Common as it is to conflate winning and succeeding, they are not the same at all. In fact at times they may even be quite different. The current situation in Iraq is a case in point. Winning and succeeding are often used interchangeably, and in different contexts – depending on which particular spin various political leaders and media pundits wish to apply to their messages.
If the Bush administration’s goal was to “win the war against global terrorism”, then the initial military engagement in Afghanistan, and the focused pursuit of Al-Qaida and Taliban forces, were defensible responses to the attack on 9-11. (We shall not address the moral considerations here about war; let’s just stay focused on the “facts on the ground” as diplomats say.) In the course of time the Taliban seems to have been an important political and military infrastructure from which Al-Qaida could organize and train forces hostile to the United States. As an arguably legitimate response to an unprovoked attack on US soil, Special Forces and Northern Alliance fighters could have eliminated both the Taliban and Al-Qaida as credible political or insurgent organizations in the Middle East. In point of fact they were doing just that.
From the outset of the Afghanistan War there were numerous reports about the effectiveness of Northern Alliance intelligence sources feeding vital information to US Special Forces on the ground, who would then forward attack coordinates to the Air Force. B-52s, flying thousands of feet overhead, would then conduct surgical air strikes that took out those positions while leaving the rest of the countryside in relative tranquility. In a nutshell from a military perspective it was working. The United States was in fact wining the so-called “War on Terrorism”. (So-called because it is difficult to comprehend a war against a tactic. Wars are usually waged against sovereign states, or poor people, or mood altering drugs.)
While the Special Forces and Navy SEALs were so engaged in what might be termed warfare in Afghanistan (and no doubt Pakistan as well), the Bush administration decided to implement the plan to invade Iraq – a plan we subsequently learned had been developed well before 9-11. The administration officials were careful to couch their arguments in the run-up to this invasion in language of war – in the language of winning, and defeating the enemy. In the language of “shock and awe”.
They chose to begin a “war” that they could not win. They also chose a “mission” that they could “accomplish”. And in that second venture they are succeeding. They are not winning either war – be it in Afghanistan or Iraq - because that was not their ultimate goal. And yet, they have achieved their goal, which is a permanent military presence in the Middle East.
Removing Saddam from power was not a daunting task. His rank and file military – pumped up as the third largest army in the world before the invasion - were as loyal to him as the Iraqi National Soccer Team was loyal to his son*. As everyone is painfully aware by now, Saddam ruled with a brutal hand, and once confronted by superior military forces, his army folded as the metaphorical cheap suit. If winning were the Bush administration’s goal, then they would have directed the military to send in overwhelming forces to immediately quell any unrest, and make it abundantly clear that resistance would indeed be futile. They chose not to do that. Instead, they sent in enough forces to establish a presence, and most importantly, to protect the Oil Ministry offices in Baghdad, and to the extent possible the oil fields as well. Everything else? Well that became, in the words of the Secretary of Defense, messy.
Additionally, in what has turned out to be a stroke of genius, they decided to disband the Iraqi military and choosing to rebuild one more to their liking from the ground up. The genius here is that the administration could then control the level of their training, how well they will be equipped, and most importantly, how autonomous they will be in the future. In this area the administration has also succeeded. The Iraqi military is permanently crippled with enough internal strife that the administration can now make the case that the US cannot equip such an army with the most sophisticated equipment because their loyalty to their own government cannot be guaranteed. Like having a persistent low-grade virus, the body politic in Iraq will produce just enough white blood cells to keep the infection in check, but not enough to really wipe it out. The result? American forces must remain in the country to protect Iraq from itself for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile the administration is constructing a number (the reports vary) of military bases in Iraq that for all intents and purposes look to be permanent. These bases are another indication of the success of the mission – to create a permanent military presence in Iraq – or at least as permanent a presence as the United States did in the last two countries it occupied, namely Germany and Japan at the end of World War II and the beginning of The Cold War. [Tom Ridge, former Secretary of Homeland Security seems to agree on this point here.]The result? In time these bases will ensure that Iraq’s oil flows “freely”, and that the oil companies charged with extracting that oil can do so unfettered.
Not winning is not the same as not succeeding. In this case the administration seems focused on making sure that they do not win in order to succeed. In fact from their perspective it may be said that winning is losing, and losing is succeeding. Mission Accomplished.
If only Orwell were here.
* One of Saddam’s sons (I can never remember which is which) was in charge of the soccer team. He would torture some of the players whenever he was displeased with their performance. I guess he thought himself a motivator.
UPDATE: Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer has an interesting piece in last Sunday's edition that clearly outlines the risky spot the US is in now because of the poor judgment and incompetence of the administration. She also shows what a difficult spot their political opponents are in when it comes to troop withdrawal.
UPDATE #2: NOAH FELDMAN, a former constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq was on Radio Times, this morning. Feldman teaches law at NYU. He also is an adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2004 he wrote the book, What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building. During the show he likened the US occupation of Iraq to the one in Korea. In his estimation the earliest all US troops would leave Iraq is “ten to twenty years”. And most likely we would stay in the Kurdish provinces, where the oil fields are situated.
To the defeated go the spoils… err the oils.