Here’s a list of MSA’s (Metropolitan Statistical Areas) in the United States.
New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA
Victoria, TX
Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI
Pine Bluff, AR
Laredo, TX
Shreveport-Bossier City, LA
Richmond, VA
…what’s interesting about them?According to the FBI, they had rates of murder and non-negligent manslaughter comparable to the estimated rates in Iraq right now (14 – 20/100,000 population per year – from Strategypage, with a hat tip to Outside The Beltway).
|MSA | – | Rate per 100,000|
|New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA | – | 25.5|
|Victoria, TX | – | 25.4|
|Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI | – | 19.5|
|Pine Bluff, AR | – | 16.9|
|Laredo, TX | – | 14.7|
|Shreveport-Bossier City, LA | – | 14.5|
|Richmond, VA | – | 13.6|
Does this mean all is well? No. Is this acceptable – in Iraq or in Pine Bluff? No.
But those of us who haven’t closed our minds are all struggling the question we keep coming back to – what are we facing? What are the facts? How widespread is the violence, and how likely is that we’ll be able to contain and reduce it? Is it as widespread and deep as suggested by the opponents of the war? As narrow and shallow as suggested by the supporters? Or – as is likely – somewhere in between.
When you read stories explaining that all is lost in Iraq – or that victory is just around the corner – take a moment and think about who’s saying it. I’d have more respect for the ‘all is lost’ folks if it didn’t fit so neatly into an anti-war or anti-Bush agenda, and for the “it’s a day at the beach” folks if the opposite wasn’t true.
I tend to fall into the “things aren’t as bad as Juan Cole, Robert Scheer, and the New York Times say they are” camp, in part, because I keep seeing numbers like these.
If there was a true uprising among the Iraqis, we’d be seeing far, far higher US and Iraqi death rates.
This is a data point – one of the many we need to figure out what’s up – that suggests to me two things: 1) that we don’t face a true uprising against the U.S. and Coalition presence; and 2) that we’ve got some serious work to do both in terms of actually improving things on the ground and in terms of getting a true(er) picture out of what things on the ground look like today.
Those are ADDITIONAL deaths from the insurgents on TOP OF ALL OTHER DEATHS
and do not include OTHER CRIMES SUCH AS
HOMICIDE DURING THE COMMISSION OF A CRIME
of which there are many now.
I’ve been reading James Dunnigan’s stuff ever since I stopped spitting up on my mother, beginning with the defunct Strategy & Tactics magazine.
The Defense department can’t publish enemy casualty figures, because the Nervous Class would scream their heads off about Vietnam-style “body counts”. It would also interfere with the right of critics to make up any kind of numbers they want to.
As Dunnigan points out elsewhere, a reasonable estimate of the carnage can be made from Iraqi Health statistics, although these are obviously not gospel. They show that your chances of getting killed by violence in Iraq is about 9 times greater than your chance of getting killed by a criminal in the United States. They are, however, significantly less than your chances of getting killed by a criminal in South Africa.
For the number of US troops deployed in hostile territory, the ratio of casualties to total troop strength is at an all-time low compared to previous actions. Since guerrillas strike at targets of opportunity and get their best results against non-combat units, if there were more troops in Iraq (you may have heard “suggestions” to that effect) with bigger logistical demands, there would almost certainly be more casualties.
Even when striking at “soft targets”, the insurgents can do no better than losing two of theirs to one of ours. When they engage combat units they lose 10 to 1 or more. They can’t sustain those kind of losses in the long run, which indicates that a lean, combat-heavy force is much better than the bloated Vietnam-style presence that some people pretend to want.
It also shows why the insurgents must lose. They have no hope of evolving into an effective conventional army, which Mao said was the entire point of guerrilla warfare. They have no reliable source of supply and international support, which Mao said was required for success. And they have no political program that appeals to anyone outside of Western nitwits.
Body counts dont matter either way. War is won in the mind and will. If American will or progressive Iraqi will isnt equal to the deadenders and their terrorist allies, we will lose. Thats the long and the short of it.
