Versus

Okaaay, lets make few assumptions.
First of all to define what is going on.
If we take the statement that the Middle East is widely populated by Muslim folks would it be true. I think so. There are few others too but Muslims are majority, right?. Yes that one is true.

The Muslim world is divided by two main religious movements or fractions.Shiites and Sunnis. I tend to compare that religious state of things with the Christian religion and the bias within, where you have two major blocks Catholic and Orthodox Christians and than you have further bias on each side. But in order not to make this post WAR and PEACE size, lets just say that within Muslim world there is a major bias. Would that be true? Ummm,yep.
In the past that region was subjected to various conflicts, conquests, bloody battles fought by many different sides and cultures.If we go one level up and try to look at it from a different perspective, with smaller resolution this time,we could see that on that specific point on Earth, the middle east, there was a lot of commotion and mixture over time.Simply there is so much history there...Ok, so now, if there was so much commotion in the past,would it be wise to assume that people whom live there know a lot since they came in contact with so many different cultures and civilizations? I guess so.

So to sum all this we have one dominant religion divided along one major bias, concentrated on the pretty busy place on Earth.

As any species, humans have an urge to dominate area that they populate. To control it in order to survive. So in the middle east they are fighting fiercely for a long time. Middle East became interesting to the Europe and to the, what later will be known as DA WEST,several times. First Macedonians, than Romans, than Crusaders and at the end British Empire and European Colonialism. So DA West came to DA East, searching for something. First and only reason why Europeans went to East was the over all economy. In order to progress and gain wealth, they went there to make money and to make money by all means. Including by waging wars and conquests. Big deal, everyone does it. Well it turned to be a big deal since Europeans didn't just came there saying let's trade and fight they came there also by saying in order to be with us you have to become one of us aka become Christians.
So not only that the Europeans took their money, their land, they also wanted to take their religion. And the Muslims replied with Jihad. A holy war. War fought for principles not for material things. War became spiritual, fought from a different dimension, from the soul. That made permanent mark in the relations between East and West. From that moment everyone whom is not Muslim, whom is not one of their kind is seen as someone that doesn't belong there, someone whom is infidel. A non believer. Someone that needs to be destroyed immediately and without remorse.

I was in Minneapolis when Operation Iraqi freedom started, in sport bar, watching the game on TV with my friends, just drinking beer and eating guacamole,chatting as usual. Before that I had many conversations with my friends whom also had their own view at the situation and we had many discussions about Iraq. I did expressed my doubts and fears and said that I'm afraid that this thing wont go at all. They said to me that I shouldn't worry since US military is strong and it will crush Iraqi military in no time. They were fully patriotic and me, whom was at the time FOB, didn't feel like arguing. I went home to my wife and watched the news. One thing that was mentioned on CNN was that Saddam has some old Russian military generals as advisers and from that point I knew that all I was feared of will actually happened. I knew that the Iraqi military offer small resistance to the US military. I knew that they will let US into the Iraq and that they will let US think that they won. And that the guerrilla tactic will follow after that. I knew all that cause same thing happened to me while I was in the army during the Kosovo campaign. The KLA offered little resistance, they let you in into the village, wait till dusk settles down and you start your dinner and than they attack with full force.
Basic guerrilla 101. How come that the US military and politicians didn't saw that? Why did the US thought that it will go smooth? And this wasn't just a case of securing one village along important communication route, this was securing the WHOLE country. My friends started to understand my fears when insurgency started and the body count among US forces started to climb.
All I could say to them than was the line from the movie Aliens when Ripley says to Newt that these people here are to protect you, they are soldiers. and Newt replies with something like:"It wont make any difference..."

I'm not trying to play some smart a** here and say that I know everything.But I do know that in order to make statement like we are losing or winning, you need to know first what your objective is. For me, the objective for the "coalition of the willing" is still a mystery.