Win Or Lose
- from: ‘Young Americans – The “Unwinnable” Ramadi Episodes’: Series Prologue And Episode 1: ‘Return To Ramadi’ (CONTENT WARNING)by Pat Dollard
"...in many ways, Ramadi was the truest analogy of Afghanistan. The Iraq war hinged entirely on whether or not Ramadi could be won, as Al Qaeda needed it to control the rest of their recently established de-facto state, the Al Anbar province of Iraq. The shorthand is that we were told Ramadi, and therefor Al Anbar, and therefore Iraq, was lost, and it was time to get the hell out of what was almost literally the new Dodge, the wild west of western Iraq. Well, due to our tenacity and solid counter-insurgency plan, we won the hearts and minds of the citizens of Ramadi, and we won the war. But not before the Democrat political establishment killed many young Americans by encouraging the enemy to keep fighting by endlessly dangling the tantalizing promise of a forced media and Congress-driven surrender. "