OLD POST
I let my Foreign Affairs subscription lapse. I subscribed because I could afford it after years of thinking it a luxury. And after several years of reading pieces that reeked of idiocy or were so banal as to be worthless in providing insights, I let it go. I had a full set of coffee mugs and that is about the extent of its worth to me. Gotta contain that hot coffee.
So when I read a piece on how to win in Iraq (via Real Clear Politics) that just screams idiocy, I am heartened that I no longer pay for it. The article starts with the assumption that Iraq is an unwinnable war and so naturally the author's recommendations for achieving victory are so ridiculous that I was just stunned that anyone could think they are a recipe for winning.
Let's take a look at it, shall we?
Or perhaps I'm being unfair to the author. He said it was a method to win. He didn't say it was a method for America or free Iraqis to win.
END OLD POST
The article is a "premium" one, so 8 years later I can only hit the gist of it:
The beginning of wisdom is to recognize that the ongoing war in Iraq is not one that the United States can win. As a result of its initial miscalculations, misdirected planning, and inadequate preparation, Washington has lost the Iraqi people's confidence and consent, and it is unlikely to win them back. Every day that Americans shell Iraqi cities they lose further ground on the central front of Iraqi opinion.
The war can still be won--but only by moderate Iraqis and only if they concentrate their efforts on gaining the cooperation of neighboring states, securing the support of the broader international community, and quickly reducing their dependence on the United States. Achieving such wide consensus will require turning the U.S.-led occupation into an Iraqi-led, regionally backed, and internationally supported endeavor to attain peace and stability based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Let's see. We won the war.
We won it by convincing not only the Iraqi government to support our surge but by convincing even our enemies in the Sunni Arab community that we could win.
And we won without the cooperation of neighboring states who continued to fight us tooth and nail, without the cooperation of the broader international community, and by relying on an American-led military and political effort that defeated our enemies within Iraq.
But other than that, the author is spot on.
Even on the tenth anniversary of the invasion and liberation, wisdom hasn't made any inroads into the anti-war side's thinking. Thank goodness we didn't rely on our best and brightest's premium opinions back in 2005.
I really must go through those old drafts to see if anything is of interest. I've found old complete posts that somehow failed to post as scheduled before.
