We are now 16 months into the Iraq war. At a similar stage in earlier American wars, how were our forces faring? Well, at about this point in the French and Indian Wars George Washington had been defeated and forced to surrender at Fort Necessity (he was released after being disarmed), and then disastrously beaten in a fight where his unit of 1,400 men took 900 casualties and ended up running away. (Washington himself was not injured but had two horses shot from under him, and took four bullets through his coat.) Washington's next experience of war, in the American...