Have we finally lost the war in Iraq?

[RusskiSoldat]

I mean, it was hopeless to me for quite a while, but these past few weeks the fact that the US actually has no options but to retreat in a way in which it loses as little as possible and the fact that the Iraqi government began making pleas for protection to foreign nations seemed to sink in.
What's strange, is that no one is really too surprised or saddened by this.
Is it the same everywhere or am I just picking up a local vibe?

[mrjesushat]

Considering the Iraq Research Report that just came out, the U.S. must be losing the Iraq War. Which is not technically a war, anyhow. But the obvious fact that our officials are saying things like, "We are not winning the war, but we aren't losing it," (from the Defense Secretary Confirmation Hearings, yesterday) is indicative of how bad things are really going.

And all of this ought to take a backseat to the all-important question in this early part of the 21st Century: Where on earth is Osama bin Laden, and what is he planning to do, next?

[Erik]

America lost the war 3 years ago, when Iraq became a civil war.
They have just been denying this fact for a very long time.

[Nationalist_Cause]

America lost the war 3 years ago, when Iraq became a civil war.
They have just been denying this fact for a very long time.

Agreed. Even the first Bush administration understood the mess of marching to Baghdad back in Gulf 1. Cheney, surprisingly enough, understood the risks as well as anyone. What changed his attitude toward the whole concept is beyond me.

But the "war" is lost. It was lost long ago. One might argue that it was an impossible conflict to win, short of slaughtering millions of Iraqis. The U.S. military isn't designed to win this type of conflict. The military is designed to kill and destroy things, nothing else. Occupations are not an American cup of tea.

[aduellist]

For those who seem determined to willfully misinterpret what I actually wrote vis a vis postwar Germany, I was not comparing them except in the sense that I was contrasting them. So to be absolutely clear about my point (for the third time):

Postwar Germany

- Overwhelming US and Allied force present to secure the country
- An ineffective and tiny insurgency which pretty much ceased to exist after six months and only conducted four "major" attacks
- A western European country with some tradition of democracy
- A modern infrastructure, albeit devastated by the war

It still took four years to restore the basics and 8+ years and the Marshall Plan to truly get the country back on its feet.

Present Day Iraq

- Insufficient US and Allied forces present to secure the country
- Neighboring countries working actively to destabilize the current Iraqi government
- An effective and very active insurgency with plentiful supplies and funding
- A Middle Eastern country with no tradition of democracy (indeed a country that would probably not exist as such save for some lines drawn on a map after WW I)
- Scarce-to-nonexistent infrastructure except around major metropolitan areas (and even there not what we'd consider "modern" in many cases)

After three and a half years, pretty much all but Baghdad and Anbar Province are secure. The availability of electricity and drinking water exceed prewar levels. There has been much progress made despite our many blunders.

We did not retain the lesson of postwar Germany that high force levels are needed, especially in the Iraq case to seal the borders until things can be sorted out. De-Baathification didn't work out any better than De-Nazification, in that many capable administrators were tossed out simply because of ties to the Baath party (regardless of the fact that such ties were needed simply to survive, as was also the case in postwar Germany). That's another lesson not learned/retained. "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it". We certainly didn't take into account the fact that large segmments of the Iraqi military and security apparatus would not "die in place", but would go underground and run a conventional war. Then again, no plan survives first contact with the enemy.

What is needed to win is a new Marshall Plan for Iraq and Afghanistan. That would include sufficient troop levels for security and massive infusions of capital to speed up and insure the success of building/rebuilding. Of course, that would require a national commitment to getting the job done. The fact that I see no such commitment on the part of the American people is what leads me to believe we've lost. We as a people no longer have the stomach for a fight and the world knows it. That's not a reflection on our military. They're doing the best they can (and better than many would have expected). They're simply having the rug pulled out from under them by the home front.

I also not with some amusement how you keep changing the definition of WMD to suit your own purposes. Last time I checked, an artillery shell filled with mustard gas or sarin was a WMD. We also have documentation going back decades stating that they had them (have you actually read any of the UN reports?). Do you really expect anyone to believe they all just magically disappeared? As to being "useless", well that's not even slightly true. They may be old and degraded, but they'd still kill lots of folks. Why do you think western countries are still dealing with the issues of how to properly dispose of WW I vintage chemical munitions if mere age makes them "useless"? It appears your definitions change to suit your needs in direct contradiction of established facts. "Oh, those WMD don't count!" Of course, you still haven't addressed the stuff that went to Syria (again widely reported in major newspapers).

In conclusion, I'd simply like to say to the folks who have pinged me about sources that I've two points.

