HOW TO LOSE A WAR
The United States doesn’t know how to lose a war. West Point’s
curriculum doesn’t include a course that teaches our generals, or presidents how to say we failed in our mission. Even if there were a protocol for handing our saber to the enemy in a big ceremony it wouldn’t work in the situation we have in Iraq for there is no person in authority to accept our admission of failure. Perhaps we could establish a new protocol similar to one I remember from an old western movie in which the two sides fought a particularly fierce battle until sundown when both withdrew for a night’s rest. When they went back to the battlefield the next morning they noticed that the enemy had just folded their tents and departed.
However it may be staged, the American people need, and are entitled to, a proper closure to this war. We need to hear someone state clearly that we were led into the invasion of Iraq because someone misinterpreted the intelligence reports, failed to question the accuracy of evidence and let personal feelings over-rule reason and sound judgment. Over and over our leaders have told us the invasion was justified, yet is seems clear that they failed to design the strategies needed to follow-up the military victory with arrangements for establishing a peaceful civil regime that would provide police, and public utility services. Finally, they failed to provide safe workplaces and suitable incentives to lead the people into significant employment.
Our history includes a great variety of wars in which our people devised techniques to fit the situations they faced whether the battlefield was on the water, in the forest or in cornfields; whether the battles involved individuals or organized groups. Also, we learned a lot from the battles in the jungles of Korea and Viet Nam. But all of these experiences failed to adequately prepare us for Iraq. The enemy there doesn’t appear to be organized, wears no uniform and follows no regular system of attack. The main motivation and unifying force seems to be their hatred of the occupying forces.
It appears that in Iraq we have a bunch of unorganized clever, religiously inspired, nationalistically dedicated civilians who are able to outmaneuver us in a style of warfare that we simply can’t understand. Our service personnel are doing their job well insofar as they are able to understand what their job is. The frontline leaders don’t seem to know how to defeat these people. They can’t tell the men to go out and kill every person they see. It would be stupid to tell them to kill every man with a beard or that looks like Hussein.. Yet the men can’t simply wait to act until some fellow sets off the package of dynamite he is hiding under his jacket or drives his bomb laden car into the traffic control barrier.
We civilians at home are also unable to suggest a solution. We hear the reports of kidnapping, suicide bombing, and beheading of captives and are shocked. We grieve with the relatives and friends of the victims and are angry and disturbed that our leaders don’t seem to be as concerned about it as we are. They give us assurances that their programs are working and progress is being made, acting as if they don’t read the papers or watch the television news reports.
Being so deeply concerned about the daily news helps push us in our search for a plausible reason for being unable to end the war and bring our troops home like we have done in past wars. Thinking about the horrors of it keeps us from accepting it as routine like the weather reports or the Saturday football games results. It is important that we refuse to let ourselves become callous about this war that is killing and disabling so many of our young people and consuming so much of our precious resources.
The great volume of the news and the horrible nature of it tends to occupy so much of our thought that we get wrapped up in the NOW of the news. We see so much news about the current activities that we have come to believe that we are losing the war because of something that is happening now, in the present. This concentration on the NOW is blinding us to the important happenings of the past.
If we shift our thoughts of the happenings on the front lines NOW to the questions of the who and the what of the PAST we may be able to learn what got this horrible war started and for what reason. Somewhere along the line something must have gone wrong. A nation doesn’t wake up one morning to find itself in a war, certainly not one it is losing, in a small country on the other side of the world. Knowing the cause and events leading up to the war may not tell us how to stop it but it certainly should help us understand it better.
The terrorist attack of 9/11/01 is a logical starting point. This event enraged the president as well as the general population of the country. Evidence reveals that the whole attack were planned and staged by Osma ben Laden in association with el-Qaeda from their bases in Afghanistan. Mr. Bush vowed to hunt them down and bring them to justice for which vow he received praise from the entire world. The search for the terrorist leaders began in Afghanistan but failed to locate them.
For reason not know to us the President seemed to suspect Saddam Hussein of Iraq of being involved in the attack and instructed his intelligence people search for evidence of his involvement with el-Qaeda and/or ben Laden. Soon the campaign in Afghanistan shifted to Iraq with emphasis on the search for evidence of collaboration between Hussein and the terrorist organizations. President Bush appeared to have a strong dislike for Mr. Hussein as well as a desire to have him deposed from his leadership role in Iraq.
