When to declare victory?
It was Senator George Aiken who said that American strategy in Vietnam should be to “declare victory and go home.”
A quick Google search reveals that this advice is being repeatedly given regarding Iraq and has been for years. However, the general point of both Aiken and his modern day imitators is that the declaration would be disingenuous but useful. It's just an excuse to get the hell out.
But there is a problem here. At some point it really does make sense to sincerely declare victory and go home (unless one genuinely thinks the best thing to do is stick around 50 years as we did in Germany and Japan.) One does not have to kill every single insurgent or terrorist before a victory declaration is real.
I wonder if we are closing in on that point. For instance, we are getting fairly close to the point where Iraq can be fairly said to no longer have an insurgency problem. Instead, it has a terrorism problem. After the conclusion of the current campaign to clear and hold all of the insurgent held towns in Anbar province, all, or very nearly all, of Iraq will be in control of the elected Iraqi government. If the insurgency can no longer hold territory but just blow up people, perhaps that is no longer an insurgency but simply “an acceptable level of violence” (see P.J. O'Rourke's Give War a Chance) akin to the situation in Northern Ireland for a long time. I'm not sure we need to stick around long for that.
A quick Google search reveals that this advice is being repeatedly given regarding Iraq and has been for years. However, the general point of both Aiken and his modern day imitators is that the declaration would be disingenuous but useful. It's just an excuse to get the hell out.
But there is a problem here. At some point it really does make sense to sincerely declare victory and go home (unless one genuinely thinks the best thing to do is stick around 50 years as we did in Germany and Japan.) One does not have to kill every single insurgent or terrorist before a victory declaration is real.
I wonder if we are closing in on that point. For instance, we are getting fairly close to the point where Iraq can be fairly said to no longer have an insurgency problem. Instead, it has a terrorism problem. After the conclusion of the current campaign to clear and hold all of the insurgent held towns in Anbar province, all, or very nearly all, of Iraq will be in control of the elected Iraqi government. If the insurgency can no longer hold territory but just blow up people, perhaps that is no longer an insurgency but simply “an acceptable level of violence” (see P.J. O'Rourke's Give War a Chance) akin to the situation in Northern Ireland for a long time. I'm not sure we need to stick around long for that.
posted by Harsh Pencil | 11/30/2005 10:17:00 PM
There have been many little victories already... the day Saddam was captured, and the first election. The December 15 election will be the final victory. After that we should start to draw down troops. We should maintain a smaller presence there for some time to keep influence on the Iraq military so that it cannot participate in a coup.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, there Air Marshall! I, for one, was not advocating leaving before the job was finished or that we have not acheived big victories. I was simply making the point that at some point, one has achieved a victory and it is time to come home and that may be soon. I am definitely not arguing that that time is now, even if the boots on the ground like your friend disagree and that we should pull them out against their wishes and better judgement. As Bush said yesterday, these judgements have to be made with a huge amount of input from the military. They have better information than we do. But all this doesn't contradict my point: There will come a time when a truthful declaration of victory can be made. At that point, and not before, we should consider being prepared to leave, and there is nothing wrong with speculating that that point might be nearing.
Victory is truthfully declared only when it has actually been achieved. So I think we agree.
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