Steven Den Beste has an interesting article that responds to some of the statements that the German Foreign Minister put out this week. But it got me thinking about how much the world has changed in just the past 50 years.

50 years ago, we expected strategies to play out over decades. Now, we have the German Foreign Minister claiming that the domino strategy in the middle east has failed. Huh? We've only been over there a few months. Germany of all countries should know that it's not wise to underestimate the time it will take for something to work.

But it speaks a lot about how expectations have changed.  The United States lost something like 480,000 troops in World War II.  Around 60,000 in Vietnam. But we have people talking about how badly things are going in Iraq because something like 190 or so troops have been lost since major action ended at the end of April. 

We live in a much faster paced world. Wars are expected to take days rather than years. Remember during the Iraq campaign some reporters were using the word quagmire because US forces had paused (one division paused due to a sand storm).  From the day the US went to war against Germany it took three YEARS for US forces to get into Germany. 

And US forces are still there in Germany 60 years later. Which brings up today's ironic moment -- the German foreign minister talking about how it would be a good thing for US forces to not stay in Iraq even as US forces have continuously been in Germany for the past 60 years.