Comments on: What if we win in Iraq?

By: lirelou

lirelou — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:32:04 +0000

Sonagi, you’d have to direct your question to Dr. Kaplan. I once spent a fourth of July picnic in his company, but the conversation never came up. We all know what the neo-cons expected to happen after we toppled Saddam’s regime. Peace, brotherhood, a new Iraq, the Middle East falling into line. (Obviously, no Middle Eastern experts ever briefed the neo-cons. Or if they did, they were subjected to that smirking “we know better than you, but we have to listen to your drivel anyway” common to so many Washington “heavy hitters”.) I agree with his premise that winning will resonate. How favorably it resonates will depend upon what has been won. And that will depend upon the Iraqis, who are the only ones in Iraq who can truly win or lose the country.

ps. So much for being an “Empire”. Real empires dictate. Pseudo-empires plead, bribe, cajole, and are otherwise subject to the whimsies of their alleged “clients”. As a rank amateur, I would have been happy seeing Iraq split up into three countries, with the Kurds getting a (U.S. guaranteed – for the short term) Kurdistan, while we bowed out to left the various sides settle things among themselves.

By: Arcane

Arcane — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:03:27 +0000

Peace = greater profits. Ditch the Marxism, DrDank.

By: DrDank

DrDank — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:54:11 +0000

Just like Vietnam, the Iraq war was never ment to be “won”: only sustained. war = profit

By: Sonagi

Sonagi — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:41 +0000

Good to see you step up to the plate in this discussion, Lirelou.

So Kaplan was for the war before he was against it. What outcomes was he expecting to happen after we toppled Saddam’s regime?

By: Arcane

Arcane — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:10:03 +0000

I always chalked this up to the brilliance of FDR in grabbing a world empire while someone else paid for it (blood-wise and infrastructure-wise, that is), but hey, there are a lot of ways to write history.

Yeah, those Soviets weren’t imperialist at all. sarcasm

By: lirelou

lirelou — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:52:56 +0000

Ah, Jesus, some minor facts. 09/39 did not launch Russia into a war with Germany, so they should hardly receive any WWII Allied credit for invading a slice of Poland and launching a war against the Finns. 22 June 1941 was the “day of infamy” for the Russians. Likewise, “old ivory handles” (brilliant) participation in Sicily hardly constitutes the entire Italian campaign, whose principal architect was GEN Mark Clarke (and whose best troops included French North Africans and Poles.) As for the “little race” across North Africa, the U.S. entered that area long after it had already become a major contest between Britain and Germany. If it was on the periphery in 1945, it certainly wasn’t in 1942, when Fascist governments controlled both sides of the Mediterranean and the Germans were already at the Black Sea. Certainly the Russians deserve credit for their war against Germany, their former partner in crime, but neither should U.S. assistance to the former soviet union be overlooked. It provided a lot of the materials and expertise which put the Red Army on the road to Berlin. It also kept other Allied armies, ranging from the French and British to the Chinese, in the field. To judge WWII U.S. participation in WWII by war deaths alone ignores America’s more important role as the logistics underwriter of the Allied war effort.

Ah, Lexington Green, pithy indeed. A deep bow of respect, Sir!

By: Curzon

Curzon — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:20:12 +0000

Fair enough John—Kaplan’s current writing, or as I would identify as his “third phase,” is indeed pro-military without apologies. But surely this article does not qualify in that category. It basically says the best win we can hope for is for things to get better than they are now by dropping off the headlines.
And I still think a history of the Philippines warrants more reading by all…

By: John Robb

John Robb — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:05:50 +0000

Curzon. ;-> Kaplan used to be so refreshingly gloomy (as in the title of this site).

By: Curzon

Curzon — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:07:35 +0000

“Russia dead soldiers were 12,000,000 and the US war dead was 370,000.”

And most US war dead were from the Pacific theater, not the western front.

By: Jesus Reyes

Jesus Reyes — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:48:08 +0000

I’ll betcha MJF is an idiot, nevertheless there are some interesting facts.

Russia dead soldiers were 12,000,000 and the US war dead was 370,000.

Russia started fighting 09/39 and the US started fighting D Day 06/44 which looked as much like a race with the Russians for Berlin as anything else. Now I realize there was that little race across North Africa to secure the oil and then a couple of years trying to hold back “Old Ivory Handles” (or was it pearl) from coming up the Italian peninsula.

By: Lexington Green

Lexington Green — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:35:06 +0000

Elamband is right, but more right than he thinks.

The USA and Britain, the other maritime superpower, fought lots and lots of small wars all over the place for centuries. They are usually back-page news. They involve small, long-service professional forces. They often have messy and muddled beginnings, middles and ends.

Iraq is a misbegotten thing. It was pitched with the rhetoric of a major war, but it is really more in the league of the Spanish American War, or the Boer War—a mismatched conventional conflict (though the Boers had some early wins) followed by a long, nasty and unpopular guerilla phase. The President, by selling the public one thing then delivering another set himself up to “lose” no matter what ultimately happens.

But Kaplan is right. A better-than-terrible outcome in Iraq would be a much, much better than a terrible outcome, for the USA and a lot of people.

By: ElamBend

ElamBend — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:10:03 +0000

Outright victory is only called for in existential wars, small wars e.g. every war since 1945 need only acceptable peace. I would even argue the Vietnam was an acceptable defeat, though are more measurable victory would have been preferable.

By: Curzon

Curzon — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:21:48 +0000

John, you’re kidding, right? This piece is a very measured article, looking at a “better” but not perfect outcome, and is incredibly honest: Thus, it is hard to imagine any future circumstance that will make the cost of invading Iraq seem worthwhile—and I say this as a supporter of the war years back. Moreover, I am leery of assuming that we may win this war merely because of the demonstrable improvement in conditions on the ground throughout the course of 2007. That is because we will not know how sustainable that improvement really is until we start withdrawing troops in significant numbers. Still, improvements on the ground certainly raise the possibilities of a better rather than a worse outcome.

I haven’t heard that type of smart thinking from anyone else as of late.

Also, Kaplan has been saying this for at least five years: Remember the Philippines. What is now casually called the Philippine-American War lasted from 1899–1913, with 5,000 US soldiers dead.

MJF: you’re an idiot.

By: mjf

mjf — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 02:25:03 +0000

The U.S. has not won a single war since 1945, and even that was mainly thanks to the Soviet Union’s efforts against Germany. The U.S.-led coalition in Korea ended that war with a stalemate that still is in place today. What if we win: what a delusion.

By: jtb

jtb — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:00:15 +0000

We’re still cursed by certain members of the South Korean populace. Perhaps Kaplan thinks we “lost” the Korean War, too?

By: Younghusband

Younghusband — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:56:07 +0000

Winning sure would “resonate” simply because of the dire hopelessness of the situation, at least in the public consciousness. Kaplan’s metric for victory is interesting:

... if it drops to page three or four, say, by the end of 2008, that would qualify as a better outcome, if not a “win.”

Hmmm… not for the history books I would say.

By: John Robb

John Robb — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:50:34 +0000

What’s wrong with Kaplan? Everything he seems to cover recently is a variation on “oooh shiny!”