Heh heh heh...
Warblogfogfernugen rocks...

Straw man. nobody says "that we're losing." (Do you have a cite for that? Even one? I read a lot of liberal opinion and I haven't seen it yet. Have some conservatives have said it?)

What they have been saying is that it isn't going as well as it was hyped by the admin before the war (Richard Perle, for a start.)

Lots of blog comment board posters think we're losing (of course, someone on the Internet can be found to espouse just about any conceivable opinion).

It seems to be close to a consensus opinion on Tacitus's comment boards; there are people there claiming that our supply lines are nearly cut off, the cities can't be cracked, the army is powerless to fight suicide commandos, the whole Middle East is about to plunge into general war, etc. See also the comments on Agonist and Ted Barlow's blog. I myself indulged in some hyperbolic whining on Bjorn Staerk's comment board about how the political war is unwinnable because everyone seems determined to believe the worst about the US no matter what. There's a lot of pessimism out there right now.

Things will probably change once the military situation progresses a little further.

"Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder."
--Richard Perle

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/saddam/transcript2.html

There are admittedly few if any mainstream sources willing to say "we're losing the war with Iraq," although as Matt points out, it's fairly common wishful thinking among certain corners of blogdom.

Some further believe that, while we may not lose this war outright, Iraq will become a "quagmire." Again, it's far too early to make such a claim.

I think it's pretty obvious by now that Richard Perle was full of baloney. I can imagine how Tommy Franks reacted when he heard that.

Dean, I'm feeling charitable enough to think it isn't wishful thinking most of the time. I think that most of it is what Raymond Smullyan once called "fearful thinking", the equally irrational opposite of wishful thinking: a tendency to inflate fears, possibly out of an unwillingness to be disappointed or shocked later.

It is, of course, good to anticipate bad possibilities and prepare for them. But the fearful thinker dwells on catastrophes for which no physical preparation is possible, as a sort of emotional preparation.

This is something that I'm prone to myself; I tend to inflate potential bad news into irrational fears of apocalyptic catastrophe. But I've learned that I have this tendency, so I moderate it in my own head and it only gets out every so often.

By the way, the owners of the blogs I mentioned aren't spewing fears of catastrophe, just some of the people who visit and post comments there. (I mentioned Ted Barlow because he had just posted something about how he didn't think we were losing, and several people immediately replied to disagree.)

Matt, I think a better way to phrase it is the old "fog of war" saying. For the first time, everyone, not just the soldiers, is experiencing the day to day uncertainty of a campaign. They're having a hard time dealing with it. :)

As Pournelle likes to say "The trick is, not to lose your head..."

Since World War II, the United States was the leading participant in two major wars, Korea and Vietnam. The rest of the conflicts where relative brief skirmishes with limited objectives easily accomplished, such as Panama, Grenada or driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait. The Somali expedition was an utter failure that became a minor catastrophe after one dreadful firefight in Mogadishu. We were driven out of Lebanon by a single truck filled with explosives that took out a barracks filled with sleeping Marines. Afghanistan has been neither won nor lost. The government we put in power in Kabul will rule only until the US and other foreign troops are withdrawn.

Korea, after three years of terrible fighting, resulted only in modifying the borders between the two Koreas. Vietnam was an absolute defeat.

The factors that made Korea a waste of time and effort, and that defeated us in Vietnam was that the United States was fighting in accordance with mutually contradictory objectives and tactics of a type that our government had never allowed ourselves to be bound to during World War II. The
mutually contradictory objectives and tactics are these:

First, we seek to minimize casualties and even inconveniences among American and allied military personnel.

Second, we seek to provide the same degree of minimized casualties and inconveniences among enemy civilian populations.

This is exactly the pattern our civilian and military leaders are reverting to in the struggle to conquer Iraq, the contradiction of which will become much more obvious as we draw closer to the time when we must fight through the streets of Baghdad. It is a prescription for stalemate, which, under the political and diplomatic circumstances contextuating our decision to commence this war, will in fact constitute a national defeat.

