The New Math of Strategery

Well, this Center for American Progress condemnation of the Iraq War, purporting to tally up its costs, is just stupid. At the most basic level, it ignores that we turned a cruel and uncompromising enemy into an ally with hope of being a workable democracy.

On the human costs, I'll at least say that it is an improvement over the past Leftist rants that a million Iraqis died in the war. One hundred thousand is still a lot. And it would help to mention that the enemy was largely responsible for targeting civilians.

The human costs section also tries to make it seem worse by recombining subsets of casualties into new categories. It also ignores that our casualties have been light by historical standards, Also, enemy casualties are not even mentioned.

The economic costs section is worse. The cost of the total Iraq War compares favorably with the money spent at a pen-stroke in the spring 2009 "stimulus" act. And the costs to care for wounded veterans is large, but would stretch out for sixty or seventy years--making it a tiny fraction of our GDP and even government spending over that stretch.

But it is when CAP gets to strategery that they really fall on their faces.

We empowered Iran by removing Saddam?

One, how moral is it to say that slaughtering Shias and Kurds (including with gas) is the price we should happily pay to contain Iran? Might that not offset some of the human costs listed above? And this line of reasoning says that we shouldn't have defeated Hitler since it just empowered Stalin and gave him Eastern Europe.

Second, it over-states Iraq's ability to contain Iran under Saddam. Saddam was so weak he had to bluff WMD to keep Iran at bay. And it over-states Iran's influence in Iraq. Iraqis for the most part don't like Iran. And Iraq remains a close US ally and will for decades to come. From Iran's point of view, they have American allies and American troops all around them at sea and on land. Our failure to halt Iran's nuclear program is empowering Iran, and that has nothing to do with destroying the Saddam regime.

We created a terrorist training ground in Iraq, inspired jihadi recruits, and allowed them to test and perfect tactics?

Oh please. It wasn't a training ground--it was a killing ground. We slaughtered their A Team. Which might be more clear if the human cost mentioned enemy deaths.

As for inspiring recruits, what doesn't inspire them? The flocked to Afghanistan long before the Iraq War or 9/11. And since smashing the jihadis in Iraq, we've definitely harmed the recruiting drive. As I've long said, it isn't enough to fight jihadis--we have to kill them and defeat them.

And did Afghanistan's jihad boys learn from Iraq? You bet. They learned to use IEDs that are killing more Afghans than American soldiers and which is alienating Afghans just the way the Iraqi jihadis screwed up and lost in Iraq using those tactics--and without the supplies and skilled terrorists that the Iraq War had to make the bombing campaign really gruesome.

We lost moral authority?

Yes, Abu Ghraib is mentioned. Unmentioned is that Abu Ghraib was a torture facility under Saddam and that under our command, the worst behavior was limited fraternity hazing humiliation of some prisoners, and not torture. Also unmentioned is that torture is the norm for the region, so the cries of horror from the region were rather bizarre. We've lost moral authority to them?

Face it, any problems we had stemming from Abu Ghraib were not from the acts themselves--pretty mild by regional standards of prisons--but from the over-the-top reaction by so-called human rights activists and the press which treated the whole affair--despicable on its own--as something far worse than it was.

Iraq distracted us from Afghanistan?

Hogwash. Even President Obama only mentions Taliban gains as stemming only since 2008. Personally, I call it as early as 2007 after the Taliban sanctuary in Pakistan was allowed to form in 2006, accelerated after 2007 when the surge success in Iraq sent al Qaeda running to Afghanistan for their primary theater. Given that we won the war in Iraq by fall 2008, our shift to Afghanistan has lagged enemy gains by only a little. Sending 100,000 troops to Afghanistan would have been a waste in 2002 to 2006, as there would have been little for them to do other than annoy and alienate Afghans for occupying their country in the absence of a robust Taliban presence to justify it--unless the budding Von Clausewitzes at CAP think we should have invaded Pakistan's tribal territories to go after al Qaeda. What's that? Silence? I thought so.

The war stifled democratic reform?

Using the words of Arab autocrats who claim democracy causes instability is laughable. What do you expect them to say? The instability was caused by an Iranian and al Qaeda (with an assist by Syria) invasion of Iraq. The overthrow of Saddam actually led to movements toward democracy in the Arab world--despite the fighting in Iraq--until the post-Samarra Golden Dome mosque bombing in February 2006 signalled the beginning of al Qaeda and Iranian-sponsored sectarian killings on a really large scale.

Now that the violence is down dramatically in Iraq, let's support democracy in Iraq to see how an example of a peaceful Arab and Moslem state allied with America can prosper. A little patience, please.

The war caused rising sectarianism in the region?

Hey, whatever you have to believe to sleep at night, I guess. Let me just say that Shias and Sunnis had no problem slaughtering and abusing each other on grand scales--or attacking other minorities (Syrian slaughter at Hama, Iraq's Anfal campaign against the Kurds and other ethnic cleansing inside Iraq, the whole Iran-Iraq War thing, Egypt's sad treatment of Copts, and general oppression of Sunni/Shia or other minorities like Turkmen, Christians, Jews, Kurds, or Zoroastrians) in both Iran and in Sunni Arab countries--long before we destroyed Saddam's minority Sunni Arab government.

Are we to return Iraq to the Baathists to make amends, and restore the happy kite flying days of pre-2003?

Please. This argument is a joke. Iraq offers hope for a way that rule of law can protect minorities.

So that's their analysis.

The whole exercise is a sick joke. It purports to add up the negatives of the Iraq War, but the authors can't add and ignore any good (except the grudging admission that the Shias of Iraq had been freed). Worse, it is based on Jethro Bodine-style grade school ciphering that isn't up to the task of evaluating a question as large and still unfolding as the impact of the destruction of the Saddam regime, the defeat of al Qaeda and Iran in Iraq, and the nurturing of a democracy in the heart of the Arab world.

We could still blow the victory we've achieved and fail to exploit the limited victory to achieve much more. But such a strategic failure would be because of the efforts of people like CAP who hate that we won the war and are determined to erase the image--if not the fact--of that victory.

Victory has a thousand fathers, but CAP is too busy screwing the pooch on this one to join the parade led by Vice president Biden. They don't understand history, war, tactics, strategy, or grand strategy.