Monday, April 30, 2007
http://isbushantichrist.blogspot.com/Did We Lose the War? Let’s Count the Ways
Why is it when Harry Reid said, “the war in Iraq is lost” – why did it create so much hysteria? Is saying that America lost the war, a little like saying that Mt. Rushmore is a monstrosity? It may be true, but still, it’s unpatriotic to say it? Or do you either get the point of Mt. Rushmore, or you don’t?
That the war is lost seems not so much an opinion as fact. One that becomes more obvious every day, not only in terms of the various body counts, but in all the possible ways there is to lose a war.
Most people count Vietnam as another war that we lost. But even though we lost a lot of lives and money in Vietnam, we certainly didn’t lose everything there was to lose. We didn't lose the cold war, for instance. The United States was certainly divided by the war in Vietnam, but afterwards we continued on, pretty much as we had before. It wasn’t like when, for instance, the Japanese lost WWII.
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said about the war in Iraq. The kind of monumental defeat we’ve suffered there may seem, in retrospect, much larger and more comprehensive than what happened in Vietnam. Maybe that’s why many people refuse to look at it honestly – they seem to have confused the kind of defeat they fear and dread so much, with the one that’s already happened. It may be time to begin taking stock of all we have lost, rather than arguing with those who believe that staying in Iraq - that is, staying in denial - is more patriotic.
#1) The war was lost initially by making it impossible to succeed. By going into Iraq under false pretenses, Bush effectively sent our troops on a fool’s errand. He set them up to fail. There was no way American forces could ever win the war by accomplishing their mission of disarming Saddam, when in fact he never had WMD’s in the first place. And changing their mission afterwards, into something that was just as impossible – ‘democratization’ - couldn't change that central fact. It’s like sending a fireman into a buring building, to rescue a child that you know isn’t there. The best anyone could hope for is getting that fireman out alive – and the best we can ever hope for is getting what's left of our troops out alive.
#2) The war in Iraq was also lost, insofar as it was part of the larger ‘war on terror.’ If indeed our underlying goal was to defeat the terrorists in Iraq – which is how Bush usually likes to characterize it - all we have done is to make more terrorists. Instead of defeating them, were’re actually breeding and making more terrorists in Iraq, and we will keep on making more the longer we stay.
That’s why it’s not enough to say that we’ve lost an important - though completley unnecessary - battle in the war on terrorism, without underlining the fact that we keep digging the hole deeper, the longer that we stay. This is the war that keeps on losing, as it continues to motivate and train more terrorists.
#3) We’ve lost the war from a strictly militarily point of view. War at its most basic level is all about destroying the enemy’s forces and resources, faster than the enemy can use up your own. The insurgents/terrorists – whatever you want to call them - have succeeded in stretching US military forces to the breaking-point. The so-called ‘surge’ only served to highlight this fact for everyone to see. It made America’s loss - and the limits of American military power - that much more conspicuous. At the same time, the insurgency keeps adapting, and shows no signs of giving up. They keep growing in their ability to launch new attacks, while our entire volunteer army is on the brink of collapse.
#4) We’ve lost the war strategically, in terms of America’s ability to influence and effect change in the Middle East, and in the wider world. The most important thing to remember about being a superpower is that the wars you don’t win outright, you automatically lose. It's the natural consequence of creating high expectations. By getting America bogged down in a war we cannot win, and by dividing American forces instead of finnishing the job in Afghanistan, Bush has compromised America’s credibility as a military power. The perception of America as the world’s preeminent super-power was not something that could be overthrown on 9-11. It was instead the kind of power that has proven to be empty and useless on the streets of Baghdad.
#5) The illegal war in Iraq also represents a terrible loss and setback in the court of world public opinion. Much deeper, and probably more damaging and long lasting than the military loss, or the loss of prestige and credibility, are the long-term consequences of preemptively invading a nation that was no threat to us. Without the trust and cooperation of other nations – and particularly other Arab nations - it will be impossible to deter terrorist attacks on the United States in the future. The war in Iraq represents the end of America’s role as leader of the free world, and the beginning of Bush’s vision of America as a universally despised bully. A preemptive bully that most of the world now considers the greatest threat to peace and stability in the world.
#6) The war in Iraq represents a profound moral defeat for the basic values that we used to uphold. It’s wrong to say that Americans haven’t sacrificed anything for the war effort, when the values we’ve sacrificed at places like Abu Graib, are something previous generations of Americans always fought to preserve. When shameful torture is being committed in our name – we are no longer a civilized people. We may still be a very affluent and technologically advanced nation – but we are only barbarians in business suits.
#7) We’ve also lost some of our most important rights and freedoms. Bush took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic; he eneded up doing the opposite, by tearing up the Constitution, and making war on a nation that was no threat to us. Today, any American can be picked up, put in prison, held incommunicado, and tortured indefinitly; this is something that has never happened in this country before. In that sense, we’ve lost a very big part of what it meant to be a free, and under the rule of law.
#8) The loss in terms of the American military lives is about 3,350 to date. Though this is much less than the 57,000 killed in Vietnam, there is also a disproportionately high number of seriously wounded coming back from Iraq. In terms of civilian casualties, the Lancet study figured about 655,000 casualties in Iraq to date. By comparison, an estimated 365,000 civilians were killed in North and South Vietnam. What the numbers don’t show is how these civilian casualties - that are on par with many genocides throughout the world - will ultimately translate into more terrorist attacks, and many more American casualties.
#9) There has been the unprecedented squandering of taxpayer dollars in Iraq. The Defense Department in the 1970s came up with a figure of $140 billion in direct military outlays between 1965 and 1974 for the Vietnam War. To date we have spent three times that - almost $422 billion in Iraq. Figuring out what that kind of loss really means involves more than just counting up all the dropped bombs, spent shells and wasted vehicles and aircraft. As General Eisenhower once said, ““Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
The killing fields of war has two sides, and what we don’t see every night on the news are the people who’ve died or been wounded from hunger, or lack of decent housing or medical care, primarily because our nation’s resources were funneled into killing rather than healing. We don’t see all the people who were never educated, the medical and scientific research that was never funded, and all the lives that were never given a chance. These losses are just as real as any on the battlefield. Instead of worrying so much about supporting the troops by keeping them posted where they don’t want to be, we should have been paying more attention to problems and issues and people who are getting no attention at all because of the war in Iraq.
Whether or not you think it’s time for American forces to pull out, there should be no debate about all the ways we have irretrievably lost the war. General Sherman once said in the waning days of the Confederacy, “All the powers of earth cannot return to them their slaves, any more than they can get back their dead grandfathers.”
All the power America has will never produce hidden WMD’s or a democracy in Iraq, and it will never stop motivating more terrorists in the meantime. It can never turn an illegal and unnecessary war into a legal and necessary one, nor can it restore our honor or basic civil rights, let alone get back our tax dollars, or bring back those who have already died in Iraq. If we still believe that it can, than we might as well be fighting to get back our dead grandfathers too.
posted by R. Stephen Hanchett at 11:21 AM
http://isbushantichrist.blogspot.com/
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