>>Body counts dont matter either way. War is won in the mind and will. If American will or progressive Iraqi will isnt equal to the deadenders and their terrorist allies, we will lose. Thats the long and the short of it.
It would seem wise at this point to stop using the term “deadenders”, especially in the context of their possible victory.
Deadenders they are, deadenders they will remain. We decided that back on 11/2/04. The rest is noise, though highly instructive in who will make effective common cause with the Ba’athists by denigrating what will transpire in Iraq on 1/30.
T.J., i thought about that as I wrote it. You are quite correct. I think people are too quick to dismiss the possibility and danger of the Sunni somehow riding out the occupation, cowing the Shiia, and managing to regain at least partial control of Iraq. It is not impossible, and we should recognize and confront that danger. War isnt about numbers, these guys have the no-how and brutality to tyranize the majority again. They did it once after all, and for quite a long time.
“They have no reliable source of supply and international support, which Mao said was required for success.”
Are we not counting Syria and Iran?
Matt –
Iran and Syria can support the insurgents enough to make us mad, but not enough to make them win.
Insurgent warfare is warfare, which must aim for eventual conventional military victory. The purpose of guerrilla actions are to build support and a trained cadre for that purpose.
Compare Vietnam. The Viet Cong never had a chance to develop into a real army. They were on their way there, but they got wasted in 1968 and ceased to function in any meaningful way after that. The fighting was taken over by the NVA, which made no headway until we withdrew, and even then they made no headway until we withdrew air support from South Vietnam as well.
There is no NVA to back up the Iraqi insurgents. Even if there were, so long as we’re there, they can’t win. Nor do I think they would win if we weren’t there, unless Syria or Iran invaded and we just stood by trying to get the UN to condemn the whole thing.
The insurgents think they can make us leave and then install a neo-Ba’athist government. They can’t launch a political program because their Islamist allies are getting used and haven’t been clued in yet.
praktike is right and there’s something else that should be considered. Sunnis who want a bigger share of the Iraqi pie than their numbers warrant don’t see anything to gain from participating in the political process. Elections won’t turn them into good little democrats.
This should not have been unexpected. It was evident (at least to me) from before the invasion.
However, despite our missteps and miscalculations and the difficulties that have been there all along I don’t think the situation is hopeless. But I do think that we need to consider very carefully what outcomes in Iraq we will accept and that W’s statements about accepting whatever elections produce is political happy talk.
What concerns me is that the Sunni insurgents have the ability to keep Iraq just unstable enough that the Iraqis accept another Saddam just to bring security. That’s a scenario that’s happened frequently in the past.
When I read “War is won in the mind and will.”, I am reinforced in my belief we are losing. Preparing the Stab-in-the-back excuse so soon?
If this were really true, the Confederacy, the Wehrmacht, and the Imperial Japanese Army would probably have won. Will is not a substitute for intelligent, well-executed strategy, nor for a creating favorable tactical situations, nor for deploying sufficient numbers, etc. And will dissipates in the face of blunders and reverses. Indeed, the worst blow to our “will” was probably the simple discovery that Pres. Bush’s costume show for “Mission Accomplished” was years premature.
I assume Armed Liberal will update the post to reflect the fact that the death rate comparison is explicitly terrorist homicides in Iraq to all homicides in the USA. If we compare only terrorist homicides, the correct rate for Baton Rouge, etc., is zero. If we compare all homicides, I’m having trouble finding a recent figure for Iraq. For the 12 months ending April 2004, the homicide rate in Baghdad was 76 per 100K, or three times as bad as the worst example above.
My current city of Baltimore had 276 murders in 2004. With a population approximately 650,000, that gives it a rate of about 42 per 100,000 per year.
Given that there hasn’t been a mass release of criminals from the jails (as there was in Baghdad in late 2002) I don’t know that it being about half as safe as Baghdad in this regard is a good thing (for Baghdadians) or a bad thing (for Baltimorians).
