Victory

We can fairly easily change the dynamic for the bad guys in Iraq from "No matter what the Americans promise, they'll eventually wimp out" to "Just when you think the Americans are about to give up, they'll suddenly bring the hammer down hard and utterly shatter your hopes to win, hopes that they let you build over a period of time only to savagely rip them away from you and show you that they are utterly for naught. They are in control. You are not and can never hope to be."

But we won't.

An American Thinker piece examines the insanity of the ISG report in light of what we should be doing.

excerpts:

The political class, Republicans and Democrats alike, insists on taking the ISG report seriously. Our leaders are struggling to formulate some new policy for Iraq. But they can't succeed because they refuse to understand what has gone wrong with the old one.

There is nothing complex about the problems in Iraq. Those problems are entirely transparent to anyone with a firm grasp on reality. Unfortunately almost nobody in our political class has a grasp on reality, let alone a firm one, and very few Americans seem to notice. Most of us, after all, get our meat wrapped in plastic on Styrofoam trays. We are adept at blinding ourselves to unpleasantness and reality is relentlessly unpleasant.

Supporting the Iraqi Army

The ISG report is all about facilitating our retreat from Iraq. That is what changing our focus from combat to training would be intended to accomplish. But retreat on any terms would be defeat and we can't afford defeat.

The unpleasant reality in Iraq is that the price of victory will be both horrifying bloodshed and a commitment to be the dominant power in Iraq for decades to come. To win you must fight, and then you must hold on to your gains. The entire political establishment is desperate to avoid facing this reality.

President Bush is as guilty of confusion here as either the ISG or the softest-headed congressional Democrat. He is, in fact, the principal author of the "cut and run" strategy. From the beginning of the war in Iraq he has said that we will stay there only as long as it takes to "do the job." His undefended (and indefensible) assumption is that if we just set up a decent government in Iraq we can turn tail. The new government will then take over the task of suppressing the bad guys in Iraq which will help us move toward victory in the broader "war on terror."

The truth is that any government we set up in Iraq will be useful to us only so long as we are there to keep it under close supervision. The instant we leave, any government we leave behind will divide up among the various factions and join in a general bloodletting. With the sole exception of the Kurds, each faction has foreign sponsors and those sponsors are our enemies. When the killing finally stops, Iraq, or at least large parts of what used to be Iraq, will be securely under the influence of one or more of our enemies and the effort to win our Arab and Persian War will be crippled.

Iraq will remain in our sphere of influence as long as our troops are the dominant force within its borders and no longer. It is predominantly Arab and overwhelmingly Muslim. It isn't friendly ground. Our conquest of Iraq was a major strategic victory in the Arab and Persian War. Unless we've gone stark raving mad we won't abandon that victory.

Talking about how to organize our departure is almost as destructive as leaving would be. As long as we keep talking about removing ourselves from the picture in Iraq the local politicians will spend all their energies preparing for the full-blown civil war that will follow our departure.

We can't build Iraqi security forces if the Iraqis see those forces as assets to be secured for use in the coming civil war. We can't terminate troublemakers like Moqtada al Sadr if the powers that be are planning to rely on him for support when we depart. We can't even keep the Shiite dominated Iraqi government from gravitating toward Iran, which will remain in the region long after we go home.

If we want Iraqi partners to help us install and maintain a useful government in Baghdad we have to offer them something more than a one night stand. If we aren't committed to them they won't be committed to us and we won't be able to move forward together.

We are stuck in Iraq and we have to face that fact before we can have any hope of improving the situation there. Increasing our focus on training Iraqis and decreasing our focus on combat operations would be moving in exactly the wrong direction.

The recipe for victory in Iraq is simple. Establish that we are in charge there by killing a great many more people. This may take more troops. It might just take a shift in emphasis from politics to fighting. Try hard to ensure that the dead are enemies bearing arms, but remember that trying too hard to avoid collateral damage will only guarantee futility and frustration. Stop worrying about hearts and minds. As the old saying goes: "when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." Get a good grip and hang on.

Make it clear by word and deed that we anticipate remaining in Iraq until the jihad burns out and the oil runs dry and that, in the mean time, there are strict limits on Iraqi sovereignty.

It's pretty simple. If you don't intend to put a country under the boot, then don't invade!