Right now Ebbie, with oil at the price it is per barrel, Russia, as a major exporter of oil looks to be in pretty good shape. Russia's long term financial planning relies on the price of oil being somewhere around $22 per barrel, it has been way, way above that for a long, long time.

The US did recover from it's defeat in Vietnam - only just, and it took you damn near twenty years to do it. But in those days you had conscripted armed forces, today you do not, they're volunteer professionals. Now should they lose in Iraq just because the politicians and a section of the population are not prepared to support them then the US will not recover from that defeat.