Nonetheless, much like Baghdad, there are places that are wise to be avoided and some that are simply no-go after dark. Unless, of course, you live there or are a cop/soldier patrolling there. However, I have no fear of leaving my home and have no plans to move away.
Looking around at US homicide statistics, it appears we are currently at the lower end of a nearly decade long decline. While it’s an exercise useful for little else than perspective, I tallied what the rate for DC was during the period that earned it the name of murder capitol.
During the 5 year span of ’89-’93, DC had an average annual murder rate of “457”:http://mpdc.dc.gov/info/districts/crstats.shtm with a population around 550,000. This gave it an average rate per 100,000 of 83.
Really, though, this sort of numbers game can be played all day with everything from national stats to local stats (Fallujah 2004 v. Hunt’s Point, NY 1971 is a fun one). It serves to give a perspective, but a very narrowly focused one at that. Comparing election turnout statistics should be another fun game. Anyone have the 1788 US election stats?
“If this were really true, the Confederacy, the Wehrmacht, and the Imperial Japanese Army would probably have won.”
But it is a well established fact that the Confederacy and Japan had the ability to continue resistance long after they surrendered. Much has been made of the vast number of ongoing casualties such a turn would have caused. Clearly something besides raw numbers accounts for unconditional surrender?
“Will is not a substitute for intelligent, well-executed strategy, nor for a creating favorable tactical situations, nor for deploying sufficient numbers, etc”
All of those things are aimed (when executed properly) to affect the will. As Napoleon said, morale is to the physical as 3 is to 1. Body counts are simply not a reliable guide to victory, particularly in a low intensity conflict. Does this mean killing the enemy is counterproductive? No. It means its not enough. Momentum is one of the keys to victory, because it is one of the keys to will power. Is the insurgency getting weaker or stronger? Is our ability to kill them getting better or worse? Are more or less enemies pouring in from Syria? These questions are far more important to everyone involved then how many bad guys were killed yesterday or last week or last year.
This isnt about defeatism, its about understanding reality in order to best realize our goals. One terrible danger I see for our side is the false belief that we will surely win a victory by simply hanging around long enough. We need to be far more proactive than that. Our enemy surely is.
AJL,
Mark kind of beat me to the punch. I would add, though, that in the case of the Confederacy, will couldn’t have been enough because the North had everything: manpower, industry, rail systems, financial systems etc. But I don’t believe we’re in the position of the Confederacy. In this case, we’re the ones with everything. A better analogy would be if, after the battle of Bull Run, the Yankees had said, “Oh my God! The sky is falling! These rebs are too tough and dedicated. They’ll keep fighting forever! We’ve already lost! Quick, get our troops the hell out of the South![sound familiar?]” That would have been a clear case of a failure of will losing a war. And,like the North, the only way we can lose this war is if we have a failure of will similar to what I outline above.
“But it is a well established fact that the Confederacy and Japan had the ability to continue resistance long after they surrendered.”
Is it so established? My understanding is that when we got to Japan, we were mystified as to how they kept fighting for so long. Their planes were made out of wood and paper by the end. The soldiers we captured were starving. There was a faction that wanted to keep fighting, but they were utterly delusional, and the emperor stepped in.
“It also shows why the insurgents must lose. They have no hope of evolving into an effective conventional army, which Mao said was the entire point of guerrilla warfare. They have no reliable source of supply and international support, which Mao said was required for success. And they have no political program that appeals to anyone outside of Western nitwits.”
This is kind of funny. It ignores the history of guerrilla warfare against conventional armies. Did the Afghani muj against the Soviets, the Viet Cong, the Algerians win with conventional armies? Of course not. But they still won. As far as the reliable supply and international support, much of the Islamic world is supplying jihadis and support of some kind.
As far as the “loss of will” referenced above it has been occurring for the last year or more as support for the war among the US public dwindles. See “Support For War In Iraq Hits New Low”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=716&e=27&u=/latimests/20050119/ts_latimes/supportforwariniraqhitsnewlow
I agree that the Iraqi insurgents have no clear political program and that any regime they install would likely be murderous and repressive. Although wishing away reality seems to be a major neocon strategy, failure is inevitable if policy is not based on an accurate appraisal of the situation.
