Random thoughts about Iraq
- It's interesting to wonder how everyone would view this adventure if everything about it had unfolded the same way, except that the WMD intelligence had proved accurate. In other words, suppose we had quickly brushed aside the Iraqi military and the government with minimal losses on our side (as did happen), neutralized Iraq's threat potential, and then saw the country descend into the same chaos we see now. Surely then, by the traditional standards of warfare, our invasion would have to be viewed as a success. We would have neutralized the enemy's ability to threaten us militarily. In the event, the threat we perceived didn't actually exist, so no one equates destroying the country's military and government with victory. Throughout most of human history, however, turning your enemy into an anarchic political and economic basket case was the very definition of victory. It's only by recent Western standards that the outcome in Iraq comes off as such a disaster.
- This war was always fought with an extremely limited commitment of our moral and material resources. It has taken more than five years for me to know one person with an immediate family member serving in Iraq, which says something all by itself. The outcome in Iraq tells nothing about how this country will fare in important future struggles that engage a broad segment of the society.
- It doesn't matter how hard we try in "hearts and minds" campaigns because the troublesome terrorists are likely always to come from the small percentage of truly unreachable ideologues and fanatics at the fringe.
- In the long run, clannish, patriarchal, totalizing ideologies (a term that encompasses religions) won't stand up well against what might be called "Western" political and cultural values.
posted at 7:05 PM
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