How to Lose a War in a Week
The cock-ups of the last week have revealed America as a clumsy, self-deluded giant led astray by faulty judgement and questionable competencies. Instead of the omnipotent, omniscient colossus striding over the recumbent but grateful Iraq to lead the world into the 21st century, the neocon Moses stepped on the global stage, tripped on its own shoelaces, and fell flat on its face.
Amazingly, after sneering at Clinton’s humanitarian interventions, Bush repackaged the Iraq invasion (after political and diplomatic and logical mis-steps too numerous to catalogue) as the liberation of the Iraqi people. Needing a feel-good TV-friendly war, he used Enron-style creative accounting to discount the dangers and exaggerate the benefits, burdening American troops with a battle plan that put them on the wrong side of the asymmetric threat equation for the first time since Somalia. Our forces, instead of implacably eradicating an outgunned Third World army with our overwhelming advantage in military technology and material, kicked off the war with Shock and Awe Lite and found themselves strung out along a highway leading to Baghdad with people throwing bombs at them instead of flowers.
In a cringe-inducing human-interest story, Iraqi refugees shared their food supplies with hungry Marines down to one MRE a day.
The onus for the military miscalculations that necessitated downshifting the mighty invasion juggernaut into “Park” for a few weeks while an extra 100,000 troops rush to Iraq will rightfully and delightfully descend on the well-padded shoulders of “Dummy” Rummy Rumsfeld. Colin Powell is probably sniggering with exaggerated sympathy as he moves over to make room for Rumsfeld in the Washington doghouse.
But the real question that needs to be pursued by our ferocious and tenacious media is not whether our foolishly optimistic and criminally deceitful administration sold the war as a cakewalk.
The question is, since we were fighting a war of choice, why did we choose to start it now, when considerations of public opinion, diplomacy, international law, and simple military prudence all screamed at us to wait and think it over?
The most vivid recollection of the run-up to the war is not the dismissive confidence of Bush’s war party, which they are now endeavoring so mightily to explain and expunge. It was Bush’s imperial impatience, his ostentatious frustration, his thin-lipped “Saddam has bamboozled the UN for 12 years and this can’t go on any longer” petulance. As we bulldozed over the U.N., our allies, and the undecided towards the invasion, the airwaves were full of Bush’s Ming the Merciless tirades trumpeting his inexorable resolve, climaxing with his short-circuiting of the UN inspection process, his ultimatum to Saddam, and the statement that the United States would go to war “at a time of our choosing”, which turned out to be right away.
Bush stamped around in fury like a demented Rumpelstilskin until the floor collapsed and plunged us all into war.
We invaded Iraq not because its terrorist activities demand extreme and urgent measures (hey, that’s Pakistan). Or because its weapons of mass destruction pose an immediate threat to our nation’s safety (sorry, North Korea). Or because declining to relieve extreme human suffering under the regime would expose our nation to the unacceptable accusation of moral indifference (Kurdish Turkey, maybe. Iraq, no.).
And it’s hard to believe that our military readiness, morale, and death-dealing capability, however prematurely and irresponsibly deployed, would have wilted irrecoverably in the heat of an Iraq spring.
We went to war ten days ago because George Bush didn’t want to wait any longer.
Not long enough to engage with U.S. and world opinion and make a plausible case for war as the last but only option. Not long enough to let the weapons inspectors do their jobs. Not long enough to grease the wheels at the UN with a little well-considered conciliation and compromise with our traditional and natural allies. Not long enough even to cut a deal with the Turks and open up a northern front that it looks like we desperately need.
We went in because we didn’t want to wait a minute longer. We were ready even if the rest of the world wasn’t.
But it turns out we weren’t ready either. What happened?
Maybe our nation’s SUVs drove America into war. Bush couldn’t bear the idea of Saddam thumbing his nose at us while American voters fumed as gas prices marched closer to three bucks a gallon. But on a more exalted plane, it was probably Karl Rove’s urgent whispering that the financial markets/the economy/the re-election were being crippled by uncertainty over the war.
Well, we did get our one-day 3% bounce before the indexes resumed their flaccid descent.
But with the overly precipitous rush to war, its very premise — that the genius of George Bush and his handlers had somehow discovered a new kind of war was more effective, humane, and beneficial than the traditional avenues of diplomacy, multilateralism, and the United Nations he so arrogantly scorned — is discredited by Bush’s botched execution. The triumphant march to Baghdad escorted by jubilant Iraqis has failed to materialize and all we hear is the sullen roar of angry Arabs and a disgusted world.
For $75 billion (just the downpayment, of course), and the thousands of lives disrupted, blasted, or cut short all we get is the same old I kill you before you kill me war humanity has been fighting for 5000 years.
Not too much of a bargain when you think that the inspection regime could have bottled up Iraq at a cost of about $80 million dollars and a few cases of sunburn.
The idea that the unaided “wisdom”, “foresight”, and “prudence” (were ironic quotation marks ever so deserved?) of George Bush is necessary or sufficient to direct our mighty armies towards goals that are just, beneficial, or even achievable has been dealt a fatal blow. Hopefully, the idea that pre-emptive/preventive war unilaterally pursued is anything other than the last and worst option will be buried with it.
The Iraq debacle reveals that wars of choice too easily become the playthings of opportunistic politicians and manipulative ideologues. Benefits are exaggerated, risks are minimized, and the facts of war and the logic of peace are twisted to suit a secret and self-serving agenda.
The decision to go to war with Iraq was not the expression of our national resolve. It was the toxic product of the ambition and self-delusion of a cynical neocon junta and the credulity of a morally and intellectually adrift president.
The American military’s humanitarian nightmare will soon be over. Our force will pick itself up and dust itself off. Our commanders will not allow their undersized and overextended strike force to be lured into a premature battle with the Republican Guard divisions enticing them on the southern approaches to Baghdad. Saddam for his part will have to swallow his disappointment that the Mesopotamian rope-a-dope gambit that destroyed the armies of Greece and Rome in the deserts of Iraq came up short. He is probably hoping for some more providential sandstorms that will allow him to redeploy the Medina Division, perhaps back into Baghdad and the relative shelter of its civilian population, before it is destroyed. We will hunker down and let the bombs fly until there is nothing between us and the capital except rubble and red puree.
Our military is going to go back to its traditional job of bombing anything that makes the enemy’s life worth living and fighting for into flinders, erring brutally on the side of caution in ruthless pacification sweeps, and trapping conventional troops in exposed positions and obliterating them before they even have the chance to frame the choice between defiance and surrender. Hearts and minds and Hershey bar photo ops can be left to Paul Wolfowitz when he comes to stage-manage the hollow made-for-TV triumph that will celebrate the conquest of Iraq.
The military victory will re-establish the prestige of American arms and the efficacy of American terror. But Bush’s war against history, reason, decency, the international system, and world opinion is already lost. All that’s left is to finish the killing, raise the U.S. flag for a brief, valedictory moment on the rubble of the neocon’s hopes and dreams for a new American empire, declare “victory” and go home.
Yes, Bush got his war…and lost it within a week. And if we are lucky, it will destroy him.