“My understanding is that when we got to Japan, we were mystified as to how they kept fighting for so long. Their planes were made out of wood and paper by the end. The soldiers we captured were starving.”
Precisely my point. We wouldnt have been mystified if they had stopped fighting at what we deemed a logical point. But people rarely do. Japan certainly had spent a great deal of effort to turn their islands into in depth fortresses for a nation not intending to resist.
“There was a faction that wanted to keep fighting, but they were utterly delusional, and the emperor stepped in”
It is well to remember that this ‘faction’ was the one that started and executed the war in the first place. I have never seen any scholarship or evidence indicating they had lost their grip on control at any point before the nukes. Thats how fascist regimes work.
Where we are going off the tracks in this thread is expecting beligerants to act in a way that we deem logical from our perspective. Tom has it exactly right. You cant pile up the pros and cons of each side and come out with a definitive answer in a low intensity conflict, and that should be obvious. There are simply too many examples of desperate, ruthless guerillas outlasting vastly superior opponents.
Tom Volckhausen – Did the Afghani muj against the Soviets, the Viet Cong, the Algerians win with conventional armies?
As I pointed out before, the Viet Cong didn’t win. Saigon fell to the army of North Vietnam, not the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong were wrecked by their losses in the Tet Offensive and lost their political as well as their military influence. After the war, most of their leaders ended up as prisoners or fugitives. In the opinion of many North Vietnamese leaders, insurgent warfare was a failure in Vietnam. Others saw it as useful only as a transition to conventional war – the way Mao taught it.
Algeria fell because the French, under DeGaulle, chose to give it up. Our present situation is happy indeed compared to the awful mess the French were in at that time.
That goes double for Afghanistan. Even after the Soviet Union crawled back home to die, it took several years for the rebels to take control of the country. And the rebels had received a great deal of quality assistance from the US and China.
The romance of the invincible guerrilla goes pretty deep in left culture these days. That’s because nobody remembers all the losers. For every successful insurgency in history, there are 99 failed ones. It’s difficult to fight insurgents, but it’s even more difficult for insurgents to win if they have real opposition.
“For every successful insurgency in history, there are 99 failed ones.”
I’d love to see that list. Particularly with the levels of brutality required against the general populace required to effectively put down the insurgencies.
Mark Buehner: There are simply too many examples of desperate, ruthless guerillas outlasting vastly superior opponents.
The great Geronimo (now there’s a guerrilla for you) was as desperate and ruthless as any man who ever lived, but in the end he lost all the same. Likewise Pancho Villa, even though the Mexican government he faced was not “vastly superior” but weak, divided, and incompetent.
Insurgency succeeded in Cuba, though Baptista was anything but vastly superior. A counter-insurgency in Cuba failed, mostly because Castro’s force was superior. It failed in Boliva (bye-bye, Che Guevara), the Philippines, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Peru, and El Salvador.
Nicaragua is a special case. Sandino’s failed insurgency was followed by two “successful” insurgencies, backed first by Cuba then by us, which won by political revolution, not force of arms.
Spain is a special case, too. Franco was the rebel insurgent, but it was the Spanish Republic that made use of guerrilla warfare. They lost.
It’s worth noting that, not so many years ago, the US and Britain were the number one practitioners and exporters of guerrilla warfare, which we tried to deploy everywhere in the world against vastly superior Axis forces. Many heroic deeds were done, but Allied commanders were not overly impressed with the results. And the Germans were not expelled from France and Russia by Maquis and Partisans, but by armies.
There is an abiding faith on the left that popular revolutionary guerrillas must succeed. But as the Drill Sergeant said, “Bullets don’t go where you wish them to go, they go where they are aimed.”
Sure seem to be a lot of special cases. For the record, a special case is not defined as ‘that which disagrees with my premise’.
