I wonder where that "Mission Accomplished" sign, unfurled on May 2, 2003, is languishing. I wonder if it is stored somewhere, in a warehouse, waiting for the day it can see the light of day again. It could be there forever.
A lot of Americans anger towards the war is due in large part to the false pretenses that were used to justify it. But nothing turns people against a war more so than losing it. If the invasion had been successful, many would probably willingly and easily forget about the false justifications used for the invasion.
Monday was the four year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. After four years of fighting, President Bush and co. still claim that victory can be achieved in there. This is possible, but by all indications, it seems very unlikely. Part of the reason is that the military system is simply not capable of fighting the type of wars it is engaged in. No matter what types of technology it implements, or what type of tactics, the structure of the U.S. military prevents it from effectively meeting the challenges of this new type of asymmetric warfare. It is precisely because it is so structured which prevents it from having the flexibility to fight an opponent using guerrilla tactics. Despite superior technology, the military has not been able to defeat smaller, poorly equipped adversaries, as was evidenced in Vietnam and Iraq. In order to effectively fight against a guerrilla force, one has to become a guerrilla force. The type of extreme overhaul and change required to make the military such a force seems unlikely to be adopted. It might not even be feasible to make such a dramatic change to a system that is so rigid and entrenched; such a large bureaucracy with a long history. Its greatest weakness is the very nature of what it is.
The newest general in charge in Iraq, General
Petraeus has touted recent successes in reducing the violence in Baghdad. But the insurgents have simply shifted their focus to the outlying provinces. A loosely structured guerrilla force is by nature flexible and amorphous, exactly the things that a traditional military, such as that of the U.S., is not. The resulting choices left to the Iraqi government and U.S. military might be simply to maintain security over Baghdad, and ceded control of the outer provinces to the insurgents, or to shift the limited forces to go after them wherever they are. But then that would leave Baghdad vulnerable, and the insurgents would simply move back in.
A larger force in Iraq might possibly have a better chance of pushing back the insurgency, since presumably it would allow sufficient forces to hold and maintain security in Baghdad while other troops went after the insurgents in the provinces. But when General Eric
Shinseki was asked in February of 2003 about his estimation of the size of force needed to maintain security in Iraq after a successful invasion, he answered:
I would say that what's been mobilized to this point -- something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground- force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure that people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this.
His response was excoriated by
Rumsfeld and his deputy,
Wolfowitz. It's telling that they are no longer with the administration; that Bush let them go, given how religiously he holds the idea of loyalty, the fact they they are no longer there is an admission of how their ideas and leadership has been discredited. This is particularly amazing given how this administration has dogmatically refused to admit mistakes, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. While for others, there is vindication.
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Ancient Rome is a subject I find fascinating, and reading about it is one of my hobbies. (On the literary side, I recommend Robert Graves'
I, Claudius, and
Claudius The God.) The reasons for Rome's decline is also of particular interest. Recently I read an interesting hypothesis to explain the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The writer posits that part of the reason for the empire's collapse was that it required "over 3 million soldiers to meet its basic security needs[citation needed]. However, by AD300, they only had an estimated 500,000 troops, which meant that they could not control the territory the empire possessed." (from
Wikipedia)
This was a poorly planned war. From an outside perspective, it seems almost amateurish in its execution. After six-and-a-half years, the Taliban is still active and undefeated in Afghanistan. As NATO and the U.N. is still struggling to get enough troops to continue the fight there, the Bush administration launched a war based on false pretenses. This has left the military overstretched. Even more, its lack of success in Iraq and the fact that it is bogged downed there, has put the military in a situation where it is unable to intervene in a potential situation which would actually be a direct threat to the United State's national security.
The military has been weakened, and one wonders how it would respond to a situation such as a conflict with China over Taiwan. No one believes that such a clash would really be about Taiwan, but instead that it would simply be an excuse used by a superpower and a rising superpower to clash over their attempts to assert global power and dominance. But the failure in Iraq has had the effect of making people more willing to question the use of military power in order to resolve conflicts. This is in part due to people questioning the previous assumption that American military power had absolute dominance and effectiveness. But others have already realized that this is not the case, and it no longer works well as a deterrent. This can be seen in the confrontation with Iran, and their unwillingness to bend to American pressure to stop their uranium enrichment program. They see how the U.S. military is tied up in Iraq, unable to quell an insurgency, and realize the relative emptiness of any threat to use military force to resolve the issue. The Bush administration's recent attempts to play down a military option in Iran is quite conspicuous and telling. A surreptitious reason for going to war was to create a "new Middle East," one where democracy would spread and take hold. Instead, the position of the members of Bush's "Axis of Evil," Iran and North Korea, along with other foes like Hezbollah, have been strengthened by the U.S.'s failure in Iraq.
One positive outcome of this war might be that Americans would be far less willing to support using the military as a means of resolving international issues, and instead rely on diplomatic means. Along with this, they might also be a lot more critical of administrations calling for war, and be more inclined to take a much more critical look at evidence and justifications used to start a war.
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It is interesting to note that the United States has not won a major conflict in the East since the end of WWII. This was the case in Korea, Vietnam and now Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, where the international community was fully supportive of military action, the war goes on, and in the meantime, Bush had shifted his sights to Iraq. Now he is stuck there, and sees no way out.
