Gadfly is Marty Aussenberg, a columnist for the alternative weekly Memphis Flyer, where this story was originally posted. Marty is an attorney in private practice in Memphis, Tennessee.
Let‛s proceed from the assumption that there are winners and losers in wars (although a case can certainly be made that wars are frequently lose-lose propositions). Let‛s further proceed from the assumption that every war is fought for a purpose, and that (and I admit, this is a big one) the primary purpose of fighting a war is not to enrich the people who inevitably get rich from it (in the case of Iraq, the Blackwaters, Halliburtons, General Dynamics and Exxon Mobils of the world). For a somewhat more contrarian thesis, read my piece entitled “Should We Support the Troops?”
Continued below:
Given these assumptions, it is reasonable to assess the success of a war by measuring it against its stated objectives. In Iraq, the objective (supposedly) is not only to provide security and a stable, democratic government in Iraq, but to prevail in what this administration likes to call the “war on terror.” And, since Iraq has been characterized by this administration as the “central front” in that war, and since one of the stated purposes of fighting on that “central front” is to “fight them over there so we won’t have to fight them over here,” it is certainly valid to measure the success of all those purposes and objectives against the results that have been achieved.
There is little question that the war in Iraq has, at least thus far, failed to achieve the objectives the administration has set out for it. Remember that, as a condition for implementing the “surge,” there were “benchmarks” established that were supposed to be achieved. Well, in September, the General Accountability Office issued its report saying that the majority of the benchmarks had not been achieved. And, it is generally acknowledged that the overarching objective of the war in Iraq, namely political reconciliation, hasn’t been achieved, and, based on statements made recently by Iraqi officials
never will be.
But, there are other “metrics” by which the success of “war on teror” may be measured. One of them must be the answer to the following question: is the U.S. being made safer from terrorist attack by fighting in Iraq? If the “fight them there…fight them here” slogan is to have any meaning, surely this is the sine qua non of the validity of that meme.
Astonishingly, though, not even the folks who are fighting the war, either on the battle front or on the intelligence front, can answer that question. Who can forget General Petraeus’ startling admission, during his recent testimony before Congress, that he didn‛t know whether the war was making us safer. Here is the man who is responsible for fighting this war, who is watching the troops under his command be killed and maimed on a daily basis, and he can‛t even tell us whether their sacrifice is worth it. This is un-freaking believable!
Perhaps even more revealing was the recent interview conducted by NBC‛s Iraq correspondent, Richard Engel, with the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Admiral Scott Redd. This recently-created agency is supposed to be leading the fight, according to its “mission statement,” to “combat the terrorist threat to the U.S. and its interests.” When asked directly by Engel, “are we safer today,” and after a long, uncomfortable pause (not unlike the one Petraeus exhibited in response to the same question), Redd replies: “tactically, probably not; strategically, we‛ll wait and see.”
What the hell does that mean? Wait for what—3,800 more American combat deaths? See what—al Quaeda continue to use the war as a recruiting tool? Well, Admiral Redd won‛t get to wait or see anything (at least not at the NCTC): two days after he gave that interview, he abruptly announced his resignation from the NCTC. Just another example of where speaking truth to power gets you with this administration.One thing is for certain: if the “rah, rah” Bush boys can’t answer the question in the affirmative, the answer is undoubtedly in the negative.
A recent report issued by the American Security Project doesn’t waffle in answering, with a resounding “no,” the question asked in the title to this article. ASP is a self-described “non-profit, bi-partisan public policy research and education initiative dedicated to fostering knowledge and understanding of a range of national security and foreign policy issues” (a/k/a think tank) whose board of directors includes Gary Hart, John Kerry, George Mitchell, Richard Armitage and General Anthony Zinni, all ouspoken (if not partisan) critics of the war in Iraq. The report answers the question in cold, statistical fashion. Using ten objective criteria for determining the results of the “war on terror,” the report concludes, not surprisingly, that we are losing that war.
From a “massive and dramatic increase in Islamist terrorism since 2003” to “Al Qaeda‛s [expansion of] its reach globally,” to the increasing perception in the Muslim world of the U.S. as an “aggressive, hostile and destabilizing force,” the report paints a dismal picture of the effect of the war in Iraq on the “war on terror.”
The report‛s quantification of terrorist attacks is startling. It finds that the number of such attacks, worldwide, has increased exponentially. It does not suggest that just because the U.S. hasn‛t been attacked it is therefore safer, and doesn‛t need to worry about terrorism elsewhere in the world, because those aren‛t “American interests,” a position espoused, either ignorantly or dishonestly, by the Vice President‛s wife in a recent interview with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” As the NCTC‛s mission statement acknowledges, even our intelligence community recognizes that our “interests” go beyond our borders. And, of course, there is now the depressing fact that the war in Iraq has resulted in the death of more Americans than were killed on September 11th, which even by Cruella de Cheney’s standard, is an American “interest.”
The mantra of the Vietnam era, equally applicable to the current one, was most poignantly revealed in a song by the group known as “Country Joe and the Fish.” The chorus of their song, “I Feel Like I‛m Fixin‛ To Die,” included the question “And it‛s one, two, three, what are we fighting for…” My question is: Joe, where are you now that we need you?
