Dan

Calabrese

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June 16, 2008

We’ve Won in Iraq: Now Don’t You Feel Stupid For Thinking We Would Lose?

It seems so ridiculous now, doesn’t it? The idea that the United States could actually lose a war to a ragtag bunch of insurgents and terrorists?

It’s absurd.

And yet, look how many people believed it. Now, in the cold light of day, with Al Qaeda routed, with Basra liberated from Sadrist thugs, with other radicals high-tailing it to Iran, with Moqtada al-Sadr himself surrendering Sadr City, with 1,000 Sunni insurgents recently rounded up in Mosul, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki decisively overcoming ethnic strife to build a true coalition government . . . you have to just feel like a complete moron to have ever believed that America would lose.

The U.S., the Iraqis and what’s left of the British are on the verge of a definitive and total victory in Iraq. Not to put too fine a point on it, but let’s go ahead and say what is clear to anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention: We’ve won the war in Iraq.

We’ve won. We’ve routed Al Qaeda. We’ve turned back Iranian attempts to fuel an insurgency. We’ve given the constitutionally elected government time to build its own security forces and develop governing consensus – and it has done so.

Not that it’s been easy, and not that there are no challenges remaining, but the United States set out to eliminate a threat and establish a democratic beachhead in the Middle East. We are going to succeed. The only serious question remaining is how long the rest of the Middle East can resist democracy’s appeal. It is surely too much to hope that the dominoes will tumble in rapid succession as they did in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Despotism in the Arab world has not been a product of a single patron state. But if Iraqis can self-govern, as can Afghans, as can Turks – however many problems they may encounter in the course of doing so – why can’t people in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere do the same?

In retrospect, our success seems quite unremarkable. The United States military does not lose wars. U.S. politicians can turn military success into ultimate defeat, as they did in Vietnam. The U.S. can and does make strategic errors and suffer tragic setbacks – including loss of life – as a result.

But we don’t lose. Not when the military is free to do its job and the civilian commanders in Washington are committed to the effort. So it seems amazing now to ponder how many Americans were sure the war effort had failed. It’s astounding to realize that the majority leader of the United States Senate declared just over a year ago, “This war is lost,” and paid virtually no price politically for doing so.

The most impressive thing about this victory is that it came in the face of public ignorance at best, and outright hostility at worst, toward the mission. Worse still is that the public’s nonsupport came as the result of an intentional effort on the part of the Democratic Party, which embraced a strategic objective of driving support for the war into the ground.

How can you win a war in an environment like that? It starts with a president who sticks to his guns, ignores the polls and remains committed to the effort. Such a president has to understand that he will receive no credit for doing so. He will be called stubborn and inflexible, even after he changes commanders and embraces a new strategy because the old one wasn’t working. Unlike the last two multi-term presidents, he will leave office with his approval rating in the toilet. He must not care.

Such a president needs amazing political skill, too. When the Democrats take control of Congress and vow to cut off funding for the war, he has to find a way to get it out of them anyway.

You also need troops who are disciplined enough to ignore negative vibes from back home, and focus on doing their jobs. When the word comes down from the floor of the U.S. Senate that they can’t win, they have to be able to ignore it. When infantile protesters take to the streets to demand their surrender, they have to continue undaunted.

Democrats and Chuck Hagel did everything they could to turn Iraq into Vietnam. They tried to create a political environment in which the skill and execution of the troops would make no difference. But the comparison never worked. We did, after all, depose Saddam. And we did, after all, limit American combat deaths to less than 10 percent the number suffered in Vietnam. Iraq was simply not the Vietnam sequel they wanted it to be.

As long as our forces were committed, and our president was behind them, they were going to win. They would make mistakes and suffer setbacks, but there was simply no way America was going to lose. And now that this can no longer be denied, don’t you feel like a moron for ever thinking otherwise?

You should.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

This is Column # DC181.  Request permission to publish here.