Medary.com

J. R. Dunn, military expert, in The American Thinker:

The Jihadis have lost Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s true that fighting continues in both countries, but at this point it’s effectively theater. It can’t be repeated often enough that the type of war we are involved in is as much political as it is military. By any political measure, the Jihadis have been routed. Their only chance of prevailing was to appeal to the Iraqis and Afghans as a viable alternative to elected democratic governments. No such attempt was ever made. Instead, the Jihadis have relentlessly made the Iraqis and Afghans suffer. Their final chance in Iraq lay in derailing the political process last year. They failed at this, and now it is over. Not the violence – there will be car bombs going off in Iraq for years to come, unfortunately. But any opportunity of a Jihadi victory is gone.

(Skepticism on this point is understandable, considering the circumstances. Doubters are encouraged to read any of the myriad milblogs written bysoldiers on the spot, or the recent reportage from Iraq by Victor Davis Hanson and Ralph Peters. It’s a sad comment on the nature of the times that anyone relying solely on the legacy media knows next to nothing of what’s going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, or in truth most other areas of the world.)

This is an excerpt from part 1 of a 3-part posting by Dunn, going a long way towards answering the question that nobody seems to be focused on: What now? Where do we go from here?

Are you SURE you're on the right side of this war?