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What Can We Win?
by James Glaser August 27, 2007 Our President, and it seems like more and more members of Congress are talking about winning George's War in Iraq. I guess what I don't understand is, what we are going to win? Another question that pops up is, who is going to lose? From what we can tell from media reports and testimony given to Congress, about five to ten percent of those insurgents fighting us are either al Qaeda or other non-Iraqi foreign fighters. That means that the ninety percent of those fighting us are Iraqi citizens. I understand if the Iraqis win, the Iraqis get their country back, but if we "win," what to we get? We have already told the world we are not there for Iraq's oil, and if we want the oil, really Iraq doesn't have much else. The place is mostly sand and desert once you get away from the banks of the two rivers they have. I guess if we win, we could put in a huge military facility, but you just know the troops we keep there would always be targets. If you think about it, those Iraqis fighting us are never going to quit. Remember, Iraq is their country, and it is all they have. So, they will try and kick us out for generations if need be. That means, no matter what we do, we can never win this war. If you watch the nightly news about Iraq, keep an eye on the background, and you will see that every place they film has been devastated. Rubble abounds. Baghdad was a real jewel of a city before the war. It is a war-crime to bomb civilian targets, and the world now knows we did just that. We bombed the electric companies, the water works, and the sewage treatment plants. We are now in our fifth year dropping bombs, shooting off artillery, running around with huge tanks, and constantly firing small arms. I have read that we have totally destroyed some cities, and Fallujah is a good example. Hundreds of thousands lived there pre-war, and now only thousands live there. We bombed the churches, the hospitals, and the schools. We don't even deny that destruction, in fact we admit it. This war has been a knock down, dragged out affair, and we have killed thousands. Nobody knows how many houses we have broken into in the middle of the night, nor do we know for sure how many Iraqis we have put in prison, but on both counts it is in the tens of thousands. That is a major reason that millions of Iraqi citizens have fled their country. They are scared, and they are scared of us! We, the United States of America are a powerful country, and in all honesty, Iraq is a pitiful country. Think back in history and you will see the same thing can be said about the United States and England back in 1776, only back then we were the pitiful country. We were the ones who wouldn't give up. We fought the British until they had enough and decided fighting America wasn't worth the men and treasure it was taking. I think the same can be said today about George's War in Iraq. The Iraqi freedom fighters (that is what they consider themselves) are not going to quit. They are going to keep right on bleeding us of our troops and our money until we decide to walk away. You can't win a war if the other side won't quit. It seems that is what happened in Vietnam. We killed hundreds of thousands of North Vietnamese regulars and almost totally destroyed the Viet Cong. On top of that we killed one million, some say three million civilians, but no matter how many we killed, the Vietnamese would not quit. We are at a different scale of bloodshed in Iraq now, but if you compare the first four and half years of this war with the first four and half years of the Vietnam War, you will see that the killing is about the same. We didn't win in Vietnam, and we are not going to win in Iraq. |
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