Regardless, im not in total disagreement. Guerillas dont always win, perhaps not even most of the time. But they do often enough against percieved colonial powers. The Brits, Germans, Dutch, Spanish, and French didnt just decide to cut loose their empires in the last 50 years on a whim. You can find some particular excuse for any example of defeat and point to that as the cause, but lump the last hundred years together and the pattern is clear, indigenous insurgencies are bad news for overseas powers. One can rarely get around the basic dilemna, crushing an enemy much weaker than you makes you a bully (even to yourself eventually), and losing to them makes you an idiot.
The point is, there _are_ lessons to be learned, and victory is possible. Some of the lessons are what you are pointing to. Is Syria playing a role wholly different than North Vietnam played in much of the Vietnam war? We know for certain that allowing sanctuaries and logistics for insurgents is a good way to lose. We know the importance of offering stability and prosperity as an alternative to chaos and uncertainty the rebels provide. Yet Iraqis still cant get _gasoline_ without waiting in line. Sitting on the biggest freaking oil well on earth. Electricity is still off most of the day. These arent wacky criticisms, they are no-brainers.
We can lose this war. The Baathist can possibly even win to some degree. Underestimating your opponent is a sure road to disaster, I think we can agree on that.
Andrew sez:
“I assume Armed Liberal will update the post to reflect the fact that the death rate comparison is explicitly terrorist homicides in Iraq to all homicides in the USA.”
Oh, come on, Andrew – I’m not comparing Detroit and Mosul as placs to live. The specific question – which was in my post – was this:
“How widespread is the violence, and how likely is that we’ll be able to contain and reduce it? Is it as widespread and deep as suggested by the opponents of the war? As narrow and shallow as suggested by the supporters?”
As I’ve said before, let’s argue about what I really say.
In this case, one of the arguments against the war is – essentially – that we’re losing, tha tthere is a widespread uprising of Iraqis who want the US out and are willing to use violence ot accomplish that.
OK, is that true?
The facts suggest not. If it were widespread, I’ll suggest that we’d see a rate of casualties far higher than what we’re used to as a murder rate in American cities.
Is that the right data to look at? Don’t know. I’m willing to look at other data.
But let’s come to conclusions from facts, rather than media impressions.
A.L.
Q: when was the last time the entire Shreveport-Bossier City, LA police force up and quit?
never. they are actually two different police forces in two different parishes.
why?
Because the analogy that AL is trying to make between Mosul and these cities is rather, um, inexact, and especially without that information.
prak, I’m simply asking one of Rumsfeld’s questions – “How do we know if we’re winning?” and trying to come up with an indicator.
The reason for comparing death rates is simple – if I presented you with a simple number (X per 100,000), how would you know how to react?
A.L.
And I’m saying that it’s a bad indicator. The best indicator is whether or not the Iraqis will stand and fight for their own country. A state that can’t enforce its own laws is no state at all. It doesn’t matter how many people are dying.
On will: Am I to conclude that our failure, so far, to protect Iraqi police and pro-American officials arises in a failure of American will, and not in insufficient (or badly deployed) forces? Phrased this way, we can put this “will” nonsense away once and for all. War is a force that gives us meaning, and I suppose that the desire to be subsumed in a collective and triumphant national will is one of the reasons warfare is so common in general and so popular in this specific case. But it doesn’t change the fact that no amount of blogger exhortation can compensate for the fact Joe Biden (and he claims Lindsey Graham in support) says our training program is a failure and overstates the number of Iraqi trained troops by a factor of thirty.
To tell you the truth, the idea that “will” can overcome the other side’s advantages (home turf, etc.) sounds more like Osama addressing suicide bomber recruits than a discussion of what, if any, alteration in American policy can salvage something from the IraqWagmire. And, to be frank, whatever you say about our opponents, just as in WW2, lack of will does not seem to be one of their failings.
