Max Boot: Guess What? We're Winning
[Max Boot is a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of Modern History is due out in the fall of 2006 from Gotham Books.]
To listen to the critics, you would think that the Iraq war was the biggest blunder in U.S. history and George W. Bush the worst president ever. Comparisons with Vietnam have already become a cliché, but that's not going far enough for the respected Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld. In a November 2005 article in The Forward, he called the invasion of Iraq "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C. sent his legions into Germany and lost them." Most Americans are more judicious, but polls indicate that a majority doesn't trust Bush's handling of Iraq and now thinks the invasion was a mistake. Although only a minority favors an immediate pullout, ever more Americans seem to agree with Democratic chairman Howard Dean, who said on December 5 that "the idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong."
As we mark the war's third anniversary, it is worth asking whether such sentiments are justified or whether they represent an emotional overreaction to the sorts of temporary setbacks that occur in every major conflict. The answer is, of course, unknowable until we see how the war turns out. It won't be clear for years whether Iraq becomes a stable democracy or whether, as critics expect, it becomes mired in despotism or internecine conflict. It is entirely possible that the naysayers will be proven right and the invasion will go down as a fiasco. This might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, however, for the more opposition there is on the home front, the less chance there is for our troops to prevail.
But while it is too early to reach definitive judgments, it is not too early to take a dispassionate look at the record so far. If we avoid both the hyperbole of the Administration's more perfervid critics and the inflexible defensiveness of its more passionate champions, we can see that although the Administration has made plenty of mistakes, their consequences are not irredeemably calamitous. To his credit, President Bush has not made the most critical mistake of all: He has not lost his nerve in difficult times, as have so many Democrats who initially supported the invasion. Thanks to the President's fortitude, the Iraqi people's resilience and, above all, the skill and bravery of Coalition armed forces, victory is still the most likely outcome. But due at least in part to Administration missteps, that victory will be a good deal harder to achieve than it needed to be. ...
Iraq in Perpective
Opponents of the Administration have lost sight of the stakes in Iraq by concentrating on the losses suffered by U.S. armed forces and on the missteps made by their commanders. Of course, no one, least of all the war's supporters, can be happy about the fact that the conflict has cost the U.S. Treasury more than $250 billion and cost the lives of more than 2,200 Americans (and more than 16,400 wounded) as of this writing. Critics are right that some of these losses might have been averted by wiser leadership.
But if the Iraq war has been marred by scandalous miscalculations, that does not distinguish it from any other war in U.S. history. Think of the failed invasion of Canada and the loss of New York, Philadelphia and Charlestown in the Revolutionary War; another failed invasion of Canada and the burning of the White House in the War of 1812; the massacre at Little Big Horn in the Indian Wars; the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the fall of the Philippines, the mauling of American troops at Kasserine Pass, in Operation Market Garden, at the Anzio beachhead and in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II; and the horrific retreat from the Chosin Reservoir followed by two years of bloody stalemate in the Korean War. All were setbacks of far greater magnitude than anything that has occurred in Iraq, yet none precluded ultimate victory.
Even the most successful operations in wars past usually resulted in far greater losses than those suffered in Iraq. Some 5,400 Allied servicemen died in about 18 hours on D-Day—more than twice as many as have perished in three years of combat in Iraq. During World War II the United States lost an average of 300 soldiers a day. In Iraq, we are losing an average of two soldiers a day, a pace that would require another 76 years for U.S. deaths in Iraq to match those in Vietnam.
Of course, no statistic can assuage the suffering of the friends and family of those killed or maimed, and even one death or disfigurement is too many. But given the incessant harping of the news media and the antiwar movement on casualties, it is not callous to note that losses in this war have been lower than in any other major conflict in U.S. history with the sole exception of the 1991 Gulf War, which set casualty expectations unrealistically low. The Gulf War also set financial expectations too low since we financed most of its cost by dunning allies. Due to a lack of international support (again, partly the result of the Administration's ham-fisted diplomacy), we have not been so lucky this time around. But while war spending of $83.3 billion a year ($250 billion over three years) is a vast and growing sum, in an $11.7 trillion economy it represents just 0.7 percent of gross domestic product. Even if we add in the rest of the defense budget, total spending on the military is still just 4.5 percent of GDP. We spent almost 40 percent of GDP to win World War II and more than 7 percent a year over several decades to win the Cold War.
None of this is meant to excuse the Bush Administration's mistakes or to denigrate the heroic sacrifices of American servicemen and women. But if, decades from now, Iraq emerges as a stable democracy and the Middle East becomes a better place, future historians may well marvel at how cheaply and skillfully this transformation was achieved. It's good that we as a nation are hard on ourselves, that we expect a lot from our leaders and have little patience for incompetence. It's not so good that we sometimes set our expectations unrealistically high. If we took our own history more seriously, we might learn to temper our expectations with humility and to find a greater capacity for patience. We surely need more of both.