1. I don't think it's necessary to provide sources for things that have been widely reported in multiple contemporary media. If I were citing some obscure passage from Saviolo's "Of Honour and Honourable Quarrels" or Sir George Silver's "Paradoxes of Defense", I'd provide links because they just that, obscure. However, providing links to several contemporary news stories seems rather obsurd. If you haven't done even basic fact checking before expressing an opinion, that indicates either intellectual laziness or willful ignorance. For example, if you'd actually read the 9/11 Commision Report you wouldn't be asking me about "sources" documenting the links between Saddam and Al Qaeda. It's all in there. Likewise the Russian general and the terrorist training camps (again widely reported in several major newspapers).

2. I note that you have yet to post a single factual source either refuting any of my contentions or supporting your own.

[King Sakkeus]

I also not with some amusement how you keep changing the definition of WMD to suit your own purposes. Last time I checked, an artillery shell filled with mustard gas or sarin was a WMD. We also have documentation going back decades stating that they had them (have you actually read any of the UN reports?).

Nah a shell that could, if working as planned kill maybe 19 people but in reality couldnt kill me even if I showered in it is not a WMD. When nobody knows that these shells even exist, not even the owners its even less of a threat than before.
A working missile with a sarin warhead and few hundred km's of range would be a WMD.

Do you really expect anyone to believe they all just magically disappeared?

Nobody believes that they magically disappeared. Saddam destroyed them when the UN told him to destroy them. What Saddam didnt destroy, UN inspectors destroyed. All the "WMD"'s that were found were old and mixed with conventional shells. Nobody knew they even existed for christ sakes!

As to being "useless", well that's not even slightly true. They may be old and degraded, but they'd still kill lots of folks. Why do you think western countries are still dealing with the issues of how to properly dispose of WW I vintage chemical munitions if mere age makes them "useless"? It appears your definitions change to suit your needs in direct
contradiction of established facts.

Sorry but you are wrong here. The WMD's were old enough that they dont work because one of the old shells was used in a IED and it exploded near american troops and it caused absolutely no injury to the troops.
Before the war they were supposed to have TONS of that stuff ready to launch and kill the whole world.
Now all that was found was few kg's of degraded and useless powder that is so inefficient that I could bake cookies from them and the best part is that Saddam didnt even know he had them! That is no WMD.

Of course, you still haven't addressed the stuff that went to Syria (again widely reported in major newspapers).

Werent the only "reports" about Syria and the iraqi WMD's in tabloids that didnt find any "UFO took my husband" stories so they were forced to make some ridicilous Syria WMD connection?

During the Iran-Iraq war, Syria sided with Iran. Since then they have been enemies. Why would Saddam send his WMD's to hes second worst enemy and not use them to defend Iraq?
George W Bush said that he knew exactly where the iraqi WMD's were. If he knew then why these places were not watched? Surely it would be easy to see the TONS of WMD's being moved?
Syria also has their own chemical and biological weapons programs that are more advanced than what Saddam had in 2003. The weapons would be absolutely useless to them except if they want the US to attack them.

Was Saddam realy able to move them to Syria with NOBODY noticing? Nobody has came forward and spilled the beans. The operation would require hundreds of people taking part and I am supposed to believe that none of them ratted? No paper trail, no eye witnesses, no facilities that created the WMD's, no storage facilities, no nothing.
The US intelligence cant find any evidence of it but you trust tabloids?

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

For those who seem determined to willfully misinterpret what I actually wrote vis a vis postwar Germany, I was not comparing them except in the sense that I was contrasting them. So to be absolutely clear about my point (for the third time):

Postwar Germany

- Overwhelming US and Allied force present to secure the country
- An ineffective and tiny insurgency which pretty much ceased to exist after six months and only conducted four "major" attacks
- A western European country with some tradition of democracy
- A modern infrastructure, albeit devastated by the war

It still took four years to restore the basics and 8+ years and the Marshall Plan to truly get the country back on its feet.

Which, as others have pointed out already, was because Germany had been bombed back to the Bronze Age. That was the main obstacle to getting that country back on its feet. The problem with your analogy is that, apart from an American invasion and occupation, there is nothing about Germany post 1945 and Iraq that is even vaguely analogous. Which is kind of tricky if you're trying to make an analogy.

I also not with some amusement how you keep changing the definition of WMD to suit your own purposes. Last time I checked, an artillery shell filled with mustard gas or sarin was a WMD.

Last time I checked, the pre-war claims about Saddam were that he had an active and ongoing WMDs program, not that he still had a few old pre-1991 items in his stockpile. So the only person changing definitions is you.

