Angelo Codvilla’s summary of the Iraq war, pg 190 in his
book Advice to War Presidents: A Remedial Course in Statecraft:
In fact our statesmen never decided among themselves what part of the terrorist problem Iraq posed, hence how invading Iraq would solve it, hence who our enemy was, and therefore what victory would mean. Much less did they decide why they were occupying the country. They did not choose among competing analyses of the problem, and then settle on a coherent plan for victory against concrete enemies. They compromised with one another, adjusted their definition of enemies and of victory to fit what they happened to be doing at any given time, and claimed that it was all so complex.But victory in our time is as self-evident as ever. If you can’t celebrate it in peace and safety, with flag flying, bands blaring, and enemies dead or cringing, chances are it’s not the real thing. Among other things, victory means being unencumbered to deal with tomorrow’s problems. Remember that the natural objective of any fight is to win, to get it over with – not to pass the troubles on to your grandchildren……
Now think about our current adventure against the Islamic
State.
1. Do we know who the enemy is? Not really, certainly not once they melt back into populated centers, and especially since many of them are members of the indigenous population.
2. Do we have a plan to completely defeat them? Not really, since we don’t even really know how to identify them, let alone how to kill them without killing the civilians around them, thereby recruiting even more of the population to their cause.
3. Is that plan achievable realistically? Since we don’t have a plan, by definition it is not achievable
Posts
