Can someone please explain to me why we are in Iraq?
Let’s make a couple of things abundantly clear.
1) I was against invading Iraq from the very beginning. I didn’t have much faith in our ability to handle the post-war phase, so called â??nation building.â?
2) If we are to engage in armed conflict with another nation, I subscribe wholeheartedly to the â??Powell doctrineâ? - attack with overwhelming force, to end the conflict as soon as possible, attack with a clear goal, and with an exit strategy in mind.
That said, why are we in Iraq? If we are there to eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction, I think we have failed. Even if there were no weapons programs in Iraq (which I doubt, even to this day) there would have been before long. We have eliminated Iraq, at least in the short term, as a threat to the United States. But we have still failed. Because while we were taking away Saddam’s toys, other countries have become emboldened, knowing that the US had neither the manpower, nor the stomach, for a second simultaneous conflict. Iran is racing toward nuclear weapons. North Korea may have them already (They say that they have them, but I’m sorry, I just have trouble believing anything that comes out of North Korea). Syria may be considering the possibility of starting a program. Pakistan, which already had nuclear weapons, may be even less stable than they were two years ago.
You see, when you are a democracy, you have to pick your battles carefully. Democratic public opinion rapidly turns against war (didn’t anyone in our government ever play Sid Meier’s Civilization?) and it is difficult for a democracy (especially one with a relatively successful economy) to recruit enough soldiers to the military to maintain a force capable of sustaining two major, simultaneous conflicts.
My point is that Iraq was not a war. Iraq was a battle. And while we have won that battle, we continue to lose the war. Islamic countries resentful of our power in the world become fertile breeding grounds for future generations of Jihadists. I don’t have any facts to back this up, only intuition, but I would guess that the best way to assure that a young Arab boy will become a man who hates the Untied States enough to give his own life to the the cause is to have an American soldier kill his father.
Iraq itself, which was proposed by our leaders to be an example, a jewel of democracy in the Middle East, an example that other countries would want to emulate… is in disarray. Bordering on civil war, with a proposed constitution that mandates a state religion, lesser rights for women, and far too much weight given to harsh Islamic law… this is not what the American people imagined in 2002 when our leaders asked for our support for this action.
Which actually leads into my next question… what did we expect? It seems to me that many who supported the action in the first place, and are now against it, were incredibly naive in what they expected this battle to be like. Let’s review American armed conflict over the past 50 years or so…
Afghanistan - The jury is still out. You see, we abandoned this job partially completed so we could go pick a fight with Saddam. Bin Laden is still free, and the Afghan constitution, like the proposed Iraqi one, mandates Islam as the state religion, and maintains the sovereignty of Islamic law, even over the constitution itself.
the First Gulf war - Largely successful. The goal was to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. You will note that this is the ONLY conflict on this list that strictly followed the Powell doctrine of armed conflict: Attack with overwhelming force, with a clear stated goal of what you are trying to accomplish, and with the end in mind (have an exit strategy before you start).
Bosnia - Seriously here… does anyone know what we were doing in Bosnia? Which side we were on? Who were the bad guys? Of course not, we were too busy worrying about who was giving the President a blowjob. Do we know if Bosnia is stable now? Do we care?
Sporadic bombings through the Middle East and Northern Africa in the 1980’s - A prime example of â??you hit us, and we’ll hit you back, only a little harder.â? Result? After three decades, Quadaffi is still in power, and proved that you can blow up American soldiers and get away with it, as long as you do not blow up too many, too often.
Panama - We did it quickly, with few casualties, and set up a stable government. Almost perfect… except for the fact that we were merely undoing our own mistake, as we had set up Noriega in the first place.
Vietnam - 200 years from now, Vietnam will still be the textbook example of how not to conduct a war. Too little power spread over too long a time. We never really lost a single battle in Vietnam, and yet we lost the war. Handily. Result? Communist government in Vietnam; 58,000 American soldiers dead, and scars we still have not healed from.
Cuba - A wonderful example of our ability at â??nation-building.â? Everyone remembers that we helped Castro assume power in the first place, right?
Given this track record, why did anyone thing that rebuilding a nation as large and technologically advanced as Iraq was going to be easy? And obviously, everyone did. The American people thought it would be easy, because they expected the job to be accomplished in 24 months. With no casualties. Our leaders thought it would be easy, because they did nothing to convince the public that they were wrong. Then they sent too few people. And too little equipment. Unless they thought it was going to be easy, these actions are completely inexplicable.
My personal opinion is that the current administration saw September 11 as an opportunity to go and finish the job that, in their minds, went unfinished in the first Gulf War. In my mind, in the first Gulf War we simply had a clear idea of what we were there to accomplish, and once we accomplished it, we stopped. This same administration was so in love with our smart bombs, unmanned spy robots, tomahawk missiles and stealth technology that they forgot how to actually win a war. Wars are not won with guns, and they never have been. Truly effective end strategy is about winning hearts and minds of the people, and I am not sure we are doing an effective job of that in Iraq. If you try to win a war with guns, you end up with a decades long insurgency. Just ask Britain, or Russia, they know all about it. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and whoever else planned this little escapade forgot that.
Sun Tzu said, over 2,000 years ago… that the first step to defeating your enemy was to make yourself undefeatable. I think that the money and the time we have spent in Iraq would have been better spent on defensive technologies to protect ourselves from this new, multi-threat world. The Cold War model of detente won’t work anymore. You cannot dissuade an enemy from attacking you with assured destruction if that enemy is not afraid to die, or if they are crazy, or if they do not provide any centralized target or infrastructure to strike at.
The insurgency in Iraq is not afraid to die.
The leadership in North Korea is crazy.
Al’Queda provides no centralized target or infrastructure to strike at.
Welcome to war in the the twenty first century.