I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a somewhat well-known New Age Nut who was condemning natural selection and genetics. His speculative explanation for the panda’s psuedo-thumb was that maybe on realizing its utility for eating bamboo, the pandas’ predecessor species began to think about having a thumb, maybe incorporating thumb-iedology into their lovemaking rituals. (No, I am not making this up.) The corollary that I threw in his face is that the same argument shows that couples who have a Tay-Sachs child must not have had the right ritual during their lovemaking. Put that way, it doesn’t sound so much inspirational as cruel.
As far as the murder rate in Iraq, here’s a calculation for you: the Palestinians have lost 800 persons per year since the Al Aqsa intifada began in 2000, out of a population of about 3.7 million. That’s about 22 per 100K per annum: right in line with America’s worst murder rates and less than Iraq. By your argument, Hamas and Islamic Jihad can claim that this rate of civilian losses is completely consistent with “winning”. Is this really an argument you care to make??!
Adding to Praktike’s comments,most of Glenn Wishard’s examples of failed insurgencies involved local insurgents against local governments.
More relevant to the US situation in Iraq are examples of local insurgencies against foreign occupation. Most examples of failed occupation involve protracted guerrilla war and eventual loss of public support in the occupying power, rather than victory for the insurgents due to conventional warfare.
Only if Iraqis will stand and fight for their government will it endure. US dominance on the battlefield is unquestioned but insufficient. The US public support for the Iraqi war was never overwhelming and continues to erode. Public patience will soon be exhausted.
Clearly there are examples of successful invasion/regime change in recent history (Grenada, Panama,etc.) and many examples of failed insurgencies, but the trajectory in Iraq is not encouraging .Estimates of insurgent numbers by the US military have grown from “a few dead-enders” to tens of thousands. Landmarks which supposedly showed the “light at the end of the tunnel” have come and gone with continued deterioration (“Mission Accomplished”, Saddam’s capture, “sovereignty”,etc.).
The election itself is already being added to this list; the new Administration talking points stress it is only a transitional assembly. The next freeway exit is the preparation of the Iraq Constitution.
Andrew, you couldn;t have explained our differences better. You seem to assume that the process is such that when some event takes place, the Good News Fairy flies down and announces that all is wonderful.
I see life as far more muddled and contingent than that. The things you list are small rocks being added to the pile. Will it ever be done? Yes, if we keep at it. Is there a Magic Rock that we’re looking for? Nope. Just hard work.
A.L.
Tom: Only if Iraqis will stand and fight for their government will it endure. US dominance on the battlefield is unquestioned but insufficient. The US public support for the Iraqi war was never overwhelming and continues to erode. Public patience will soon be exhausted.
I have no doubt that the insurgents can win, if we abandon Iraq and Syrian tanks are allowed to roll against Baghdad. Then the world can forget about Iraq, just as the heroes of the Sixties turned their backs on Vietnam and Cambodia.
As much as some people would dearly love to see that happen, it is not a thing that must inevitably happen. If you’re looking for a relevant example, how about Afghanistan?
Looking through that list of cities, they are from the part of the country David Hackett Fischer would classify as Backcountry or Walter Russell Mead as Jacksonian where a high murder rate is not unexpected, with a single exception; Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI, an extension of New England Puritan Yankeedom. I wonder why.
Armed Liberal Reductio ad absurdum number 1.
There is no Good News Fairy to announce good news. There are no announcements of good news. Therefore, there is good news.
Armed Liberal Reductio ad absurdum number 2, in the form of a dialog.
Relatively moderate Palestinian: Hamas, your policies have been a disaster; our people are getting crushed. We need a new plan.
Hamas terrorist: On the contrary, our shaheed losses including noncombatants are comparable to the murder rate endured by Detroit (where there are also many Arabs). War is won in the mind and will. Stay the course.
Four thousand scared “trained” troops is not a “small rock”, it is evidence of a complete failure to assemble a desperately-needed authentically Iraqi force to oppose the insurgents. What you call a small rock is, to mix metaphors, the drowning man grasping at straws. A few more straws won’t matter. Your own arguments work just as well when put (with minor changes) into the mouths of our opponents.