We also have documentation going back decades stating that they had them (have you actually read any of the UN reports?). Do you really expect anyone to believe they all just magically disappeared?

Er, no. The claims Bush et al made in 2003 weren't about some remnants of his old (well documented) pre-1991 stockpiles. They were about some sort of vast, ongoing WMDs program that was going to kill us all when he gave a spare nuke to Osama. Or something. Except that turned out to be a huge steaming stinking crock.

So trying to say "Well, he used to have a WMDs program!" doesn't get your bumbling hero off the hook.

In conclusion, I'd simply like to say to the folks who have pinged me about sources that I've two points.

1. I don't think it's necessary to provide sources for things that have been widely reported in multiple contemporary media. If I were citing some obscure passage from Saviolo's "Of Honour and Honourable Quarrels" or Sir George Silver's "Paradoxes of Defense", I'd provide links because they just that, obscure. However, providing links to several contemporary news stories seems rather obsurd.

If what you were claiming was common knowledge then asking for your sources certainly would be "obsurd". Unfortunately, you've parroted some Republican folklore (eg that nonsense about the foiled Jordanian WMD/chemical attack, which was simply a right wing blogosphere wet dream) and made some wild claims (eg the one about how Saddam managed to erase all traces of his WMDs program with the help of magical elves or something) without producing any evidence. So, sorry, but it's not so "obsurd" to expect you to back up your fantasies about Al Qaeda training camps in Saddam's Iraq or magically vanishing WMDs facilities. The evidence for these things are much more obscure than Silver's book and it would be "obsurd" for anyone to accept your strident assertions about them without asking you for evidence. Or, rather, pointing out that these claims are "obsurd" Republican fantasies.

2. I note that you have yet to post a single factual source either refuting any of my contentions or supporting your own.

Let me know which contentions you need factual sources for and I'll post you links and quotes until you beg for mercy.

[RusskiSoldat]

Acceptance of fact is just as important as the fact itself.

[JP226]

How have we lost exactly???? They physically can not remove us and as long as we are there they can't win because we are physically too powerful. Less americans have died in what 4 or 5 years most days of WW2. Hell we can turn that whole region to glass with a push of a button, yet you guys think we lost?

[Erik]

Acceptance of fact is also the first step towards learning from it.

[Ronin]

You can't win a war against terror because a war against terror will never end.

[JP226]

the war on terror is essentially a guerilla war with a few minor diversions in the west.

Guerilla wars can and have been beaten time and time again. If they won, do you think militaries like that of the west would invest so much in conventional warfare?

it's not a war on drugs like you are trying to imply because you aren't dealing with the stiffeling(sp) of a product in high demand. You dealing with fools that can't figure out how to set off a bomb with themselves outside of the blast radius.

[Sher Khan]

How have we lost exactly???? They physically can not remove us and as long as we are there they can't win because we are physically too powerful. Less americans have died in what 4 or 5 years most days of WW2. Hell we can turn that whole region to glass with a push of a button, yet you guys think we lost?

I don't know. Considering a plan to physically withdraw our troops in the very near future, I say they're doing a pretty good job at that. Just because our losses are minimal compared to a situation 60+ years ago or because we have such great power-projection available to us doesn't mean we can never 'lose.' We certainly had nukes during Vietname, but as I recall, it wasn't the communists boarding helo rides to get out in the end. Total war is not an option for our military, so we play by different rules. If we lose by those same rules, than it's still a loss.

If we were Stalinist or Maoist, we would have parted Southeast Asia with a few atomic bombs instead of forlorn looks. That would have been 'victory' I guess. But we're not like that. We're the United States of America. We play by our own rules, and those happen to be a little different than engaging in absolute annhilation of a country.

the war on terror is essentially a guerilla war with a few minor diversions in the west.

We're talking specifically about Iraq, which didn't have much to do with a war on terror in the first place, and now currently has less to do with a further war on terror than the explosion of sectarian violence boiling to a critical level.

Guerilla wars can and have been beaten time and time again. If they won, do you think militaries like that of the west would invest so much in conventional warfare?

If we can learn anything from similar situations, like say, Lebanon in the 70s and 80s from their civil wars and occupations by Israel (and U.S to some extant), is that a full fledged Middle Eastern tribal battle cannot be 'won' in any conventional sense by a foreign entity, only by the majority of the people themselves. Guerillas can have been beaten all the time, but the Middle East breeds a totally new kind of fighter the West still seems to have trouble handling. The Israelis learned this lesson the hard way - twice I might add - during their incursions into South Lebanon. The lines of tribal divisions that fuel the troubles in Iraq right now can launch an entire discussion by themselves (we should promptly discuss this matter if we want to get anywhere in the area from here on out).

