The Q word
Reuters reports on a new warning from Iran that notably included the Q word:
Iran warned the United States on Wednesday it would find itself in a “quagmire deeper than Iraq” if it attacked the Islamic state…The warning by the head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, a target of new U.S. sanctions announced last week, added to angry rhetoric…”If the enemies show inexperience and want to invade Islamic Iran, they will receive a strong slap from Iran,” Jafari said…”The enemy knows that if it attacks Iran it, will be trapped in a quagmire deeper than Iraq and Afghanistan, and they will have to withdraw with defeat”…
Jafari should be advised that the use of the Q word, Quagmire, is not a good omen for him. Though it has a certain resonance in American political circles, and indeed more than that if there is mission creep from military action to nation building, the median distance between the appearance of Quagmire in the US press and actual military defeat of an enemy is less than two weeks.