For those of you who recall in horrow at the idea of largescale massacres of civilian populations, let me remind you that in the single night of March 10, 1945, some 300 low-flying B-29 Super Fortress bombers of the United States Army Air Force killed more Japanese civilians in Tokyo than all the American casualties that would be caused by the Korea and Vietnam wars combined. That was true shock and awe, exactly as our commander, General Curtis LeMay, intended with the support of the government and people of the United States.

I do not believe the Iraqis who are fighting against us are doing so only because Saddam's Baathist police, militia or elite guard units are holding guns to their heads. Many of them are resisting us for the same reason that I -- even in my old age -- would take up a gun and see to it that I killed at least one enemy invader and perhaps more than one, before I would inevitably be killed. It is called elementary patriotism.

I believe this factor will become even stronger as our forces draw up in a great circle around the outskirts of Baghdad. A large part of the five million people of Baghdad will regard Saddam as their national leader and will serve him and protect him regardless of our propaganda leaflets, alternative governments and food shipments.

Many of these people will fight us to the death. If we wish to conquer them, our forces may have to fight them as the German infantry fought the Russian infantry in the broken buildings of Stalingrad, or the American forces fought the Japanese in the similar broken buildings of Manila, the caves of Peleliu, the buried log forts on Tarawa, the caves and bunkers of Okinawa. If they do not surrender, we may have to crush them to death, one fighter at a time.

I do not believe we will find much in the way of "weapons of mass destruction" in the Iraqi arsenals, unless we snowflake them, to borrow the Chicago cop euphemism for planting evidence. And I do not really care how many Iraqis Saddam or his sons have killed or mistreated. I truly do not give a damn about such issues, whether they are true or propaganda-based.

Nor do I believe we will succeed in planting democracy among the Arabs or other middle east peoples, Sunni, Shia or whatever. In the middle east, the combination of Sharia law and violent nationlism will always win over western-style and western-imposed political solutions and concepts such as democracy.

This does not mean I do not support the Iraq war. I think that the conquest and control of the Iraqi oil fields is a valid reason for destroying their government and imposing a puppet regime of our own choosing. We need to control that oil in order to maintain our power around the world and to help stabilize the United States economy. At least until alternative fuels such as hydrogen power are ubiquitously available as a permanent substitute for petroleum derivatives.

I think that building large US bases in the middle of the Iraqi western desert, well out of reach of any urban Arabs and the inevitiable suicide bombers is another valid reason. It is only a matter of time before we lose our bases in Moslem countries where we do not control the government. Monarchies such as those of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf sheikhdoms and Jordan, and the elected presidency of Egypt are all living on borrowed time. We need local bases when and where they fit our plans for helping to shape and control events in such a turbulent area.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Fact of the matter is that the President himself has been saying for months that this war may take a much, much longer time than many people think. But hey, if you can find a guy who was in charge of a military commission to make an off-the-cuff remark about how easy things could go, that's all you need to prove that we've all been led astray, right?

Warblogfogfergnugen is the perfect word for it.

Make no mistake -- I am not anti-war. Nor do I believe we are losing or even close to achieving anything but total military victory.

For one thing, the war is only 11 days old. Just chill out, OK?

We'd do well to remember what Eisenhower said: "War plans are fine until the shooting starts."

The propaganda war is another matter, but I think it's too early to tell on that one.

That said, I think we shouldn't lose sight of the mindset that got us here in the first place (especially when we hear official after official say that the war is going "according to plan", whatever the hell that means in light of the Eisenhower dictum above).

Therefore, I'd like to provide the following quotes from various, um, influential public servants and individuals from the private sector:

Richard Perle, recently resigned chairman of the Defense Policy Board, in a PBS interview July 11, 2002:

"[Saddam's Iraq] is a house of cards...[It] will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder. "

Ken "Cakewalk" Adelman, former U.N. ambassador, in an Op-Ed for the Washington Post, Feb. 13, 2002:

"I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps.

Vice President Dick Cheney, on NBC's "Meet the Press" March 16:

"The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."

