With the impending inauguration of Obama, a lot of revisionism about the Bush years is streaming forth from various sources. But as far as Iraq is concerned, I'm sticking with my old friend the Aardvark, who is now blogging under his real name: Marc Lynch. He writes:
The change in approach (was it strategy or tactics?) that has come to be known as the "surge" has contributed to a reduction in violence, and that's a good thing. Fewer people are being killed. But this does not constitute military "victory." Marc, in another piece, gets right to the point:
...beneath the superficial veneer of improved security upon which most Americans have focused, Iraq continues to be torn apart by deep divides over ethnicity and religion and by escalating battles between political insiders and popular forces. Despite some promising developments, little political reconciliation has taken place since the "surge" began.
I am a bit concerned about the politics here. When Obama comes in on Tuesday, Bush-backers will say that the war has been won; thus, as the conflict continues, reignited by any of several flash points (provincial elections, the Basra situation, the Kirkuk impasse, etc.) they will then turn on Obama and complain that he has lost the war. But his is not true. Bush lost the war and he has never overcome that defeat by re-constructing a politically viable Iraq. As long as Iraq remains a broken state, the central government unable to control its own territory and riven by deep internal divides, it will continue to be a strategic problem for the US. Bush created that problem by breaking the Iraqi state, and he has not solved it.
We can think about this in terms of Sun Tzu (because that is what I am reading now with students). In Chapter Three of The Art of War, he writes:
Generally, in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this. To capture the enemy's entire army is better than to destroy it; to take intact a regiment, a company, or a squad is better than to destroy them.
In Iraq, the US initially took that state intact. American forces, following the Sun Tzu idea that speed in execution is of the utmost importance, very quickly fought their way north from Kuwait, taking Baghdad faster than anyone really thought possible. It was what happened next that lost the war. The US did not impose internal order (remember all the looting?); the US did not create an effective government; and, perhaps worst of all, the US disbanded the Iraqi army, shattering the coercive power of the central state apparatus. Essentially, the country has never fully recovered from that destruction. The US had won the war, in a sense, only to lose it shortly thereafter. That, in any event, might be what Sun Tzu would say.
So, let's remember, when the Bush dead-enders come out of the woodwork to blame Obama for the continuing Iraq mess:
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan is on to the same issue....
"...War.... yes, everyone knows what war is like. But occupation is more terrible in a way, because people get used to one another. We tell ourselves, 'They're just like us, after all,' but they're not at all the same. We're two different species, irreconcilable, enemies forever."
from _Suite Francaise_ by Irene Nemirovsky (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006)
The Bush/Cheney Junta didn't plan for the occupation and thus lost the war.
Afghanistan is a similar situation and more intractable today. I wish somebody in power was not only studying Sun Tzu but Badshah Khan and Gandhi as well.
Posted by: gmoke | January 19, 2009 at 01:57 AM
"The Bush/Cheney Junta didn't plan for the occupation and thus lost the war."
So funny!!! If Bush/Cheney could only had planned for the occupation thus bringing on the success and bringing in the loot, what a splendid world we all are going to be resided in... some might even anointed him as "The GREAT"!!!
Funny, so funny ...as the kids would say... LOL
Posted by: isha | January 20, 2009 at 09:36 PM