Conventional ignorance

Victor Davis Hanson:

Washington is an echo chamber. One pundit, one senator, one reporter proclaim a snazzy “truth” and almost immediately it reverberates as gospel. Conventional wisdom about Iraq is rarely questioned. A notion seems to find validity not on its logic or through empirical evidence, but simply by the degree to which it is repeated and felt to resonate.

Take the following often repeated statements.

“There is no military solution to Iraq.”

Well, obviously it is true in the sense that in this postmodern age we were not going to see another Curtis LeMay flatten a Fallujah or Ramadi.

But the miraculous political achievement of postwar Japan or Europe was the dividend of a military solution: the destruction of wartime fascism and the prevention of its reemergence by vigilant military policing.

Likewise, there will only be peace in a constitutional Iraq when citizens believe that they can safely participate in government, express themselves somewhat freely, prosper economically, and feel safe from internal and external threats.

In order to do this, an army and a national police force that purport to prevent thugs, militias, and terrorists from killing those with whom they disagree, are required. In war-torn Iraq, such forces will only emerge as confident and capable when they know that the U.S. is stronger than their enemies, and can offer them a window of security to train and strengthen.

...

“We haven’t tried regional diplomacy.”

This is another red herring. Regional players all had interests in Iraq. The problem was that they were never quite our own.

So before talking, they first wanted to try their hand at mischief and advantage, and only later, when and if forced, would resort to diplomacy. Iran wanted to create a Shiite buffer state; the Gulf monarchies and Jordan to ensure that Sunni insurgents won and thereby to remind their own dissident minorities to respect the status quo; Turkey to thwart an independent Kurdistan; and Syria to do anything that caused the United States trouble.

In 2003, and again in 2007, these regional powers wanted to talk with the United States since they had a hunch we were winning — and thus they might be able to find advantage from, or were terrified of, the local power broker. But in 2004-6 we were perceived as mired in Iraq, weak, and not worth the verbiage.

...

“We need to talk to Iran.”

We always have had some sort of dialogue ongoing in a backchannel capacity with Iran. But mostly these negotiations over the last thirty years have centered on problems caused by Iranians: they take hostages — and want to discuss the price of their release; they send out terrorists — and want to discuss the price to call them off; they cheat on international accords — and want to discuss the price to comply.

...

Iraq is the worst (fill in the blanks) in American history.”

Critics are not allowed to stop history at a convenient point — at Abu Ghraib, the pull-back from Fallujah, or the bombing of the dome at Samara — and then pass final judgment whenever they wish. If Lincoln had quit after Cold Harbor, Wilson after the German Spring offensive of 1918, or Roosevelt after the fall of the Philippines, then their presidencies would have failed and the U.S. today would be a far weaker — or perhaps nonexistent — country.

History instead will assess Iraq when it ends — either in defeat through a precipitous American withdrawal and collapse of Iraq, or in victory after a gradual redeployment of American troops as Iraqi forces step in to ensure the stability and security of a constitutional state.

...

Those who claim Iraq is the "worst" whatever are ignorant of warfare and ignorant of history. They are projecting their desires for and end result that can be used to prevent the US from the use of force in the future rather than any reality about the war itself. Our own civil war was was much more ineptly fought and certainly much more costly in terms of casualties. There is also a tendency to look at warfare as a manufacturing process in which you control the actions of all sides, rather than recognizing you are dealing with a thinking enemy that resists your efforts and tries different means to to react to your efforts.

As for the "no military solution" bromide, the surge suggest that the military can achieve an acceptable solution that gives the political players an opportunity to win. War is the continuation of policy by other means. When those means have been successful, the policy can be implemented.