Two Steps Forward, Six Steps Backward

James Wolcott has a good post up entitled Headless Body, Topless War. In it, he links over to a couple of folks at the Lew Rockwell web site, hopefully making at least some folks realize that it's NOT just the liberal/left in this country opposing the war. Neither Martin van Creveld and William Lind could be considered liberal by any stretch of the imagination, yet they've tirelessly critiqued the thinking that put us into Iraq. Both forecast an ignominous defeat in Mesopotamia, and they've got far more in the way of insight and analysis than the faith based neo-cons who seem to think along the lines of college football as metaphor for Operation Go Fallujah Ourselves. Goddamn.

Creveld takes on the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam--but of course, we KNOW there are NO parallels between Iraq and Vietnam...well, except for the fact that military superiority means nothing in either situation, except that our lack of reliable intelligence means we never really know what the enemy is up to, except that as a direct result of not having reliable intelligence we end up killing civilians--which, like it or not, is one of the best recruiting tools available to the insurgents, except that we really don't have a clear objective to begin with, except that, just like in Vietnam, we have complete air superiority which allows us to level pretty much everything we want--likewise providing an excellent recruiting tool for the insurgents, given that most folks don't like being killed, seeing their friends or relatives killed, and/or watching their property get destroyed, except that, just like in Vietnam, we're engaging in acts that could be considered war crimes, except that Allawi--or whoever else we call the "president" of Iraq is little more than a US puppet, except that Iraq no more wants to be "Americanized" than the average American wants to be "Iraqified"...except for that, Iraq is NOTHING like Vietnam at all. So, let's not even compare the two--although Creveld does, using the experience of Moshe Dayan, who visited the country pre-Tet Offensive, and went back to Israel with a rather pessimistic outlook for the US position...

Lind, who I've linked to before, reviews the book Tactics of The Crescent Moon, and applies the lessons to Iraq--coming up with unfortunate conclusions for the American position in Iraq. Lind often laments the lack of understanding our military has for what he describes as 4th Generation Warfare, and concludes the Iraqi resistance is fighting using these tactics. Given their familiarity with their own country, proclamations that "we've broken the back" of the resistance have to be viewed along the lines of the Vietnam-era statements about lights, tunnels, and whatnot.

Wolcott sums it up nicely enough:

Since Saddam's fall, we've been stomping around Iraq like Godzilla. Lind: "The result is likely to be more flattened cities like Falluja, more victories on the moral level for our opponents, and in the end, ignominious withdrawal and defeat."

So thick is the euphoria and triumphalism post November 2nd that I wonder if most of our media, never mind the bovine American public, have any inkling of how ghastily Iraq is going down the drain, and taking the American military with it. We've been so bombarded with "Failure is not an option" that few are willing to assert, as van Creveld and Lind do, that failure may not be an option but it damn well may be the outcome, and quicker than anyone contemplates.

Andrew Sullivan and Thomas Friedman can petition for more troops all they please. It's too late for more troops. We don't have troops to spare as it is, but even if we did, it's too late. It's too late for everything. The blundering mistakes that were made in the first days and weeks of the occupation can't be reversed now--they're incorrectible. The window of opportunity dropped like a guillotine while Donald Rumsfeld was regaling the press corps with his pithy wisdom.

The REAL question, in fact, is how the loss in Iraq will affect our future policy towards the Middle East. I think it's high time we found people in the region with whom we can work AND who have some support among the folks who live there. Given that I don't have any desire to take up residence in the desert (and I doubt many Americans do) it might be a good idea to figure out how to get along with the folks ALREADY THERE. Raining lead and depleted uranium down on them isn't a particularly good start--though it could make for a disastrous conclusion...