Patrick Cockburn (London Independent): This is now an unwinnable conflict

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Independent (London)
Dated Sunday July 24

Iraq: This is now an unwinnable conflict
As he completes another tour of duty in the chaos of Iraq, an award-winning reporter charts how Bush and Blair's 'winnable war' turned into a mess that is inspiring a worldwide insurgency
By Patrick Cockburn

The Duke of Wellington, warning hawkish politicians in Britain against ill-considered military intervention abroad, once said: "Great nations do not have small wars." He meant that supposedly limited conflicts can inflict terrible damage on powerful states. Having seen what a small war in Spain had done to Napoleon, he knew what he was talking about.

The war in Iraq is now joining the Boer War in 1899 and the Suez crisis in 1956 as ill-considered ventures that have done Britain more harm than good. It has demonstrably strengthened al-Qa'ida by providing it with a large pool of activists and sympathisers across the Muslim world it did not possess before the invasion of 2003. The war, which started out as a demonstration of US strength as the world's only superpower, has turned into a demonstration of weakness. Its 135,000-strong army does not control much of Iraq.

The suicide bombing campaign in Iraq is unique. Never before have so many fanatical young Muslims been willing to kill themselves, trying to destroy those whom they see as their enemies. On a single day in Baghdad this month 12 bombers blew themselves up. There have been more than 500 suicide attacks in Iraq over the last year.

It is this campaign which has now spread to Britain and Egypt. The Iraq war has radicalised a significant part of the Muslim world. Most of the bombers in Iraq are non-Iraqi, but the network of sympathisers and supporters who provide safe houses, money, explosives, detonators, vehicles and intelligence is home-grown.

Read more.

[Matilda]

1. Pay attention Bush & Blair (and little dog Howard).

Running a war of attrition at home is not going to solve the problem.
It's asking too much to expect you to admit you deliberately lied,
but admit it was a big, big mistake, get the hell out, and try to
create a genuine dialogue with Iraq and other ME countries.

Do they really want to go down in history as the biggest goofballs
of all time?

[cliss]

2. Yes, this is true.

The US managed to expose its vulnerabilities to its REAL enemies. And believe me, we have enemies now. It wasn't Iraq, though.

I've always felt this was the most damaging part about this war. We revealed how utterly inept we were at waging war. Couldn't even succeed in a fairly small country. The world's most powerful military, fails in a country with no military force. It's astounding when you think about it.

Stan Goff wrote, "The beast bleeds". He also felt that the most stupid thing we could have done was to show how weak and vulnerable we really are. Rumsfeld's words are almost laughable now, "We can fight wars on many fronts".

Equally important: we are burning through $4.9 billion dollars per month in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not sustainable for a long period of time. None of this has been paid for. It's all been borrowed from the future.

As we hemorrhage to death financially in Iraq, the real enemies sit back, quietly, watching. They see the spectacle play itself out in the Middle East. They watch us, knowing full well at some point this will end. The US will exhaust itself financially and with troops.

And then..........

[bemildred]

3. Yes, by far the worst aspect.

The failure of the war as a demonstration of potency. "Theatrical micro-miltarism" is what Emmanuel Todd(*) called it. But this is not the desired sort of theater, one can be sure.

It must have them gibbering in the halls of government, the few left with brains. It is THAT that will end US global hegemony, that has already done so; and comparatively the outcome of the Iraq War is peanuts.

(*) - "After The Empire" Emmanuel Todd

[CJCRANE]

4. The neocons don't want to win yet -

they want a "generational war", i.e. they want to keep this going for another twenty or thirty years.

[Emendator]

5. Good article

Of course he's right.