As far as the money we spend on our advanced armies, it's little secret that the amount of money spent doesn't equate to total superiority. There are plenty of instances - within our own wargames in fact - that show the vulnerabilities of our forces against 'weak and insignificant low-tech arms.' Again, Israeli Merkava tanks rolling into Lebanon and our ground forces in Iraq can attest to that. But this is a discussion fit for another topic altogether along with the tribal mentality.

it's not a war on drugs like you are trying to imply because you aren't dealing with the stiffeling(sp) of a product in high demand. You dealing with fools that can't figure out how to set off a bomb with themselves outside of the blast radius.

We've lost too many brave men to insurgents and militiamen who were more than capable of setting up roadside - nonsuicidal - bombs for you to simply count off our adversaries like that.

Is it??? They are servants, if you didn't know that. And the opinion of a servant is negligible in my mind.

We don't elect servants, we elect people to lead us and guide us. They, in turn, gather opinions, contacts, and backing we as average citizens could not on our own. The idea of the representative is for someone to voice their people's concerns, not necessarily abiding by every one of them. Write a direct order to your servant and see how he responds. If he refuses or stays quiet, you should whip him like a proper master. Tell us how that goes.

Either way, the president runs the military and as long as he says stay, thank god, we stay. Congress doesn't have the balls to cut funding and as long as we don't cut funding we win.

Even before Bush powered up the office of the President of the U.S. it is Congress that has the ultimate powers in our nation. Granted, the U.S. President is far more powerful than any founding father ever envisioned or desired, but Congress still has power not to be trifled with.

Including the ability to force the President's hand in withdrawal in Iraq.

what makes you say that? If anything the biggest thing i've believed in is changing direction by boosting troop force and playing hardball. I think our current strategy is not the best, but I understand no matter what we will win, it's just a matter of how long.

We thought the same in Lebanon. Classic American gung-ho attitudes can only go so far in actual use, however. This is the very reason Rumsfield has been replaced.

[Armfelt]

the war on terror is essentially a guerilla war with a few minor diversions in the west.

Guerilla wars can and have been beaten time and time again. If they won, do you think militaries like that of the west would invest so much in conventional warfare?

it's not a war on drugs like you are trying to imply because you aren't dealing with the stiffeling(sp) of a product in high demand. You dealing with fools that can't figure out how to set off a bomb with themselves outside of the blast radius.

Heh, you think that terrorism will stop if Al-Qaida, or even to Muslim religion one day would disappear? There have always been terrorism and there will always be terrorism.

[RusskiSoldat]

How have we lost exactly???? They physically can not remove us and as long as we are there they can't win because we are physically too powerful. Less americans have died in what 4 or 5 years most days of WW2. Hell we can turn that whole region to glass with a push of a button, yet you guys think we lost?

And yet it's almost universally agreed that the current occupation of Iraq is simply not worth it.
It being the comparatively little damage (comparative to disasters like the civil war) that the US has incurred in this war.

[Last Roman]

We lost as soon as the first American army/marine boot stepped on a grain of sand.

[JP226]

And yet it's almost universally agreed that the current occupation of Iraq is simply not worth it.

agreed by who??? A bunch of suits that aren't gaining anything???

[RusskiSoldat]

Considering that a bunch of suits are, in fact, the people who run this country, I'd say their opinion on this matter is somewhat important.

[JP226]

Is it??? They are servants, if you didn't know that. And the opinion of a servant is negligible in my mind.

Either way, the president runs the military and as long as he says tay, thank god, we stay. Congress doesn't have the balls to cut funding and as long as we don't cut funding we win.

[Caelius]

The US hasn't lost the conflict in Iraq but it is quite clear to anyone who doesn't have their head in the ground (i'm looking at you JP) that the US has lost strategic and operational initiative.

A matter which the Iraq Study Group has recommended new alternatives to so that it can be regained. Outside of that, at this point, Iraq is no longer a war that can be solved by military means as much as it can be in the political arena.

There will inevitably be a reduction of combat units in the future in the drive to place the Iraqis in a position to solve things on their own, but at the same time there definitely won't be a total disengagement from the country akin to Vietnam. As seen with the current construction of the new US Embassy and the new permanent installations north of Baghdad like Balad Airbase.

All in all, no one here is qualified to say what the results of the war will be, and to be honest I tend to agree with the new Defense Secretary in believing that the current US strategy in Iraq just plain isn't working and must be revised.