I am not asking for strategies on how to win the war. If I was, I’d put this in Great Debates.
I am not asking if the USA should be in the war. If I was, I’d put this in Great Debates.
I am not asking if the war is justified or a bad idea or anything like that. If I was, I’d put this in Great Debates.
I’m putting this in General Questions, because my question is this: Is there a clear objective which the fighters are fighting for? And if so, what is it? Is there an objective criteria which, if it occured, would signal to all that the USA has won or lost?
For example, is there a specific individual, organization, or government, which the USA would like to announce that it has surrendered?
The pro-war politicians like to call it a “War On Terror”, but I really don’t know what that means. The enemy is not clearly identified. When the war started, I got the impression that the goal was to capture Saddam, and that if they would be successful at this, the war would be over and we’d live happily ever after. Clearly, that has not happened. The goal has morphed into something else, and I can’t figure out what it is. Anyone else know?
I believe that the goal is a free, democratic Iraq, with the basic protections of US law: freedom of speech, assembly, and religion along with more or less universal suffrage.
Whether that’s attainable, or even what the Iraqi people want, is a subject for GD
A significant portion of the Iraqi population recognizing and cooperaing w/ the central government. The fact that the gov’t. isn’t making any progress in this direction is what constitues a failure of the Bush administrations plan.
Of course, how to define winning is part of the problem. The goalposts are misty and keep moving. But generally speaking, I think what the White House is looking for is some sort of stabilization on the security front, so there can be some effort at political reconciliation – i.e., bringing the Sunnis on board to participate in the political process, and not the insurgency. Then reconstruction of the country’s battered infrastructure can start to make some inroads, the oil can flow again, and we can go home.
However, there’s a chicken-and-egg quality to much of this. Political reconciliation depends on improved security which depends on political reconciliation – that kind of thing.
As I said in the GD thread about Harry Reid, there is and was more than one objective.
1.Remove Saddam. Done
2.Eliminate WMDs. Moot (at least apparently so)
3.Prevent Iraq from becoming a “haven for terrorists” and a threat to the US. Incomplete (but worse now than before the war)
4.Get democracy going in Iraq. In progress
5.Use a democratic Iraq to spread democracy across the M.E. Incomplete (more like a very long term goal)
#3 is the big one, at this point. I honestly don’t know how you determine whether or not you’ve succeeded on that point. As long as there is a disaffected Sunni minority in Iraq (or if Iraq is partitioned), there will be some sympathy for al Qaeda among that population.
You can’t win a war against an enemy like “the insurgency.” You can only win a war against an enemy who is also trying to win the war. If the only thing your enemy is trying to do is not lose, they can hold you at bay forever.
Presumably, when there is not organization or collection of individual civilians either A) not attacking us or B) not attacking each other. I think B is a necessary inculsion, because if A was the only criteria, there’s no reason not to pull out now. Since if we’re not there, we can’t really be attacked.
The biggest step toward accomplishing both tasks is to see a civilian goverments with enough repect and legitimacy to appease all sides, and enough power to quell the ~5% of any population who will violently disagree, no matter what.
Only when that happens can we pull out (goal A) without leaving a civil war in place (goal B).
I don’t believe there is any agreed-on objective, or set of objectives, that hasn’t shifted enough to show that it wasn’t really the high level objective in the first place. John Mace hit most of the contenders.
We don’t know if there is a difference between the objectives we are/were told, and the actual objectives. At the time the war was proposed, there was not much talk about a democratic Iraq, and there was plenty about Al Queda and 9/11.
Since Iraq is the main battle ground in the war on terror, I would guess that the end of terrorism would be a victory condition.
That means that the earliest possible time for victory is when the Universe ends. I should point out that the end of the Universe will also effectively end the war on drugs and our fight against ignorance.
I believe the original intent was to depose Saddam and install a government friendly to, or dependent upon, the U.S. gov’t. It was a stupid plan, plotted by a few who were more impressed w/ their plan than they were at dealing w/ reality. The primary objective was, of course, oil. I’m absolutely convinced that, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et.al., never believed that Saddam was a serious threat to the U.S., or even Isreal. They simple took advantage of circumstances to implement a plan that had, in general, been cooked up in the late 90’s. I strongly suspect that Bush was a late convert to this plan and the others managed to bring him onboard, not a difficult feat given his abilities.I do believe that these people were so self deluded that they actually believed the Iraqi population would welcome the U.S. military w/ open arms. They ignored many warnings, by Powell, by Pentagon planners, by NGO organizations that understood M.E. politics, by CIA analysts, by other foreign gov’ts., and the result was very predictable.
My previous post addressed what would constitute “winning” now, since the original plan never had a chance. I believe that we will pull out within a year and, after a few months, maybe a year or so, of turmoil, there will be a coalition of Iraqi tribes which will establish a theocratic gov’t. There will be no democracy. The wild card in this is the Kurds. They are united, tough, independant, and they will likely try to establish their own borders. The U.S. will be left to deal w/ whoever controls the oil.
I’m sure that the Bush administration would hope that no one noticed, but along with the ‘surge’ the goal changed from getting the country under control to getting one city under control. It may change again to getting one (green) zone under control. When you go from defining success from controlling a country to controlling a city, and then have trouble controlling a single part of that city it doesn’t matter what the definition of winning is. It probably won’t happen.
You have a good idea. Unfortunately, in practice, this is nothing more than a collection of people’s opinions. Instead of putting it in IMHO, I think Great Debates will allow something that GQ and IMHO won’t.