We debate the War in Iraq and the War in Afghanistan, but these are merely campaigns, engagements or battles in a much greater conflict.
We can afford to lose a battle or two, or even the majority of the engagements; but we cannot afford to lose the war.
This is a war between radical Islamists and the modern world; a world of reason, tolerance and individual liberty. When we lose sight of this center of conflict and frame the conflict in the small subtext of a single nation we quit too soon. American’s greatest weakness is patience: we want our wars fast and cheap.
When we use language to minimize the threat – such as referring to the strategy of isolating and annihilating terrorists as “ wac-a-mole” then we eliminate a tool from an ever shrinking bag of options.
As controversial as the Iraq and Afghanistan Campaigns were they succeeded in eliminating ten thousand terrorist operatives. We went over ten years after 9/11 without another attack, not without effort or intent on the part of our mortal enemies. We forget that this seemed unlikely at the time.
Allowing ISIS to retake Iraq is a giant step backward, but many of the battles we have lost before were critical to our ultimate success. The soldiers of the American Revolution learned what did and did not work before their victory in Yorktown. The southerners’ early victory simply made clear what the North needed to accomplish for victory. Our initial setbacks in North Africa (before Rommel’s eventual defeat) were great lessons in the operations and equipment of the German Army.
The world will never accept the brutality of ISIS or the many other variations of Islamic terrorists. By underestimating the nature of the conflict and the brutality and resilience of our enemies we will cost lives and fertilize dangerous ground, but this can be reversed. Once we understand that the enemy is not vanquished, and that diplomacy is very limited without force, we may find the resolve to continue the fight and stay with it until it is finished. Unfinished wars can be more deadly than we thought the war would ever be.
Cheers for Obama for actualizing his promised withdrawal from Iraq may prove as hollow as Chamberlain’s claim to have achieved “peace in our time.”
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