On Sun, 16 Apr 2017 19:30:39 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

The politicians (I cited Truman and LBJ)
didn't *allow* the military to win the wars although they well could have.

Not really. We would have ended up at war with the Soviets before we
took Hanoi and we were already at war with China when we high tailed
it back to the 38th parallel and called for a cease fire.


Bush 41 and Bush 43 are exceptions. The wars they got us involved in
were easily and quickly won. The political problems that remained is
what has caused all the problems.

HW won when he pushed Saddam back into Iraq. He should have picked up
his marbles and gone home right then.
Everything after that was just a series of bad decisions and battles
with no actual win available to them. GW certainly defeated Saddam's
army but they did not conquer the country and install a real
government like we did in 1945. All we did was unleash the crazies
that Saddam had been containing. I am not sure you can build a real
nation where none existed before.
I see the same thing happening in Syria and so does Putin.
He has already said, if we can come up with a plan that replaces Assad
with someone better they would get on board. Nobody wants another
Iran, Iraq or Libya.
It's is hard to find a case where we deposed a dictator in the last 50
years and it actually worked out well for the US.