Harold Hutchison is rather down on our chances in Iraq after our election:
Now, the stage is set for al Qaeda to win a major victory. It was a simple matter of getting the American media to ignore the battlefield victories while accentuating al Qaeda's attacks. What could not be accomplished on the battlefield – an American retreat from Iraq – was instead achieved in American newsrooms.
While I share some sympathy with this view, it is a development that I've long assumed would happen eventually. Americans get tired of war and we have been at war for five years, including 3-1/2 years in Iraq. Keeping this in mind, I've wanted us to Iraqify the fight by training Iraqis to combat the enemy rather than Americanize the war by arguing our better troops are more effective.
It is simply not true, however, that our troops are better to win the war. Our troops are better at conventional fighting techniques and even tactically they can do better in counter-insurgency. But in the bigger picture, Iraqis have to fight the war. They can't get tired and go home as we might. The Iraqis must win or die. It is irrelevant that more Iraqi security forces will die because unlike us, they can endure the higher level of casualties given the stakes for them.
So be grateful we've focused on training Iraqis to replace our forces. It was always in the works that Iraqis would have to replace our troops--either when they are ready or when we get tired. From early on I expected that we would get tired of fighting but I figured we could win the fight before we got too tired to see victory within our grasp. We are now quite clearly in a race for time between those two outcomes, but this has always been the case. I think we have the edge in being able to turn over combat to enough Iraqi units ready to fight in order to win in Iraq. I think we will still win this race.
And by all means, don't forget that steady persistence is what wins counter-insurgencies. We should not ramp up our troop strength now to take more of the burden of fighting off the Iraqis in a misguided effort to win quickly. It would increase expectations by our people of dramatic success in a type of warfare that does not respond well to such tactics. The Iraqis will back off to let us fight. And then we'll be under pressure from home to pull out even faster. This would leave the Iraqis less prepared to fight than if we'd continued our slow but steady path to standing up Iraqi security forces.
Long-term persistence is what defeats insurgencies. Focus on that. Though many want us to lose and many are convinced that as the result of the election we will now lose, we should all know the proper response to calls for our surrender.
"Stay the course" may not be polling well as a slogan, but it is the correct way to look at Iraq strategically (and it doesn't mean we don't adapt tactics to fight better).
