Vote: have we lost in Iraq?
As of today, is the outcome inevitable? If so, what outcome? Please explain why you believe this is so.
I have written 20 articles on the Iraq War, going back to Summer 2003. Initially pessimistic, like Lind and Prof. van Creveld, moving to gloomy, then certain that we've lost. The only remaining questions are when we'll give up, and how much we will have lost in blood, money, and influence.
My articles are at DNI. Here is the latest, with links to the others at the end:
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/fabius_iraq_sitrep_11-2006.htm
What are your views?
Problem of definition....
Although I did vote, the question brings up the issue of how do we define success in Iraq? What is a win or what is a loss? Are we talking about a military win or a political win?
Personnally I believe that wars are fought to achieve political goals (shades of Clausewitz). Therefore any win in Iraq must be based on the political goal, which is a liberal democracy. The military is part of the solution and the military strategy should help lead to the political goal.
Sooooo....the point is.....in any discussion about whether we're winning or not we each may have our own definition of what the "win" is.
Just a random thought..
Ray
Moving the goal posts...?
Yeah, my problem with the 2006 comments are that they represent a political change to the definition of victory. As you noted, they are "more modest." If you move the goal posts far enough you can claim Vietnam was a victory for the U.S.
Not that moving the goal posts isn't common -- after all, we tend to forget that the reason we went to war against Germany in WWII was because of their invasion of Poland (oh, and the Russians invaded, too). Yet, in the end, Poland was still an occupied state -- occupied by one of the original invaders.
Ray
Well it is obvious I have offended...
I am sorry if my comments were viewed as a personl attack. My point is and always will be that posting in anonymity is not the way legitimate historians approach issues, especialyl if they expect serious discussion of their points.
Once again, I apologize.
bs
Iraq Strategy Takes Page from Vietnam Playbook
24 November Los Angeles Times - Iraq Strategy Takes Page from Vietnam Playbook by Peter Spiegel.
Quote:
New tactics favored by U.S. commanders in Iraq borrow heavily from the end of another war that might seem an unlikely source for a winning strategy: Vietnam.
The tactics — an influx of military advisors and a speeded-up handover to indigenous forces followed by a gradual U.S. withdrawal — resemble those in place as the U.S. effort in Vietnam reached its end.
In historical assessments and the American recollection, Vietnam was the unwinnable war. But to many in the armed forces, Vietnam as a war actually was on its way to succeeding when the Nixon administration and Congress, bowing to public impatience, pulled the plug: first withdrawing U.S. combat forces and then blocking funding and supplies to the South Vietnamese army.
If they hadn't, the South Vietnamese army, which had been bolstered by U.S. advisors and a more focused "hearts and minds" campaign in the later stages of the war, could have been able to fend off the communist North, many leading military thinkers have argued.
In their view, progress was undermined by President Nixon's decision to begin withdrawing U.S. troops in 1969 in the face of political pressure at home, despite military objections that the South Vietnamese army was not ready to go it alone. Another key U.S. mistake, they contend, was the deep cuts Congress made to military aid to Saigon beginning in 1974.
For many in the military, the lessons of Vietnam are clear: Maintain public support, and be patient...
about that LA Times article
Thanks for posting a link to this fascinating article. The Iraq War run as boomer nostalgia, that's something to consider.
But what is this "Iraq" they speak of? A brightly colored space on the map, certainly. A State, with a government capable of weilding an army -- not likely. A nation-state, certainly not now (or "no more", or perhaps "not yet").
How many wars hve been lost through small but critical false assumptions, like this?
Dividing Iraq Might Multiply Problems
24 November Chicago Sun-Times commentary - Dividing Iraq Might Multiply Problems by Jaroslav Tir and Paul F. Diehl.
Quote:
... Our research indicates that the best time to divide a country along ethnic or religious lines is before tensions escalate to civil war or large-scale violence. Since 1900, mini-states that emerge from peaceful breakups of countries have a 95 percent success rate in avoiding militarized confrontations with each other.
The bad news is that the optimal time to partition Iraq has passed. The months soon after Saddam Hussein's removal from power in 2003 -- that is, before Iraqi politics came to be dominated by extremist leaders advocating sectarian violence -- provided a window of opportunity for dividing the Iraqi state...
The partition scenario that now faces Iraq is not as desirable as it once was, but neither is it hopeless. A partition designed to stop a civil war runs the risk of transforming the conflict into an international battleground between the mini-states (e.g., the 1998 war between Ethiopia and Eritrea).
One might similarly worry about Sunni and Shiite states clashing in the future. Based on past cases of partition carried out after civil war, this is a 50-50 proposition. There is also the risk that the new states will fall prey to future civil wars, but this occurs only a third of the time. Thus, there is reason to hope that a divided Iraq could avoid future problems, but several risks loom on the horizon.
Given that the Kurdish northern part of Iraq is generally stable and that there is relatively little violence between the Kurds and other major groups, the separation of the Kurds from Iraq could reinforce peace in the north. Yet, this could also activate a potentially dangerous territorial dispute with Turkey, which has a large and rebellious Kurdish population within its own southeastern borders. Any attempts to expand a nascent Kurdish state could ignite a war with Turkey (and perhaps with Iran and Syria as each has significant Kurdish populations). Securing Turkish cooperation for any plan is essential.
The more problematic scenario is presented by the potential Sunni-Shiite separation. The present sectarian violence suggests that the Shiite and Sunni states would not only be predisposed to fight each other after the separation, but also to experience future civil wars within their own mini-states...