# Does the US end its wars well?



## MarkOttawa (3 Feb 2011)

Excerpts from a review article in the _WSJ_; I suppose it all depends on one's goals and the nature of the conflict (deep thought, that):

Winning Is the Only Thing
Wars may end with mixed results, but there is still no substitute for victory.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703960804576120133155974872.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion



> In 1971, in "Every War Must End," Fred Iklé—later the director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and an undersecretary of defense—wrote that it is "the way in which a war is brought to an end that has the most decisive long-term impact. Yet historians, foreign affairs experts, and military strategists have devoted far more thought to the question of how and why wars begin."
> 
> Col. Matthew Moten makes a similar case in the introduction to "Between War and Peace," a collection of historical essays on "How America Ends Its Wars." As the West Point history professor notes: "Library stacks bulge with treatments of particular wars, campaigns, battles, generals, and armies. Yet historians have largely neglected the course of events leading to a given war's conclusion and its consequences for the peace that followed."
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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