I learned this rule when I was in 3rd-grade. For some reason, Republicans still fail to learn it or understand it. If you do not know the rule, it is roughly, "Never start a war you cannot win.". What this rule means is you should know the outcome before the war even begins. This rule is different from the rule, "The first casualty of war is the battle-plan.", which has nothing to do with the outcome, but rather the intricacies and alterations present in each individual battle.

Is their ignorance and ineptitude a result of stupidity and arrogance, or something more complex? Injury causes evolution. Those injured by Republicans are evolving to defeat them. Rove and the Bush administration in particular repeated the practice of starting unwinnable wars, thus miserably losing the last two federal elections.