Washington Post (April 17)
“Unlike the planners of D-Day or Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Russians organizing the invasion of Ukraine don’t need an immediate victory. They have flexible goals, and they are prepared to adjust their strategy depending on how much resistance they encounter.” In the short term, they are entirely flexible. “In the long term, Russia clearly hopes to annex eastern and southern Ukraine.”
Tags: Annex, D-Day, Flexible, Freedom, Goals, Invasion, Iraqi, Resistance, Russia, Strategy, Ukraine, Victory
USA Today (March 7)
“If the Ukraine crisis were a poker game – and to a large degree it is – you wouldn’t want to be dealt the American hand, and you certainly wouldn’t want to overplay it in the false hope of a quick win. Russian President Vladimir Putin has carefully leveraged forces of history, geography and politics in ways that ensure there is no short-term victory to be had.”
New York Times (January 15, 2014)
After three years without a case, India “can now be declared polio-free.” This “victory is an important milestone in the global effort to eliminate polio,” but much remains to be done to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of eradicating the disease by 2015, which would mean the world could be declared polio–free in 2018. Unfortunately, 2012 brought backtracking. There were 350 new cases of polio, up from 213 in 2012, and these occurred in 8 countries, up from 4.
Tags: 2012, 2015, 2018, Disease, India, Milestone, Millennium Development Goal, Polio, Polio-free, U.N., Victory
Los Angeles Times (January 12, 2014)
“The United States no longer knows how to win wars, but it continues to start them.” From hardware to preparedness, the U.S. military remains in a league of its own. Yet, since the end of the Cold War, “when it comes to finishing the job on schedule and on budget, their performance has been woeful.” The fighting in Iraq didn’t end when the U.S. left, nor is the fighting in Afghanistan likely to cease with the scheduled departure of U.S. troops. “For the United States, victory has become a lost art.”
Tags: Afghanistan, Budget, Cold war, Iraq, Military, Preparedness, Schedule, Troops, U.S., Victory
