Essay: Are We Winning or Losing in Iraq?

Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer

April 28, 2007

Are we winning in Iraq? Understandably, this is a question to which the American people, who are told we are at war, have demanded an answer. In December 2006, Commander-in-Chief Bush told The Washington Post: "We're not winning, we're not losing."

This neutral non-statement was the most honest thing Bush has said about Iraq.

As Bush sometimes cares to define it, "victory" in Iraq means "…for Iraq to be a democracy that can sustain itself and govern itself and defend itself, a country which will be an ally in the war on terror, a country which will deny safe haven to the al Qaeda, and a country which will serve as a powerful example of liberty and freedom in a part of the world that is desperate for liberty and freedom."

That's a pretty tall order. It's a good thing Bush doesn't require any other Mideast states to meet these seven – count 'em, seven – criteria, because all these states, I daresay, would fail. Thus we must understand one basic fact: What President Bush requires of Iraqis, with the help of our armed forces, is nothing less than a miracle. And unfortunately, until that miracle is achieved, according to President Bush, we can't go home. We're stuck.

In this context, the success or failure of the "surge" strategy meant to decrease the violence in Iraq is nearly irrelevant. The surge is doing nothing to achieve President Bush's Seven Criteria for victory. Many Iraqis vote, but voting a democracy does not make. Iraq still cannot sustain or govern or defend itself without U.S. support. Iraq is not an ally in the war on terror – indeed, it is "the central front in the war on terror," according to Bush. Al Qaeda continues to enjoy safe haven and stage attacks in many parts of Iraq. And Iraq is not an example of liberty and freedom to other countries in the region, but rather a cautionary tale of chaos, corruption, and sectarian strife.

Conservative pundits and war supporters continually make comparisons to World War II: What if America had just "given up" in the fight against Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany before achieving victory, they ask? What would have been the fate of the world then?

Such crudely oversimplified and disingenuous reasoning ignores one key difference between those past wars and the "war" in Iraq: Those wars were wars against other aggressor states. In Iraq in 2007, we are "at war" with… what? With whom? The more you think about it, the more the list of enemies grows and grows until… you reach the only possible conclusion: We are at war with the Iraqis themselves.

We are at war with the same people we came to liberate, the same people we're now trying to help, and the same people whom we must rely on greatly to establish democracy and freedom, and root out al Qaeda. The U.S. mission in Iraq is, therefore, a perfect paradox.

The only way to unravel this paradox is to admit we are not involved in a war. At least not anymore. The war in Iraq was won and done when Saddam's regime was toppled. Wars are fought among states, and that state ceased to be. "Mission accomplished," indeed.

Today there may be fighting, tanks, mortars, bombs, and machine gun fire in Iraq, but our current involvement there is not a war. It is an occupation.

Perhaps it is a matter of semantics, but it is nonetheless an important matter to recognize that there is no such thing as a "victorious" occupation. Occupations usually follow military victory, yes. But occupations themselves are not wars. Occupations simply are, or they aren't. It is the victor's prerogative to decide whether he will occupy a defeated nation, how long that occupation will last, and what kind of occupation it will be.

In the case of Iraq immediately post-Saddam, President Bush decided to establish a basically benign, laissez-faire occupation, because it was cheaper and easier. But that occupation was too hands-off, too ineffectual, and too tolerant of criminals and terrorists, and Iraqis who resented the foreign occupiers took advantage.

Today, Bush is spending more money, sending more troops to occupied Iraq, and getting tougher on Iraqis. Nevertheless, our military operations in Iraq today have more in common with police operations and nation building than real warfare. In a real war, U.S. forces would seek and hold territory, destroy vital infrastructure, bomb civilians and combatants alike, and destroy Iraq's government (if at all possible), with the ultimate goal of making the enemy lose the will or the wherewithal to continue fighting.

In the course of our occupation, we are doing nearly the opposite. We are giving up territory to Iraqi police and security forces whenever possible. We not only avoid destroying vital infrastructure, but we pay to build (and re-build) it while our enemies continually blow it up. We conscientiously avoid killing civilians directly, or as collateral damage, even as they provide cover and safe haven for insurgents. We prop up and encourage an Iraqi government that is at times openly hostile to the U.S. occupation, and quietly supports the insurgents. And despite all this, or perhaps because of it, Iraqi insurgents maintain the will and wherewithal to attack U.S. forces. Meanwhile, about half of Iraqis sympathize with the insurgents and believe their attacks are justified.

So the U.S is not fighting a "war" as wars are meant to be fought; and the occupation is not achieving the operational goal of a war: to destroy the enemy, or make him give up fighting.

So if we insist on asking, nonsensically, whether the U.S. is winning this non-war, the answer is, "No." But ask a stupid question and you'll get a stupid answer.

Or more precisely: Ask a psychologically loaded question, and you'll get a bogus, psychologically motivated answer. Nobody likes to use the words "lose" or "defeat." Nobody. As events have shown, we will attempt nearly any physical or psychological contortion, no matter how awkward or painful, to avoid admitting defeat.

Fortunately for us, there is no reason to ask or answer this loaded question, since it's based on a false premise. Thankfully, we are not confronted in Iraq with an either/or choice between glorious victory (some variation on the Seven Criteria) and humiliating defeat (withdrawal).

The question that Congress, the media, and we citizens ought to be asking is: "Is the occupation worth it?" Has it really been worth all of the lost blood, treasure, and prestige? (Make no mistake, we are losing prestige on the world stage: Four years of "not winning" a non-war against a non-country is embarrassing. America looks weak, confused, and ineffectual.)

It seems that the American people have asked and answered this question, reasonably. Recent poll figures suggest that 21% of Americans support an immediate withdrawal; another 37% want withdrawal within one year; and 52% think Congress should block funding for any new deployment of troops. More than half of Americans think that "victory" in Iraq isn't possible.

Maybe if politicians who have so far supported the occupation of Iraq will look at it from the same cost-benefit perspective as the American people, they won't be so obsessed with silly, macho notions of World War II style victory. After weighing what is achievable there vs. how much it will cost, I think – I hope – that reasonable politicians will elect for withdrawal.

To throw those pro-war politicians a bone, I will even admit that "victory" – let's call it success – i.e. achieving the Seven Criteria, is conceivably possible in Iraq. But the cost of achieving such success would run into the trillions of dollars over decades, and require much more brutal and morally questionable counterinsurgency tactics than we are using now. We the American people, realizing this colossal moral and material cost even as our deluded politicians only think from one "emergency" appropriations bill to the next, have rejected the Iraq occupation altogether.

But let's not put too much faith in our politicians' ability to reason. We've already done the thinking for them; now it's their turn to act on it. We mustn't give them any choice.