It Takes One To Know One: Lessons From The Vietnam Era

When folks like Henry Kissinger make comments like:

If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible

It strikes me that because Kissinger was a principal architect of the Vietnam strategy that he would know what failure in the military category looks like. Really, if people who have been through similar catastrophes are saying it's a catastrophe, then maybe Iraq is a catastrophe.