Erroneous Assumptions Will Cloud Debate on the Petraeus Report (Revised)

Erroneous Assumptions on the part of both the supporters and opponents of the Bush Administration will keep the debate surrounding the Petraeus report from bearing fruit.

The first task of solving any problem is to determine the true nature of that problem. These assumptions will drastically reduce the probability will allow the true nature to be revealed.  Here are the assumptions.

1. We’re fighting to win. No, we are not. We are trying to buy the victory instead of earn the victory. Hell’s Angels By-Law #13 would be in effect if we were fighting to win. In case you don’t know, Hell’s Angels By-Law #13 is the one that made the Hell’s Angels the most feared outlaw biker gang in the world. That By-Law is, “When a non-Angel swings on an Angel, all (emphasis added) other Angels will participate.” You get the stupid so and so who started the fight down on the ground and put the boots to him until he can’t get up. A country that wants to be the baddest of the bad doesn’t tolerate troop shortages when its way of life is on the line. It doesn’t bankrupt itself hiring mercenaries. It wins its wars the old fashioned way. It earns the victory through the total commitment and sacrifice of its population. And if this war does not require that kind of sacrifice, then is our way of life truly at risk? Or are we being told it is so we will fall in line and support that war because we think our leadership is too honorable to lie to us for personal gain?

2. Anyone who opposes the war is an unpatriotic coward who doesn’t have the stomach to fight. There is a distinct difference between opposing stupidity in how a war is fought and being opposed to war itself. If you do not weed your garden, then the weeds will take it. If you do not oppose tyrants, then tyrants will take you and everything you hold dear and grind them into dust.

3. This is an unlawful war that we were misled into and we should simply walk away. Plainly said, there are some in this country who think that nothing is worth fighting for and nothing is worth the cost of defending the way of life we enjoy. I have nothing but contempt for those misguided souls. See #2 above.  To continue the thoughts there, wars are not just fought militarily. They are fought economically, diplomatically and politically as well. Like it or not, we are engaged in this conflict of our making. For us to be able to walk away, we must put an emphasis on the other three means we have yet to demonstrate to date.

4. (A variation on #1.) What we’re doing must be working because we haven’t had another terrorist attack in this country since 9/11. Why should any terrorist come to America when they have so many targets of opportunity with home field advantage? The reality is that we are on the verge of the worst strategic defeat in our history. As we have written of elsewhere in this blog, we are doing exactly what Osama Bin Laden wanted us to do. The last time I checked, one of the keys to victory in any kind of competition is not to do what your opponent wants you to do.

If we want to win this fight, then we need to ditch these erroneous assumptions and start demanding real answers to questions like these:

We are having limited success with a military solution in Iraq. What is the cost of duplicating that success all over Iraq? (Likely answer, get rid of contractors, start the lottery draft in order to expand the Army to its needed size, fight a holding action until we can re-invade the country, be prepared to stay there 20-25 years to essentially subjugate the Iraqis for a generation, and either tax ourselves into the poor house or bankrupt ourselves. And we do all this to be able to continue pursuing a course of action having no better than a 25% chance of success.)

Since the majority of Americans aren't likely to like the answer to the first question, what are the economic, diplomatic and political alternatives we can pursue? What are their costs and likelihood of success? The unfortunate fact is that we do face a threat to our way of life if radical Islamists are allowed to gain control of a country and harness their hatred of America to the wealth and power of a nation-state. So doing nothing is not an option. But alternatives do exist. There’s a new book out called Statecraft that enumerates many of those options.

How did we get in a fix like this and what do we need to do to avoid doing this again in the future? The fact is, as I have written and spoken about here and elsewhere, there were safeguards erected after Vietnam to keep us from being in the very situation we find ourselves. Obviously, those safeguards didn’t work. We need new ones and I have some recommendations, but they are too lengthy for this entry.