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As I said in an earlier column, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are
already lost. Nothing the United States can do can yield an American
victory in either place.
In all
probability, both wars were lost before the first bomb was dropped or the
first shot fired. They were lost because, in an era when the state is in
decline, our wares on the Afghan and Iraqi states were doomed to be too
successful. We fought to destroy two regimes, but what we ended up doing
was destroying two states. Neither in Afghanistan nor in Iraq are we able
to recreate the state, which means that Fourth Generation, non-state
forces will come to dominate both places. And neither we nor any other
state knows how to defeat Fourth Generation enemies.
To the
degree America had a chance of real victory in either war, we lost that
chance through early mistakes. In Afghanistan, we failed to bring the
Pashtun into the new government, which means we remain allied with the
Uzbeks and Tajiks against the Pashtun. Unfortunately, in the end the
Pashtun always win Afghan wars.
In Iraq, the
two fatal early errors were outlawing the Baath Party and disbanding the
Iraqi army. Outlawing the Baath deprived the Sunni community of its only
political vehicle, which meant it had no choice but to fight us.
Disbanding the Iraqi army left us with no native force that could maintain
order, and also provided the resistance with a large pool of armed and
trained fighters. Washington is now making noises about reversing both of
those early decisions, but it is simply too late. As von Moltke said, a
mistake in initial dispositions can seldom be put right.
What is
interesting is that the most powerful man in Washington, Karl Rove, who is
President George W. Bush's political advisor, has apparently figured out
that the Iraq war is lost (Afghanistan is not on his political radar
screen). Further, he has discerned that if Mr. Bush goes into the 2004
election with the war in Iraq still going on, and still going badly, Mr.
Bush is toast. The result was the recent decision to turn the government
back to the Iraqis sometime next summer.
Will it
work? Probably not. Mr. Rove still faces two big fights, and neither will
be easy. The first will be a nasty political brawl with the so-called
"neo-cons," more accurately neo-Jacobins, who gave us the Iraq War in the
first place. Their political future is at stake in Iraq, and if we are
defeated, they go straight into history's wastebasket. They are determined
to fight down to the last American paratrooper, and once they figure out
that Mr. Rove wants out, they will go after him with everything they
have.
The other
fight will be in Iraq itself, where we will see a race between American
efforts to create at least the fig leaf of a functioning Iraqi state so we
can get out with some tail feathers intact and a resistance movement that
is rapidly gaining strength. My bet is that, unfortunately, we will lose.
Again, the root problem is that in a Fourth Generation world, once you
have destroyed a state recreating it is very difficult. More, as is
typical of a power facing defeat, our moves are too little and too late.
By next summer, when we hope to transfer sovereignty to a new Iraqi
government, it is likely to represent a frustration of the Shiites' hope
to use their majority status to create a Shiite Islamic Republic. That may
deprive us, and the new Iraqi government, of the one prop we still have, a
relatively quiescent Shiite population.
The upshot
of all of this is that despite Mr. Rove's belated wakening to political
reality, Mr. Bush will go into the 2004 election with one of two
albatrosses around his neck: a continuing, losing guerilla war, with
ever-increasing American casualties, or an out-and-out American defeat,
where we have left Iraq very much the way the Soviets left Afghanistan.
Which is, by the way, the way we will also leave Afghanistan.
The
neo-cons' parting gift to real American conservatives will be President
Hillary Clinton. Thanks a lot, guys.
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Recent columns by
William Lind
The Politics Of
War
11/26/03
previous
columns
William
Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free
Congress Foundation. He is a former Congressional Aide and the author
of many books and articles on military strategy and
war. |
