I’m watching the Senate debate over Senate Joint Resolution 9. And Kit Bond (R-MO) is up there saying that the American people want ‘victory not defeat’. He’s got iconic pictures of the fall of Saigon up there. He’s saying that we retreated from Saigon, from Beirut, from Mogadishu. Let me talk about this for a moment.
We sent our troops over to Lebanon as part of a peace-keeping mission. We sent our troops over to Somalia as part of a humanitarian mission. Would it have made any sense to talk about victory or defeat in Lebanon and Somalia? No. Those were not wars in which we intended to be participants. In each case, we had a mission. Those missions failed. We did not succeed. But we were not defeated and successful missions would not have brought victory.
Now…let’s talk about Iraq.
We invaded Iraq with the intention of deposing Saddam Hussein and destroying his weapons of mass destruction. What were our goals beyond that? Part of the problem is that we, the public, the Congress, don’t know the answer to that question.
The whole topic is controversial. Over time we took it upon ourselves to try to transform Iraq into a democracy. That is a mission, not a war. It is a mission that is failing. It is a mission that we cannot afford. Failing to succeed in this mission is not the same thing as defeat. However, by constantly talking in terms of victory and defeat, the administration and the Republicans have assured that the failure of our mission will be perceived as a defeat. In fact, they have gone so far with this misleading rhetoric, that it will be a defeat.
To be sure, the Republicans will point to remarks made by Usama bin-Laden and say that he perceived Lebanon and Somalia as defeats. We do ourselves a great disservice when we use bin-Laden’s definitions. It doesn’t matter what bin-Laden thinks. It matters what the world thinks. The more the world comes to accept bin-Laden’s way of seeing the world, the worse for us. Talking points are a pale substitute for reality, and the reality in Iraq is grim. But our military achieved its initial goals. In the war, they were victorious. What has followed is an ill-defined, ill-planned, and ill-executed mission.
And this has led to another war. This second war is sectarian and ethnic and civil. We can’t win this second war (we shouldn’t even be a party to it) and it has made it impossible for us to succeed in our mission. I suggest that we begin talking about our failure to succeed in our mission, rather than talking about defeat in a war.
As for the future of Iraq, the world has no interest in helping us win victory. They have little interest in helping us in our current mission (which is transparently hopeless). But they might agree to help Iraq with a different mission. And that mission would be to end the sectarian and ethnic violence.
If we could get our terms and definitions right, we might do better at making strategic decisions.
