Iraq and the American Public
I don't like sports analogies too much. They are banally overused, trite, and often oversimplistic. But when it comes to Iraq and the American public, I grudgingly think a boxing metaphor is a fairly good way to look at the situation.
The US conflict with Iraqi insurgents is in some ways pretty similar to a heavyweight prize fight that, on paper, seems to be a mismatch. As the lone superpower, the US has the glitz, the big knockout punch, and the best training money can buy. The US has a track record for getting into the ring with mismatched opponents and scoring early knockouts in the kind of flashy style that endears them to those who like a scintillating show. Given this, what kind of strategy do you think a wily opponent would employ to try to offset these advantages?
As it turns out, the US title-machine has a rather glaring weakness. This weakness was glaringly exposed in one previous fight, and was hinted at in other fights as well. Put simply, the US doesn't do well when it is forced to fight into the later rounds. Much of the US's reputation is built on quick, overwhelming knockouts that happen early on in the bout. But what happens when the opponent survives the onslaught of the early rounds and forces the US to answer the bell past round 3? We are discovering the answer in Iraq.
The insurgents in Iraq might be fanatics who have no qualms in killing fellow Arabs who are completely innocent and just want to live in peace. But this doesn't automatically make the insurgents stupid. The insurgents know a bit of history, and they also know a thing or two about the American public. America is an instant gratification culture. Perseverance is no longer a virtuous quality, but is instead a quality employed by those who lack the courage to liberate themselves from bad circumstances. Everywhere in our culture today, perseverance has become the signature characteristic of the weak, not the strong. This, of course, is Biblically backwards, but hey, welcome to America.
The insurgents in Iraq know this. Their strategy for victory is not to outgun the US, outtrain the US, or outfinance the US. Their strategy is to outlast the US. They are banking on the assumption that the US cannot and will not go the full 15 rounds. They believe that if they can force the US to answer the bell in the later rounds, the US will get tired, there will be bickering in the US's corner, and the US will begin to doubt the outcome of the fight and get nervous and defensive rather than stay on the attack. The insurgency wants to make this a battle of wills, because a battle of wills, by definition, isn't over in 2 rounds. They are counting on the US being unwilling to absorb the kind of punishment and pay the kind of price that has to be paid to win a grind-it-out fight.
From where I sit, the insurgency has employed the exactly correct strategy for defeating the US in Iraq (and beyond?). In America, cultural attitudes are simple - if victory is not quick, complete, and mostly painless, then there is only failure. The assumption of the insurgency is that the American public simply lacks the will to see this thing through. The US wants a quick knockout when it gets into the ring. The insurgency assumes that if winning the fight means absorbing lots of cuts, bruises, a broken nose, sore ribs, and lost teeth, that's the last kind of fight the US wants to be in and will bow out rather than hunker down. It's a good assumption considering that one of the two major political parties in the US has embraced this position and wants to lead based on this position.
Victory will not be achieved in Iraq for a variety of reasons. Bush and the Republicans were terribly naive to think that a land that had not known democracy in who knows how long would totally embrace it the second we showed up. All the problems on the ground since then have been based on this terribly false assumption. The Democrats are making the same false assumption now in believing that withdrawal will magically make things better. The Democrats are making the same mistake on the back end that Republicans made on the front end. But just as most of the American public bought into the faulty Republican assumptions on the front end, they now seem poised to fall for the same errors on the back end if the polls are to be believed. What do these two things have in common? A disdain for perseverance and a lust to change course at the first sign of trouble. The problems in Iraq are weighty indeed, in no small part because there are no quick fixes. The US has persevered just long enough to know that it doesn't want to persevere anymore. The Iraqi insurgency will not achieve a knockout, but they will win this bout by unanimous decision because 'they want it more than we do'.
posted by Jason Foster @ 12:32 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Where is the line between perseverance and stubborn pride? Persevering in something that started on a false premise (at best) and where the administration did not heed counsel from its own military advisors on what was truly needed in people, equipment and supplies to hold the country, subdue the insurgency and intall a democracy seems equally imprudent to setting an arbitrary timetable for disengagement. I appreciate that there are no quick fixes, but that does not forgive having no exit strategy before you go in. The administration did not answer a few fundamental questions prior to invading which is a great contributor to the situation we're in, those questions being:
1. What happens when we have deposed Hussein and his regime (who takes over, how will that happen and what is the timeframe for that), and
2. What resistance are we likely to encounter once we've won but before we can extricate?
By not answering these questions, no effective planning was put into place and we have consequently been playing catch-up ever since. I don't know that leaving unilateraly is the right answer (I would tend to think it's not), but it seems like we are now just in a situation where pride, stubbornness and short-sightedness got us here and now we have to persevere. Having to persevere in that situation is not anything people should be excited about and perhaps a change that brings accountability (which has been altogether absent since this started due to the 1-party system in place currently) would not be a bad thing.
On a different but related note, tying perseverance to Christian ethic is a tenuous place to be in this situation. If Bush has been acting in pride (which I believe he has) his behavior is likely not delighting God and should not be applauded or emulated.
Just a few thoughts from the other side of the political spectrum.
Howdy. I'm not directly tying a Christian ethic of perseverance to this situation. I am pointing out that the Christian ethic of perseverance is lacking in the larger culture, that we can see it just about everywhere, that everyone with an ounce of observational skill around the world knows it, and that the rush to disengage from Iraq is consistent with it, along with the strategy of the insurgency. The insurgency is playing to our weakness, and we are obliging. I'm not necessarily advocating perseverance in Iraq, though I probably am given the alternatives. What I am saying is that if we want to lecture Bush on all the questions he didn't answer before going in and justify our position on the war based on that, we oughta have the integrity to do the same with ourselves. We oughta be willing to ask questions about the way in which the insurgency is exploiting our own unanswered questions.
Nobody knows whether Bush acted in pride/stubbornness or not. At best, we can speculate, and these speculations are based as much on our own predispositions of Bush (which may or may not be informed by facts) as anything else. This kind of basis for drawing larger conclusions is the genuinely tenuous starting point for formulating public policy because it attempts a speculative rehash on history to guide present and future policy. This is unstable ground to say the least.
I'm no fan of Bush, as my original post indicated. I think Bush acted in haste in going into Iraq, and I think Democrats are acting in haste now in wanting to get out regardless of the consequences. To me, both actions, and the majority public support that both enjoyed at their respective times, speak to the lack of perseverance that defines our society. The world knows this, and we are being exploited because of it. The stubbornness is in not seeing ourselves the way the world does, because we're too prideful to admit this kind of weakness. It's much easier to blame a political leader/party, a bad military plan, and bad decisions on the ground for the quagmire than it is to look in the mirror and ask whether the insurgency would be as determined as they are if they believed the American public was more determined than they are. The insurgency is fighting the way they are for a lot of reasons, but one of them is because they know they can win because we the public won't have the stomach to fight over the long haul. We've given them hope of victory, and in typical American style, we pass the buck because it's the easy thing to do.
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