I wrote about the stages of Iran's defeat:
Iran’s collapse was not obvious at the time. When the Iranians let the usual winter bloodletting season pass without attacking, it should have been apparent that the Iranians were not up to the bloodletting. Then the Iraqis attacked to make sure that the Iranians did not have the time to recover their will to fight.
So does this have a lesson for us today? What happened in summary?
1. The Iranians realized they were not winning and made a big effort to change the course of the war, pinning their hopes on victory at last.
2. The Iraqis won in the face of this last military gasp and kept heart without thinking they were losing.
3. At some point, the enemy did not do something that was expected of them—another massive human wave attack the next winter. The Iraqis didn’t know why. Had the Iranians changed strategy? Were they building up for a bigger attack?
4. The Iraqis then went over on the offensive, finally providing evidence of the Iranian collapse and finished the enemy off.
At some point, somebody’s will to fight will break. Back in February 2004, I thought the Baathists might have finally broken. Battle deaths were dwindling that month and then halted for a week or so. Had Saddam’s capture in December been the final blow? It seemed like it could be so. But the March-April Sunni offensive and the Sadr revolt ended that thought.
Since then we have cleaned out the enemy from their hard-won gains. Sadr’s troops were slaughtered. Sunni strongholds have been reduced. Fallujah was a major defeat for the Baathists that eliminated their sanctuary and resulted in the loss of well over 2,000 fighters and the scattering of the rest. We are on the move in the rest of the Sunni Triangle to fight the enemy as they come into the open in response to our offensive in Fallujah.
So was the March-April offensive the last Baathist gasp to change the course of the war? If so, we have won in the face of this attack? And we are certainly on the offensive to roll the enemy back.
But the enemy is still fighting and dying. And I cannot see anything that is an absence of the expected. So at best, we are at step 2. Perhaps we are at step 3 and don’t know it. But what should the insurgents be doing that they are not? That they cannot do? What indication is there that they are losing hope and giving up? I don’t see anything yet. But it took over a year for the Iraqis to realize this after Karbala V. Indeed, it took an Iraqi offensive that unexpectedly smashed the Iranians at low cost to provide the first real hint that the Iranians were collapsing.
At some point, somebody will break first. I think it will be the enemy rather than ourselves and our Iraqi friends. I just can’t say if there are signs of this enemy collapse yet.
I've correctly noticed that the jihadis are surrendering more now rather than fighting to the death.
The Ramadan surge by the enemy did not take place.
Do these two developments signal that the enemy is breaking? For enemies whose chief advantage is a willingness to die, two signs that they are no longer willing to die are significant indicators of their fortunes.
If so, we need to pour it on and finish them off and not declare victory and risk the enemy recovering their morale.
Even if it is true that we've essentially defeated al Qaeda in Iraq, it doesen't mean that they couldn't recover if we let up or that another threat won't rise up to replace the defeated al Qaeda in Iraq threat.
Still, while we've ground down the enemies we've fought in Iraq, we shouldn't assume that the end game will be just as gradual. Victory is likely to come as suddenly in Iraq's center as it did in Anbar.
