Who Lost Iraq

8 June, ‘07

A question being batted about by the media today is “Who Lost Iraq”? Strangely enough, I wasn’t aware that it had been lost… if they’ll look on a world map, it’s still right there, jammed in between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, with Iran to the northeast. Irregardless, the rabid and bloodthirsty liberal search for a scapegoat to blame for a somewhat raggedy war continues in the media, in Congress, and in the minds of the American people. There seems to be no shortage of culprits either.

The Defense Department is blaming the State Department, and State is blaming Defense, as usual. The Generals are quoted as saying "there is no military solution to this conflict" (meaning "don't blame us if we fail"). Diplomats, for their part, argue that they’ve seen to the drafting of a constitution, organized elections, and have installed a new Iraqi government. They complain that the military has failed to establish a secure environment in which these institutions can function. Defense apparently fails to remember that historically one guerrilla usually ties down eight to ten regular troops. Thus General Sherman, when asked how many men he would need to control Georgia (during the Civil War), responded that he’d need about 200,000 Union soldiers. Typically, the resulting press hysteria nearly cost him his job. To control South Vietnam, General Westmorland would have needed well over a million soldiers! State, for their part, seems to forget that all the laws, Constitutions, and elections in the world mean absolutely nothing if the combatants are ignoring them.

In Congress the Democrats are blaming the Republicans, the Republicans are running for cover, and the media is having a field day slinging mud at everyone involved. In Europe, the current thing to do is blame everything on the United States, as they usually do whenever we fail to handle a situation in whatever way they think best. In Iraq the Shia blame the Sunni, the Sunni are returning the favor in spades, and the Kurds are seemingly getting shot at by everyone. Meanwhile the Iraqi civil war goes on, and Iraqi civilians that didn’t get killed or crippled by the last car bomb continue to live in the US media’s favorite shooting gallery.

Actually there’s more than enough blame to go around. Congress authorized the war by an overwhelming majority, something that hasn’t occurred since WW II. A good many Democratic political leaders also thought intervention was a good idea. The press was uncritical, and the American people were generally supportive. So now we have a rather messy war going on, with apparently no way out. Although responsibility for this war is widely shared, the temptation to blame the Iraqis may become irresistible to everybody involved. We gave the Iraqis a chance, so the argument goes, and if they failed to build a peaceful state, whose fault is that? Yet if the Iraqis failed to live up to American expectations, do we blame their reality, or our own illusions?
Among the Democrats, antiwar activists criticize those who voted for the war, as well as those who continue to resist legislating an end to it all. Among Republicans, the neoconservatives blame the conservatives, in particular former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but also President George W. Bush, for not committing adequate manpower and money to the task. Well, they didn’t, actually. What’s needed I’d think, is about four more US divisions, preferably divisions of well trained and combat experienced military police.

What most people completely fail to realize is that the “War” was won (with minimal American casualties) when the statues of Saddam started to topple. What followed, and continues today, isn’t a war, but a policing action carried out by an army of occupation. Granted that to the troops on the ground, or to the families of the casualties, there’s little difference between the two terms.

Before we give up and run for home, perhaps we should have some sort of idea just who we’re fighting. Approximately 90% of the insurgents are Iraqis, Sunnis who are embittered at the toppling of the Sunni Arab government of Saddam Hussein, and are often members of Saddam’s old security services. Former Iraqi military personnel are providing the technical know-how for all those roadside bombs. Former Iraqi military ammunition dumps are providing the explosives and detonators. The AK-47s and RPGs used to terrorize or kill other Iraqis are also formerly the property of the Iraqi armed forces. Certainly there are a few out-of-town recruits arriving every day, but who are they? They’re even more Sunni Arabs, youth for the most part with no combat experience, supercharged with Islamic fundamentalism and looking for a chance to die for Islam. (The Arabic version of the wartime Japanese Kamikaze pilot I presume.) So far, the Iraqi government and the US military have been helping quite a few of them find their way to paradise. The Iraqi terrorists are killing Iraqis with the expectation that this will get Sunni Arabs back in control of Iraq once more. They are encouraged by European support, noting that most Europeans were against the American invasion that removed Saddam Hussein, and Sunni Arabs, from power. The current squabble in the US Congress (and press) is encouraging to them as well. What isn’t reported in the worlds press (it doesn’t make good headlines), is that the majority of Iraq is comparatively quiet. The “war” is going on in those few predominately Sunni areas where the population is either pro-terrorist, or terrorized into silence. Islamic terrorists who tried to do it “Iraqi style” in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, found that fewer sympathizers, and more police, made it impossible for them to do much. In both countries, terrorist cells were unable to do much damage before being hunted down and arrested or killed. Currently most terrorist cells are being caught before they can carry out any attacks at all. Those that escaped have apparently been too busy staying escaped to create more mayhem. But if you still think the Iraqi insurgency is a bloodbath now, just wait until our Democratic Congress forces an American withdrawal, and the whole place blows up!

The Bush administration, like the American public, now recognizes that the occupation of Iraq was mismanaged, and they’ve learned that nation building cannot be done on the cheap. The surge of troops into Baghdad is a belated admission that rebuilding a failed state takes an enormous commitment of manpower, money and time. Unfortunately this realization probably comes too late to rescue the American venture in Iraq.

No, Iraq and the rest of the mid-east isn’t lost yet, but, like the war in Vietnam, it’s rapidly being lost in our Congress, and in the US media.