Andrew – I’m supposed to be slicing garlic for pasta, but quickly:
There’s lots of good news – we publish a bunch of it here on this site and Iraqi bloggers publish a lot of it as well. There’s no Magic Good News that will mean ollie-ollie-oxen-free; it’s going to be a long slog and we have to slog it.
Your Hamas example is missing one key element; the opposition in Iraq is trying as hard as they can to kill people; Israel is trying as hard as they can not to.
Am I happy witrh how things are going in Iraq? Nope. Am I happy with how my eight year old is doing with his fractions? Nope. Does that mean I throw my hands up and wlak away in either case?
What would you do, Andrew??
A.L.
Am I happy witrh how things are going in Iraq? Nope. Am I happy with how my eight year old is doing with his fractions? Nope. Does that mean I throw my hands up and wlak away in either case?
Unless public schools have SERIOUSLY gone downhill, the government is proceeding with a reasonably effective plan for teaching fractions to the 8-year-old. (Support on the “home front” being extremely important in the mission’s success, of course.)
Does anyone see a really good plan in place for destroying the insurgency? Many have said “hope is not a plan.” After reading the discussion above, I need to add “will is not a plan either.”
If we had anyone in charge other than Bush, I’d guess our plan is that after the Iraqi elections, we will quickly work out a deal whereby the new sovereign and democratic goverment of Iraq asks us to withdraw most forces and leave only “advisors” behind.
But I’ve learned to stop trying to divine a secret plan behind Bush’s actions. He has an unfortunate history of doing exactly what he promises.
Oberon’s fractions refutation plus “Will is not a plan” puts it better than I have, and with less snark. I hope you don’t think your child’s fraction problems must arise from lack of will.
But, A.L., your challenge for me to do better presupposes (as does all of the pro-war discussion now as then) that even our attenuated goals are attainable through some combination of resolve and better tactics. This reasoning is entirely circular. When you have a programming project that slips all its deadlines, whose chief architect shrugs and says “You have to go with the coders you have, not the coders you want”, where the CEO reiterates his strong support for the management team in charge of the project, well, in the software world there is no reason to think the project can be rescued by anybody. And to carry the analogy forward, it doesn’t matter if they’re really fantastic coders working on Quad Opterons with one guy piloting a Cray.
Now, to mix metaphors again. If you tell me not to challenge Garry Kasparov at chess, and I do anyway, and he lets me win a few gambit pawns in the opening (Kasparov likes the King’s Gambit against weak opponents), then he wins them back and I blunder away a rook for good measure, what do you say when I tell you, “OK, you sit down here and let’s see what you play.” Whatever you would say to me about taking over the chess game that’s now hopeless, that’s what I say to you about Iraq. All the king’s horses…
I defeated a chess grandmaster at a simultaneous exhibition once (I’m a weak Class A player), when a friend tipped me off that the “tea” GM X was drinking was in fact booze. So I played really passively, not my usual style, and held on until he was smashed and he sacrificed a piece for an attack I could see was inadequate. Maybe we can hold on in Iraq and hope the insurgents are drinking the same tea?
I’m not sure about Strategypage’s numbers. There have been 300-400k American troops in Iraq the past 2 years, and 1300 have died. That is many times higher than New Orleans or anywhere else. Making the assumption that Coalition has killed many, many more insurgents than the insurgents have killed Coalition soldiers, and that Iraqi civilians/Iraqi coalition allies are less able to protect themselves from insurgents than Coalition soldiers are, my guess is that violence in Iraq is much higher than almost anywhere in the world, and that the security situation is indeed really bad.
But so what? What are the implications of that? I have seen time and time again liberals confuse the point “Bush is making mistakes/following a suboptimal strategy” with the point “Bush is making mistakes/following a suboptimal strategy, and *unless he changes course, and does what I say, we’re probably going to lose*”. I don’t understand the deadly attraction for liberals of adding the sentence “if we don’t change course, and do what I say, we’re going to lose”. Then, when Bush *doesn’t* do what liberals say, and yet we still muddle through and eke out a victory, liberals look like prize jackasses, and justifiably so.
