Cetshwayo, the Zulu Chief defeated the British Army at Isandhlwana, South Africa in 1879. The first time a primitive army had defeated a modern Army. It is yet another metaphor for this war, the technology of the occupier does not necessarily trump the will of the reistance.
Here are recent articles that would indicate it's only a matter of time before Iraq ends up in a full defeat for us militarily.
The truth no one really wants to deal with is that this war could very easily be lost by the United States. All the insurgents have to do is hang on another year. All we have to do is what the French and the British did in their colonies: Let themselves be exhausted and finally destroyed by their hubris, their delusions and their arrogant lack of understanding of the local people.
We Could Lose This Militarily
Army Is Being Destroyed At Home
Iraq is now destroying the professional army the United States recruited to take the place of its citizen army. The new army was intended to serve as the unquestioning instrument of the policies of the elected administration. This administration's refusal to supply the manpower and means necessary for its vast military and political ambitions is now having its effect on that army. Its politically inspired fear of conscription, the merciless combat rotation policy and systematic use of involuntary extensions of duty its policies impose, are devastating to troops.
Management Decisions Reveal Desperation
"We are starting to play the ethnic card in Iraq, just as the Soviets played it in Afghanistan," said former CIA chief of Afghanistan operation Milt Bearden.
"You only play it when you're losing and by playing it, you simply speed up the process of losing," he said.
Desperate Conversations Are Destroyed
Powell made his assertion during one in a series of intense discussions on Iraq between Bush and Blair this fall. Those sessions, which have largely been kept secret, indicate that there was a tough debate behind closed doors as the Bush administration reexamined its handling of Iraq in the wake of Bush's reelection victory. Less than three weeks after the White House meeting, the Pentagon announced that it would boost the U.S. military presence in Iraq by 12,000 troops, to 150,000.
The discussions between the two leaders have gone on in recent months in a series of videoconferences that have been considered so sensitive that the transcripts of the meetings are destroyed after other senior officials read them.
The Quickest Way To Be Defeated In A Fight Is To Close Your Eyes
America's handling of the occupation of Iraq came in for scathing criticism Wednesday, with government officials accused of living in a "fantasyland" and failing to learn from mistakes made in Vietnam. A report issued by the independent Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington charged that the occupation had been handled by "ideologues" in the Bush administration who consistently underestimated the scale of the problems they were facing and that this had contributed to a culture in which facts were willfully misrepresented.
The report lists a litany of errors on the part of the United States. "Their strategic assessments of Iraq were wrong," it says. "They were fundamentally wrong about how the Iraqi people would view the United States invasion. They were wrong about the problems in establishing effective governance, and they underestimated the difficulties in creating a new government that was legitimate in Iraqi eyes.
One thing is for sure, if we doi see a military defeat this year, or next, unlikely as it is, it will be impossible to spin.