The president was certain that Hussein had a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and was actively engaged in a program to produce Nuclear weapons. The U.N. inspectors were not diligent enough for Mr. Bush and he arranged to have their work stopped. He replaced them with U. S. inspectors, certain they would find the evidence needed to prove Iraq’s possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The president declared that it was necessary to have a ‘regime change’ in Iraq. He would seek help from the U.N. in this enterprise, but if necessary the United States would undertake the task alone. He was able to get Great Briton and several smaller nations to join in a coalition to get rid of Hussein. Then he asked Congress to authorize him to use whatever force necessary to remove Hussein from power.
Several former government and military figures advised against attacking Iraq without more and stronger allies or U. N. support. Nevertheless, Mr. Bush pressed Congress, citing intelligence data regarding W. M. D. and his own conviction that Hussein had been associated with the terrorist organizations in the 9/11 attacks.
Congress, the constitutionally body authorized to declare war, acceded to the president’s request to use force necessary to depose Hussein. Apparently, anger generated by the 9/11 attacks exerted sufficient pressure on members of congress to lead them to bypass their customary parliamentary procedures [committee investigation, etc.] in a rush to give the president the authority he requested. This must be considered a failure on the part of Congressional leadership.
The leadership in the Pentagon included several persons who had worked closely with the president in formulating his proposed program for disposing of Hussein. Some chose to retire or resign to avoid participation in the war plans. Others who stayed on the job apparently were intimidated by the urgent nature of the president’s demands and/or by the threat of losing their job if they disagreed with their superiors or the president.
Finally, the president, the top link in the chain of command, failed. His position should have caused him to question the intelligence he was receiving because so much was depending on its accuracy. It would have been a great deal better to learn of its errors rather than stating later that his actions were based on faulty intelligence.
Weeks of listening to the news out of Washington and waiting for the attack we knew was coming we were confident that precise plans were being drafted that would defeat the Iraqi army within a few days. Previous experience assured us that our losses would be in the single digit numbers. Washington leadership assured us that the Iraqi people would welcome our forces with singing and dancing in the streets, like the people of Paris welcomed us in 1944. Saddam would be captured or killed, and we would proceed with the plans of helping the citizens set up a democratic society that would be a pattern-setting example for the Muslim world. Elections would be held promptly and we would establish an embassy to carry on the normal business relationships between two independent countries.
Then came the news that plans for the transformation had not been drawn up. It appeared to be a ’plan as you go’ program. We suffered the blunders that a kindergarten pupil could have predicted. The leaders we chose were incompetent or crooked or both and the local population was divided and unhappy. There was no dancing in the streets, but hatred of the occupying forces. Instead of choosing local contractors and workmen to rebuild and restore the economy, we awarded contracts to American firms without the customary competitive bidding process. These contractors were free enterprise entrepreneurs interested in making profits for their stockholders with no [or little] interest in establishing a democratic society in Iraq.
It took very little agitation to stir up the unemployed, the Saddam loyalists and the Infidel- hating religious radicals. Within a short while there were individuals and groups searching for ways and means of making life miserable for the American Infidel invaders. Terrorist groups found sources of bomb making materials and hosts of individuals who were willing to sacrifice themselves as suicide bombs in the process of killing foreign soldiers, workers and natives employed by the foreigners. Almost immediately the attacks were extended to contractors working for the Americans. The types of weapons was expanded to include any device they could use to kill persons or to demolish property. As word got out to surrounding countries there was a huge influx of all manner of individuals anxious to help their friends drive out the infidel invaders.
Assuming that things would improve if we moved to let them run their own affairs, we announced that on 30 June 2004 we would turn the sovereignty of the country over to the local population. However, the “turnover” contract had a long list of conditions and agreements that revealed that it was not a turnover of sovereignty at all. We were getting rid of the messy details of administration, but keeping the big paying contracts and oil operations for ourselves or our political friends.
The future is not bright. An election scheduled for January 2005 will elect a permanent government. However, the insurgents claim it won’t happen. If the new government takes over the operation of the country they will still be bound by the provisions of the side agreements of the June 30 sovereignty transfer as well as the understanding that U S troops will remain in Iraq as long as they are needed to maintain public safety.
In November 2004 we will have an election of our own and the president will be inaugurated into a government still facing the unsettled situation in Iraq. Whoever is elected, the President will have the difficult task of explaining how we are going to close out this war that was lost before it began, or continue its shameful destruction for another generation.
Jerry Clements 12 September 2004