Read entire article at American Interest (Spring 2006)
To listen to the critics, you would think that the Iraq war was the biggest blunder in U.S. history and George W. Bush the worst president ever. Comparisons with Vietnam have already become a cliché, but that's not going far enough for the respected Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld. In a November 2005 article in The Forward, he called the invasion of Iraq "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C. sent his legions into Germany and lost them." Most Americans are more judicious, but polls indicate that a majority doesn't trust Bush's handling of Iraq and now thinks the invasion was a mistake. Although only a minority favors an immediate pullout, ever more Americans seem to agree with Democratic chairman Howard Dean, who said on December 5 that "the idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong."
As we mark the war's third anniversary, it is worth asking whether such sentiments are justified or whether they represent an emotional overreaction to the sorts of temporary setbacks that occur in every major conflict. The answer is, of course, unknowable until we see how the war turns out. It won't be clear for years whether Iraq becomes a stable democracy or whether, as critics expect, it becomes mired in despotism or internecine conflict. It is entirely possible that the naysayers will be proven right and the invasion will go down as a fiasco. This might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, however, for the more opposition there is on the home front, the less chance there is for our troops to prevail.
But while it is too early to reach definitive judgments, it is not too early to take a dispassionate look at the record so far. If we avoid both the hyperbole of the Administration's more perfervid critics and the inflexible defensiveness of its more passionate champions, we can see that although the Administration has made plenty of mistakes, their consequences are not irredeemably calamitous. To his credit, President Bush has not made the most critical mistake of all: He has not lost his nerve in difficult times, as have so many Democrats who initially supported the invasion. Thanks to the President's fortitude, the Iraqi people's resilience and, above all, the skill and bravery of Coalition armed forces, victory is still the most likely outcome. But due at least in part to Administration missteps, that victory will be a good deal harder to achieve than it needed to be. ...
Iraq in Perpective
Opponents of the Administration have lost sight of the stakes in Iraq by concentrating on the losses suffered by U.S. armed forces and on the missteps made by their commanders. Of course, no one, least of all the war's supporters, can be happy about the fact that the conflict has cost the U.S. Treasury more than $250 billion and cost the lives of more than 2,200 Americans (and more than 16,400 wounded) as of this writing. Critics are right that some of these losses might have been averted by wiser leadership.
But if the Iraq war has been marred by scandalous miscalculations, that does not distinguish it from any other war in U.S. history. Think of the failed invasion of Canada and the loss of New York, Philadelphia and Charlestown in the Revolutionary War; another failed invasion of Canada and the burning of the White House in the War of 1812; the massacre at Little Big Horn in the Indian Wars; the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the fall of the Philippines, the mauling of American troops at Kasserine Pass, in Operation Market Garden, at the Anzio beachhead and in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II; and the horrific retreat from the Chosin Reservoir followed by two years of bloody stalemate in the Korean War. All were setbacks of far greater magnitude than anything that has occurred in Iraq, yet none precluded ultimate victory.
Even the most successful operations in wars past usually resulted in far greater losses than those suffered in Iraq. Some 5,400 Allied servicemen died in about 18 hours on D-Day—more than twice as many as have perished in three years of combat in Iraq. During World War II the United States lost an average of 300 soldiers a day. In Iraq, we are losing an average of two soldiers a day, a pace that would require another 76 years for U.S. deaths in Iraq to match those in Vietnam.
Of course, no statistic can assuage the suffering of the friends and family of those killed or maimed, and even one death or disfigurement is too many. But given the incessant harping of the news media and the antiwar movement on casualties, it is not callous to note that losses in this war have been lower than in any other major conflict in U.S. history with the sole exception of the 1991 Gulf War, which set casualty expectations unrealistically low. The Gulf War also set financial expectations too low since we financed most of its cost by dunning allies. Due to a lack of international support (again, partly the result of the Administration's ham-fisted diplomacy), we have not been so lucky this time around. But while war spending of $83.3 billion a year ($250 billion over three years) is a vast and growing sum, in an $11.7 trillion economy it represents just 0.7 percent of gross domestic product. Even if we add in the rest of the defense budget, total spending on the military is still just 4.5 percent of GDP. We spent almost 40 percent of GDP to win World War II and more than 7 percent a year over several decades to win the Cold War.
None of this is meant to excuse the Bush Administration's mistakes or to denigrate the heroic sacrifices of American servicemen and women. But if, decades from now, Iraq emerges as a stable democracy and the Middle East becomes a better place, future historians may well marvel at how cheaply and skillfully this transformation was achieved. It's good that we as a nation are hard on ourselves, that we expect a lot from our leaders and have little patience for incompetence. It's not so good that we sometimes set our expectations unrealistically high. If we took our own history more seriously, we might learn to temper our expectations with humility and to find a greater capacity for patience. We surely need more of both.