"My guess is even significant elements of the Republican Guard are likely as well to want to avoid conflict with the U.S. forces and are likely to step aside."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN March 23:

"The course of this war is clear. [Saddam's regime] will not be there in a relatively reasonably predictable period of time."

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a breakfast meeting March 4, 2003:

"What you'd like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. The best way to do that is have such a shock on the system, the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on the end is inevitable."

(Quotes via Salon.com)

Now I know, Dean, that you are thinking that none of these quotes goes against your previous comment, to wit:

if you can find a guy who was in charge of a military commission to make an off-the-cuff remark about how easy things could go, that's all you need to prove that we've all been led astray, right?

Here's the thing: I'm not sure we've been "led astray." That would assume that "we" paid a lot of attention to what these guys said in the first place. "We" didn't go in because of what Dick Cheney said; "we" went in because of what the Commander in Chief said.

One might make the case that he moved us there because of what these guys said to him, mightn't one, hmmm?

But that's another discussion.

BTW, you'll notice that the only guy "in charge of a military commission" was General Myers, who seemed to be hedging his bets, to say the least.

Which raises an interesting point: perhaps part of the perceived problem here is that the guys "in charge of a military commission" might have had their arms twisted by the Sec Defense for starters, not to mention VPOTUS.

We'll let the historians decide that one.

Suffice it to say that we're there now and we have to win. Failure is simply not an option.

Saddam must be crushed.

And, besides, I agree with Arnold's point about US military bases in the middle of the Iraqi desert.

You know we're the biggest dog on the block when our attack strategy is essentially the same as the aliens' in Independence Day (minus the mass destruction, of course)...

Of course, the former-pilot President is on our side this time, so all we need to worry about now are divorced lapsed Jews, Will Smith, and drunken-yet-plucky has-beens.

You're right. None of that contradicts what I said, Ara. ;-)

I've seem a lot of people expressing cautious optimism--none of which has even been proven wrong yet, except the "whiff of gunpowder" line. In the meantime, in their public statements for the last six months, the President, Ari Fleischer, Rumsfeld, and others have said over and over and over and over that it may take a long time and may not go according to plan.

Let's remember those quotes as well as these optimistic ones, eh what?

I know how it is: when you don't vote for a President, you are more likely to be less trusting of the administration. When you do vote for a President, you are more likely to be trusting. To an extent, this is all healthy. But I remember so many cautionary statements out of senior administration officials, I'm rather irked to see the optimistic ones--most of them very guarded--being brought up as if they are highly significant.

And sorry on Perle--he was the chair of a military policy board, not the chair of a commission.

Arnold, there is no such thing as "hydrogen power". It takes power to generate hydrogen, "there are no hydrogen wells".

Nuclear power using hydrogen for energy storage and transport is a feasible power source though. Or space based solar.

I think that it's wise to stop thinking in terms of whether "the Iraqi people" will be happy to be liberated or not. Once you subtract out the influence of the Mukhabarat and the Fedayeen, I'd guess that it will come down to what I said would happen before the war: we'll get sympathy and assistance from Kurds and Shiites far from Baghdad, nothing but hate from relatively well-off Sunnis near and inside Baghdad, and some sort of continuum of attitudes in between.

This is simple human nature: the people who will like us will be the people with the most to gain and the least to lose.

Keep in mind also that Saddam has an ideology, which is ethnic pan-Arab nationalism. (This seems to have gotten relatively little coverage in US media; I've noticed that most Americans can't say what the Ba'ath party theoretically stands for. But it's probably important for understanding the situation, just as some acquaintance with the principles of Naziism or Communism would have been important in previous wars.) People who identify strongly with that-- who are likely to be Arab and live in the middle of the country-- will fight hard, and people who are its victims won't.

I couldn't say it better about the current situation in Iraq then this, so I won't try. (at least not in this post)

"It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones."
--- Machiavelli

Rodney Dill

>>Warblogfogfergnugen

Dean,

Do you mind if I pronounce that word in English?