Re: Defeat

From Neoneocon:

Remember that we had been disengaged from active fighting in the war in Vietnam for years when we abandoned that country in early 1975. ...we gave up when we were undergoing very little risk and when the cost of continuing was low. Even though we were merely subsidizing the fighting of others in a cause for which fifty thousand Americans had already given their lives, we had grown weary of what was perceived as an endless conflict, and it was that psychological defeatism that led to our pulling the plug on the still-fighting South Vietnamese themselves, who then—and only then—were in fact defeated.

We have lost relatively few casualties in Iraq, our economy is still thriving, and we’ve experienced no increase in terrorist attacks here. There has been no military defeat, just a psychological one, and it is self-generated.