What's Our Goal In Iraq?

As far as the Times is concerned, it isn't victory, it's "extrication."

To whit, a Week in Review piece titled, "Saving Face and How to Say Farewell."

The impact of that defeat on the British national psyche is now obscure, but nearly two centuries later, as the Americans and their British allies seek to extricate themselves from Iraq, the story of how a superpower looks for a dignified way out of a messy and often unpopular foreign conflict has become a historical genre of sorts. As the pressure to leave Iraq increases, that genre is receiving new and urgent attention. (My emph.)

Keep in mind that this man writes straight news reporting for the Times on and from Iraq. That's part of the value of the Week in Review section. Because the writers are clearly encouraged to open up a little, we get to see what they really think.

And, boy howdy, do we:

And in the shadow of the bleak and often horrific news emerging from Iraq nearly every day, historians and political experts are finding at least a wan hope in those imperfect historical analogies. Even in the absence of a sudden and dramatic shift on the battlefield toward a definitive victory, there may still be a slight opening, as narrow as the eye of a needle, for the United States to slip through and leave Iraq in the near future in a way that will not be remembered as a national embarrassment.

Well, guess that's about as clear as it can be. Because, to be clear, his notion of "national embarrassment" does not include "leaving before the fighting is done."

Let's review: what's our goal in Iraq?

Most of the recent parallels do not seem to offer much encouragement for a confounded superpower that wants to save face as it cuts its losses and returns home.

This I found interesting:

Many analysts have disputed the core of that contention, saying that large swaths of the Iraqi security forces are so inept they may never be capable of defending their country against the insurgents without the American military backing them up.

I'd surely love to know who those "many analysts" were, particularly since more and more it seems as if Iraqi units are participating in the fight.

This on the other hand, just cracked me up:

William Stueck, a history professor at the University of Georgia who has written several books on Korea, calls himself a liberal but says he buys Mr. Laird's basic analysis of what went wrong with Vietnamization.

The shock! The stun! This man calls himself a liberal -- and yet he agrees with the analysis provided by a Republican? Is that allowed?

Grow up.

This, on the other hand, just made be wonder whether the press ever listens at all:

Like President Bush in Iraq, President Charles de Gaulle probably thought he could settle Algeria in his favor by military means, Dr. Connelly said. In the short run, that turned out to be a grave miscalculation, as the occupation crumbled under the insurgency's viciousness.

Yes, the reporter is there quoting one of his experts. But he puts the quote in with no comment whatsoever. So he chooses the quote, and then chooses not to qualify it, despite the fact that the administration must say several times a week that a military-only solution will fail.

This, on the other hand, just struck me as a non-sequiter:

Over the long run, though, history treated de Gaulle kindly for reversing course and agreeing to withdraw, Mr. Connelly said. "De Gaulle loses the war but he wins in the realm of history: he gave Algeria its independence," he said. "How you frame defeat, that can sometimes give you a victory."

Yuh, here's the thing: the Algerians were fighting a war of independence. It was during that great wave of decolonization, and that's why, as this article points out, there were so many French living in Algeria -- it was a French colony, get it? Ending the war meant, literally, giving Algeria its independence, not ending a military occupation, but granting Algeria its soverignty. The situations, therefore, in terms of the goals, the end states the countries (France and the US) were looking for prior to the cessation of hostilities, could not possibly have been more different. It is quite possible -- indeed, entirely consistent -- to applaud France's decision to end the fighting, and to applaud the United State's decision to continue fighting, and to do so at some level (granted, a level of abstraction) for the same reasons.

Comments

[Lugo]

I don't think the British think they "lost" the War of 1812, and if I remember correctly, news that they'd lost that particular battle didn't even arrive until after the two countries had agreed to end the war anyway.

I'd surely love to know who those "many analysts" were, particularly since more and more it seems as if Iraqi units are participating in the fight.

See Fallows in the latest issue of The Atlantic - "why Iraq has no Army".

Korean society was not riven by troublesome factions

Say what??? There was an insurgency in South Korea at least until the late 1960s. I think I'd call that - and the existence of millions of heavily armed North Korean Communists - a "troublesome faction in Korean society."

the United States was defending an existing government rather than trying to create one from scratch.

Oh come on, the South Korean government was more or less a creature of the United States for quite a long time.