
In other words, when you're actually fighting a war, you're in the worst possible position to recognize victory or defeat.
If the Dems are still talking about withdrawing, we must still be winning...
I've often said that people seem to look at war as a spectator sport. People can watch on TV, heckle or root for one team or another and blather endlessly about a game they don't know how to play.
There's a bit at the beginning of Roger Waters' "What God Wants Part I" from his Amused to Death album:
(Boy's voice) "I don't mind about the war, that's one of the things I like to watch, if it's a war going on, 'cause then I know if -- when our side's winning, if our side's losing..."
Good point about how it's trivialized on television. However, the point is lost amid an album about how war is just bad.
Historically, real estate won, lost, or in contention was the primary yardstick to measure progress in war. In Viet Nam we switched to the more vague method of "body count".
In the current GWT it is harder to keep score because apparently the goalposts are subject to relocation.
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