Oh?
In the present age, the United States’ decision to invade Iraq as part of the War on Terror is analogous to the Athenian experience in Sicily in its strategic effects. It represents an extended campaign, in the wrong theater, at the wrong time.
Sparta was a powerful city state that was undefeated. Syracuse was a powerful trading partner of Sparta in Sicily that was a potential enemy of Athens that Athens decided to strike.
Yes, striking a distant trading partner of their enemy when there was no imminent threat of Syracuse going to war with Athens was an obvious mistake, especially given the destruction of the Athenian expeditionary force.
But the comparison to Iraq and Afghanistan is such a stretch that it is a meaningless comparison. It is just a more sophisticated form of the old "distraction" charge.
I was going to go into a longer piece concerning the fact that Iraq was an existing enemy that really did help terrorists to fight us, that American power was massively greater than our combination of enemies, that we didn't lose our army fighting Iraq, that we really did have to worry that Saddam would get WMD if left in power, that we actually won the Iraq War (and without 300,000 American troops that is oddly still considered a requirement to win that war even after we won that war*), that our ground forces became experienced (if unbalanced) rather than "broken" or even destroyed, and that we had prior to Iraq succeeded in smashing the Taliban regime that sheltered al Qaeda and scattered al Qaeda there.
This is dramatically unlike the stalemate Athens faced with peer power Sparta and the decision by Athens to send and lose too much of its power against another peer.
And although the author goes into differences that should have ended the impulse to compare, he persists in saying that notwithstanding the differences that the effects were the same.
But rather than go into those factors to argue for why they invalidate the comparison, the comparison founders on the very basic fact that al Qaeda in fact relegated Afghanistan to a secondary theater in order to fight America in Iraq as al Qaeda's main front.
Or did I miss the part of the Peloponnesian War where Sparta sent their army off to Sicily to fight and defeat Athens there?
If the Iraq War (that ended Saddam's brutal minority regime, ended the WMD potential of the state, and turned Iraq into an ally that helped us kill jihadis rather that creating jihadis**) distracted us from the "real" war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, why did al Qaeda itself follow us to Iraq and fight us there rather than fight in Afghanistan to exploit our so-called distraction?
Seriously, al Qaeda didn't really focus on Afghanistan after their defeat in our initial Afghanistan campaign that began in October 2001 until our Surge and Awakening combination crushed al Qaeda in Iraq in 2007 and led them to return to the remote Afghanistan to make a stand; and based on the complication of the Taliban setting up shop inside Pakistan in 2006 (thanks Pakistan!) where they could move against Afghanistan.
Until those things happened, Afghanistan was a backwater that deserved the status of secondary theater. Don't believe me? Listen to President Obama in April 2010:
"I would dispute the notion that [Afghanistan is] not getting better. I do think that what we've seen is a blunting of the momentum of the Taliban which had been building up in the year prior to me taking office," Obama said.
The year prior to his presidency. That is, 2008. We won the war in Iraq by 2008. As I wrote in that post:
So the president judges that it was in 2008 that the enemy started making gains.
I've judged that it was that year--or maybe sometime in 2007--that we could say that.
My timeline was based on the fact that we pretty much beat al Qaeda in Iraq in 2007 during the surge, and so al Qaeda switched emphasis to Afghanistan. Also, the Taliban in Pakistan managed to set up a good deal inside Pakistan by 2006, eventually complicating our efforts in Afghanistan.
Which means, of course, that Iraq did not "distract" us from winning in Afghanistan. We were doing fine in Afghanistan through 2008 according to the president, but possibly only sometime in 2007 if you ask me. At worst, you can argue that we were delayed in reinforcing Afghanistan by perhaps a year because of Iraq. But since it looked like a win was coming in Iraq by the end of 2007, we didn't take extraordinary measures to bolster Afghanistan before reductions in Iraq could ease that path. If the situation in Afghanistan was that bad, we could have done something sooner.
Or are you really going to argue that the commitment of 100,000 American and 50,000 coalition troops could have settled Afghanistan down in 2002-2008 if we hadn't deployed troops to fight in Iraq?
Aren't we having to re-engage again in Afghanistan after the Taliban recovered from the Obama surges and rapid draw down and the distraction of the 2012 reelection campaign that required an official line that al Qaeda was dead?
I know Thucydides is all the rage again (and I do enjoy his history of the Peloponnesian War--and I have an old paper on it that I keep thinking I might update and use), but the Iraq War was no Sicilian Expedition. Don't try to shoehorn Iraq and Afghanistan into that template.
Give it up. Iraq did not distract America from Afghanistan.
*And no, General Shinseki was not fired for saying that before the war.
**Seriously, the Iraq War was no mistake and we gained much--or tell me what you'd have chosen not to achieve?
