You know the general in charge can really make a difference in a war. Just look at General McClellan and General Grant in the civil war. General McClellan was unimaginative and risk adverse, and therefore let the civil rage for two bloody years to basically a stalemate. The North had the people and resources to take out the South, but McCellan’s tactics allowed General Lee to make advances despite the odds. When Ulysses S. Grant took over the civil war turned from stalemate to victory for the North.

Now we can see a parallel to that war 150 years ago and the Iraq war. Is it just coincidence that the change in military leadership brought in new tactics and new successes? Now that the original military leader has clearly joined forces with the Surrendercrats it seems obvious that our early efforts in Iraq were being led by a man who did not believe we could succeed, and planned accordingly:

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq shortly after the fall of Baghdad, said this week he supports Democratic legislation that calls for most troops to come home within a year.

…

“The improvements in security produced by the courage and blood of our troops have not been matched by a willingness on the part of Iraqi leaders to make the hard choices necessary to bring peace to their country,” Sanchez said in remarks to be aired Saturday for the weekly Democratic radio address.

“There is no evidence that the Iraqis will choose to do so in the near future or that we have an ability to force that result,” he said.

Sanchez added that the House bill “makes the proper preparation of our deploying troops a priority and requires the type of shift in their mission that will allow their numbers to be reduced substantially.”

Critical assessments on the war from former Pentagon brass are nothing new. But Sanchez’s newfound alliance with Democrats is particularly noteworthy because he was directly in charge of combat operations in Iraq, from 2003 to 2004.

Who said anything about “near future”? Maybe the great general can explain why we are still in Germany, Korea and Yugoslavia. Dumb move by Sanchez – jumping on the defeatists bandwagon as we start seeing a path to victory. One has to note that the Surrendercrat’s position is built on the foundation of US failure. The Democrats keep seeing failure, predicting failure, hoping for failure. Now it is clear Sanchez also felt failure was the only option, the only possible outcome. Which explains why he never attempted tactics to win but focused on tactics to ‘survive’ the experience. He is the modern McClellan to Petraeus’ Ulysses S Grant.

History tells us how this will probably come out. The scars of the civil war lasted for decades. The anger dissipated very slowly. Even so McClellan was relegated to history as the biggest loser in the military, behind General Lee and many other Southern military leaders. Grant went on to become President. That is what happens when your primary product for America is failure. Sanchez produced failure in Iraq, and now claims that is inevitable, despite the huge turnarounds seen this year. Sanchez belongs with the Neville Chamberlain’s who now run the Democrat party. They are all heading to the same place in history: as examples of what not to do in times of great challenge to humanity.