Victory, What the Price, What the Result
For the next two months victory will be a preoccupation with the candidates and a lot of us voters; though, the word has been around, been mis-used and is still being mis-used, for a few years now.
McCain is attacking Obama in ads for being willing to “lose” in Iraq to “win” in Afghanistan.
I’ve been writing this blog for, toward the end of this month, two years. I’ve done probably too many posts on the subject of the idiocy of our involvement in Iraq. Do a word search if you don’t believe me.
I’m still looking for someone, anyone, to tell me what winning, victory in Iraq, you choose the noun, means.
I am convinced that whomever is elected President, and whenever we “leave” (and that word is open to interpretation), we will lose in Iraq by any rational definition of the word.
The Kurds hate the Sunnis who hate the Shiites who hate the Sunnis who hate the Kurds who hate the Shiites. And the Sunnis don’t like the Kurds, almost missed that one.
Whether we “leave” next year, in 2010, you pick the year, the Iraqs will almost immediately go back to fighting with each other. The only difference would be that depending on what we mean by leaving, fewer of us would die.
Whenever we leave, Iraq and Iran will go back to the adversarial relationship they had back in the Eighties.
Al Qaeda? It will do what it’s been doing. The Saudis will pay off all of the players. The billions of dollars we spent and the lives we’ve lost in the last five years will have done nothing to change that.
So how do we define what we will leave, when we leave the Mideast, as victory when it will be the exact same place it’s been for the past forty or fifty years, with billions of dollars spent and tens of thousand of lives ended, with the notable exception that Sadaam is now taking a dirt nap? It's an expensive, botched hanging, nothing more.
10 comments:
"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." - Jeannette Rankin
Unless by "victory" is meant the complete and total annexation of the other nation to the point that they are absorbed into your culture, I agree with your assessment.
In poker, the guy who takes all the chips comes in first. Who comes in second? The one who leaves the game first, expending as few chips as possible.
A part of the "surge strategy" is to say we are winning.
chamblee54
Remember, McCain said we might need to be there a hundred years.
"Amen" to everything you wrote.
I would just add that we've replaced a dictator (bad) with chaos (worse), and an enemy of our enemy (Iran) with a pseudo-government that will be neutral or perhaps even "pro" to that enemy.
To think that we borrowed $600 billion, with many more billions more to come, to achieve this negative result, boggles the mind.
But, the surge was "successful". I guess that makes it all worthwhile...or, are we really stupid enough to buy that argument?
Dave -Not being an expert on this topic, I can't say, exactly, that you are right. But, in my mind, my interpretation of what's happened, happening now, looks like it will happen in the future, I'be be willing to bet the family farm that your opinion is pretty darned accurate -as are all the comments you've received to this post to date. But then ya know, "Great minds think alike," don't we?
Within a day or two after Saddam was pulled out of his spider hole, Quadaffi stopped his nuke/chem/bio weapons programs and invited the UN to inspect.
Tens of thousands of terrorists have been killed by our guys.
Saddam is dead, a pretty strong signal to other despots.
France and Germany elected pro-American leaders to replace two stridently anti-American leaders.
Is it worth it? I don't know, but there are positives. I have friends from both Gulf wars, some in bad shape and some in Afghanistan and, probably, Pakistan right now.
The Jeanette Rankin quote is stupid. Just ask Hitler, King George, Batista, Mussolini, the Apaches, Hirohito, Grant, .... I can keep going.....
"Those who do not learn from history, are going to say some stupid shit" - DaleC
"The Jeanette Rankin quote is stupid. Just ask Hitler, King George, Batista, Mussolini, the Apaches, Hirohito, Grant, .... I can keep going....."
DaelC - Your logic, or the lack thereof, is lost on me. The quote is meant to imply that war is destructive and costly. And any measure of victory needs to take into account the costs, and whether the costs were worth it. And I would say that your examples actually back up my point.
My biggest problem with the war is that given time, I think that all that has been "accomplished" will be reversed as ethnic fighting resumes after we leave. There will be new terrorist, new megalomaniac rulers, etc., all at a cost of trillions of dollars.
Posolxstvo I - I did not mean to say that you were stupid for quoting Rankin, I meant that Rankin is stupid for saying those words. The Rankin quote does not communicate any of the meaning which you read into it. It is a comment that war can never be won.
I posted famous losers of wars and, for each of those losers, there were winners on the other side.
I guess logic is lost on you, becasue your poker analogy said that the person who wins, didn't really win and that the winner was the one who expended the least. I guess that means that UAB may have actually beaten Tennessee last Saturday.
I am curious how my examples of a clear win/loss in war makes your point that complete annexation incorporates the other country. By your logic, the Allies did not win World War II becasue we packed up and went home without adding Japan, Germany and Italy to our empires.
BTW, I also questioned the value of Iraq, but I did point out that there are some positives.
Dale,
You've got to call him Pos, a name I invented.
I thought about getting into this debate yesterday morning sitting in my wonderful apartment; but, I had a pounding hang over, something I haven't had in a long time.
I think you and Pos are not quite talking on the same point. I've got to go with Dale, given his last comment. I invite each of you to write more. And, if the rest of you are still reading, I'd like to hear what you have to say, politely, about Dale's more conservative views.
Interestingly, I don't think about myself as a liberal, I'm a realist.
Post a Comment