There are *no* circumstances under which the US will lose the WOT. The WOT is not about who will win and who will lose, its about preventing the bastards from killing people, and preventing the bastards from changing who we are and how we live our life, until they are destroyed or fade away. If we fight it well, relatively few people will die, and who we are and how we live, in a positive sense, won’t change. If we fight it badly, more people will die, and who we are and how we live will change for the worse. But we will not lose the WOT under any scenario. (I understand the dangers of complacency and underestimating the enemy, etc. etc.)
The comparison of Hamas and the US is an example of what I mean. Hamas’s endstate goal, to the extent they have any, is to drive Israel to the sea. Our endstate goals are much more noble and achievable, and our resources are much greater. Yes, the rhetoric about “resolve” and “will” is the same, but there is the important difference that we are not f***ing crazy.
The *only* thing that could lose us the war in Iraq is if a large proportion of Iraqis decided that they like the insurgents better than our Iraqi allies. There is no evidence that that is happening, though I have no trouble believing that many Iraqis hate both the insurgents and the US. Yes, civil war between the Sunnis and Shiites could break out. We can’t control that, it’s up to the Sunnis to decide what they want. Our job is to support the legitimate and reasonable Shiite and Kurdish leaders, and give any Sunnis who want it an alternative to insurgency. My guess is that the Iraqi troop situation will improve at some point after the elections, when Iraqi troops know concretely what they are fighting for, and are reassured that they are not fighting for the US.
I should say I’m not all that well informed about Iraq, and I could be completely wrong. And I don’t always agree with Juan Cole’s analysis of the past and his rhetoric on Israel, but his assessment of the present and his prescriptions on what to do going forward have been, IMO, consistently excellent.
Apologies for length. FWIW, More handwavy thoughts on Iraq & the WOT here and here, written for a liberal audience.
I’d also add that many liberals seem to see Iraq as “messy quagmire” or “botched surgery”, the implication being that once you’re in the quagmire or have butchered the patient, you can’t really make it right no matter how “resolved” you are. I view Iraq more as “very ambitious foreign aid project” the implication being that even a very badly run/inefficient foreign aid project does a lot of good as long as you devote sufficient resources to it.
“Syrian tanks are allowed to roll against Baghdad.”
Er., in what universe? A, it’s doubtful the Syrians have the logistical acumen to get their ancient Soviet tanks that far, and B, why on Earth would the Allawites want to deal with more unhappy Sunnis?
praktike: Er., in what universe?
Not in my universe. But we were imagining scenarios in which the insurgents win and the government of Iraq falls, the way the Republic of Vietnam fell. Which it did when, indeed, old Soviet tanks (WWII vintage T-34s, to be exact) rolled into Saigon.
The anti-war romantics probably think that such weaponry would be unnecessary, as every good Iraqi would welcome the anti-Yanqui insurgents with open arms. That’s what the North Vietnamese thought, too, but they had to use tanks instead.
“On will: Am I to conclude that our failure, so far, to protect Iraqi police and pro-American officials arises in a failure of American will, and not in insufficient (or badly deployed) forces?”
Clearly there is not suffienct American will to deploy sufficient forces to protect those targets. Will intertwines with priorities. Clearly protecting Iraqi politicians and police isnt a greater American priority than, say, keeping a force in South Korea, or not calling up more reserve units, or not having a draft. Im not suggesting these things, just noting that clearly America isnt (and cannot be) 100% dedicated to victory in Iraq. The insurgents can be, because they have so much less to lose. That is the argument about ‘will’. In this context it isnt some mushy new aged mind power. It is how far you are willing to go. The insurgents are willing to go whereever they can, do anything, kill anyone, lose as many allies, murder as many civilians, anything to win. Say what you will, that is a massive advantage in war, and the reason insurgents will always give foriegn occupiers trouble. We can leave, they cant. It tends to focus the mind.