Bush Loses Iraq War

One of the peculiar things about the Iraq War is the difficulty in evaluating what success for Bush would have meant. Some say that, by failing to win France and Germany’s cooperation, Bush lost the war before it started: the Iraq War failed to re-establish American
hegemony, or consent by other great powers to American supremacy. There’s something to be said for this argument, but it refers only to the international aims of the war.

More persuasive is the idea that Bush was more interested in the effect of the war here at home. Even with public support dropping, Bush has if anything made more out of the war, wanting to talk about little else. Now his entire presidency rests on his success in using the Iraq War to create a new standard for the use of American power and to recreate a sense of national purpose. In which case, as the LATimes reports, Bush has lost the Iraq War.
According to the LATimes, the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review seems to consider the Iraq War a ‘one-off’ venture, by which it really means a failure, or at least not a model to follow:

"The U.S. military has long been accused of always planning to fight its last war. But as the Pentagon assesses threats to national security over the next four years, a major blueprint being completed in the shadow of the Iraq war will do largely the opposite…

…the U.S. military has no appetite for another lengthy war of
"regime change."

And while some new lessons will be incorporated into the Pentagon review, the spending blueprint for the next four years will largely stick to the script Pentagon officials wrote before the Iraq war, according to those familiar with the nearly final document that will be presented to Congress in early February."

This president has not only failed to convince the country of his vision, he’s also failed to convince even his own Defense Department. If anything, he’s convinced the Pentagon to lower its expectations about what the American military can achieve. Not much of a legacy for Bush.