September 3, 2003
Quagmire
“Isn’t there anything faster than a microwave?” - Homer Simpson waiting for his muffin to heat
There have been wars that have lasted for decades. A few even went a hundred years or more. Yet to an increasing number of people in modern day America it’s inexplicable that the military action in Iraq is not over. Surely by now we ought to have wiped from the streets of Baghdad every single sniper, terrorist and art thief. What’s taking so long? For cryin’ out loud isn’t there anything faster than a microwave?!
Though I doubt it penetrate a true believer’s amour I’ll go through the motions of pointing out some prewar predictions.
1. American casualty estimates ran from five to ten thousand. Remember how newscasters gravely asked if America was prepared to accept the sacrifice of that many of our sons and daughters?
2. Even the people who said Iraq had no WMDs were concerned Saddam might use them.
3. We were going to have to go house to house in a bloody guerrilla war we weren’t prepared for. Thousands of our servicemen would be slaughtered.
4. Al Qaeda has no links with Iraq. Iraq is too secular.
5. It’s another Vietnam (somebody always says that)
6. Millions of innocent Iraqis would die as we turned their cities to rubble
7. We couldn’t win. Seriously, people said that. (Of course most of them were from Hollywood or Washington so I don’t know if we can count that as an expression of human thought)
Fast forward and compare
1. We were somewhere around two hundred KIA when the “official” fighting ended. We’re up around three hundred now. Three hundred is six percent of five thousand. If you were a general and you had only six percent of anticipated casualties would you be happy? If there are two hundred fifty thousand troops in the gulf just over one tenth of one percent have died. If you were in charge of the operation would you take that?
2. The popular version is there is no evidence of WMDs. Not true. There is evidence. Oh, we haven’t found a missile sitting on the launch pad all gassed up and ready to go with “Danger: Biochemical warhead” written on it. But it’s not that simple. I spent twenty four years in the engineering departments of leading defense contractors. I can tell you that most test equipment looks about the same no matter what it’s used for. If a biochemical weapons lab walked up and bit me on the butt I’m not sure I’d recognize it for what it was. There’s a lot of work to be done. It is entirely reasonable that finding sufficient proof to convince skeptics might just take awhile.
3. Thousands of our service men haven’t been slaughtered. They seem to be holding their own against the enemy. More of theirs are dying than ours. What’s really weird is that many of the same people who warned there would be guerrilla warfare now express complete surprise that it has come to pass. Instead of simply bragging “I told you so” they suggest Bush, Rumsfield, etc. didn’t know it would happen! If so, they would be the only ones.
4. If Al Qaeda’s cause is so different from Iraq’s then why are Al Qaeda terrorists now pouring into Iraq to join the fight?
5. Vietnam and Korea were wars where the purpose was not to win. America simply will not tolerate that again. To say “this is another Vietnam” is to suggest politicians have learned nothing about getting re-elected.
6. Millions of Iraqis haven’t died. We didn’t reduce their cities to rubble. In fact, our precision munitions allowed a miraculous lack of civilian death.
7. The people who were saying “we can’t win the war” have simply switched to saying “we can’t win the peace”. They were wrong then. They’re wrong now.
The truth is we went through Iraq like a buzz saw through butter. It took about a month with less than three hundred American soldiers killed. Some would consider that as one of the most efficient military operations in history.
Others call it a quagmire. Like a six year old in the back seat they keep shouting “are we there yet?”. And while they criticize the administration for not knowing everything (including the future) they demand a down to the penny assessment of what it’s going to cost. They criticize endlessly but fail to offer alternatives.
This is the way it is. We’re in Iraq and we’re going to install some form of democratic government. We’re not leaving until it’s done. How long will it take? Well gee Homer, we don’t have anything faster than a microwave but we’ll try.