I don't think I have seen the words 'victory' and 'Iraq' used in the same sentence since President Bush declared in 2003 that the 'Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror...' But having read Sam's link yesterday to a piece by Chris Kenny I was a bit taken aback to find out that the US is going to be victorious a second time:

Even those who opposed the Iraq war should recognise that America leaving the country victorious, with a relatively peaceful and functioning democracy in place, is far preferable to the war having been lost.

I nearly coughed up my falafel when I read this because there is so much to contest about it. I won't go into the meaning of 'victorious' because that's an essay in itself. But when you have lost nearly 4,500 dead and over 30,000 wounded, spent untold billions of dollars, but did not achieve the aim of the invasion (finding WMD, I think — it was so long ago), calling it a victory is 'interesting'.

But leaving aside the notion of a victorious US triumphantly ceasing combat operations seven years later than it thought it had, and only having to leave behind a skeleton force of 50,000, I do take some exception to his view of Iraq as relatively peaceful. Relativity is a funny thing, and if Kenny's intent was to compare Iraq with, say, Afghanistan or Somalia then he may have a point.

But to say that a country in which 253 civilians were killed in December, 118 in January and 80 in the first week of this month is relatively peaceful is drawing a (relatively) long bow. And that's not to mention the Iraqi security forces, or the numbers wounded. Space precludes me from arguing the toss about a 'functioning democracy' (or is that a 'relatively' functioning democracy?).

But the best line from this 'we showed 'em' view of foreign relations comes after the Iraq section:

This leaves Afghanistan. And it is here that there are signs Obama may be learning about the audacity of strength.

Surely after the tragedy of the Iraqi adventure, armchair pundits should be more attuned to the limitations, rather than the audacity, of strength in campaigns in complex environments.

Photo by Flickr user mashroms, used under a Creative Commons license.

Chris Kenny writes:

Rodger Shanahan makes clear his revulsion at the 'tragedy of the Iraqi adventure' and the audacity of anyone finding something positive to say about ongoing efforts to stabilise that country's future.

But he dances around the one point I made about Obama's Iraq policy; that is, simply, that the orderly withdrawal of US troops owes more to the success of George W Bush's surge strategy than to any decisions taken by the Obama Administration.

I pointed out that Democrats and our own Labor Party opposed the surge strategy and preferred a humiliating exit for the US. This would have seen the US leave in unambiguous defeat, it would have left Iraq in an even more precarious position and it would have emboldened terrorists everywhere.

Whatever Shanahan thinks of Bush's original decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein, perhaps he would at least concede that the surge strategy has allowed an orderly American drawdown and a more stable platform for the establishment of a democratic Iraq.

On Afghanistan, the criticism from the Left has been that the Taliban flourished because the US was distracted by Iraq. So Obama's commitment to allocate sufficient resources and focus to Afghanistan is welcome. Facing such seemingly insoluble conflicts it may seem trite to talk of victory and defeat, except to note, as George Orwell said, that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it.

Far from 'dancing around' Chris Kenny's point that the surge set the military conditions for the orderly withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, I agree with him. My post had nothing to do with the merits of the surge, the success of which (along with other tactical and strategic levers that were employed) is self-evident.

Rather, my argument was that Chris' piece spoke in absolutes such as '(US) victory and a functioning (Iraqi) democracy', or in uncontrasted relativities such as 'relatively peaceful'. It spoke of the Iraq war in terms of its impact on the US, and equated victory with an orderly departure of its troops. 

In the same vein, Jim Molan says the counterinsurgency is finally, as wars go, a success. But when hundreds of Iraqis are routinely being killed (and more injured) every month by insurgents, I would argue that the counterinsurgency has been successful in relative but not absolute terms. And the latter is what we should be looking at more closely, because only Iraqi security forces will be able to achieve absolute success. 

My point is that the political measure of success appears to be the ability to withdraw US troops, not the security of the Iraqi population. By adopting this measure, Western commentators tend to conflate withdrawal with success, with little regard for the circumstances for the Iraqis left behind.

What strikes me about the Kenny and Molan responses to Rodger Shanahan's piece is that, although both men seem realistic about the challenges of militarised nation-building and sobered by the setbacks suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither will countenance the idea that it is simply too hard to transform these places in the ways we would like.

In fact, the solution both men offer to the Afghanistan problem is 'more'. More troops, more money, more advisers, more political and diplomatic capital.

The disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan seem unable to shake this faith in the restorative capabilities of military force, so how about we go back a little further in history? Here's the American military commentator Andrew Bacevich:

Three times in the last 60 years, U.S. forces have achieved an approximation of unambiguous victory—operational success translating more or less directly into political success. The first such episode, long since forgotten, occurred in 1965 when Lyndon Johnson intervened in the Dominican Republic. The second occurred in 1983, when American troops, making short work of a battalion of Cuban construction workers, liberated Granada. The third occurred in 1989 when G.I.’s stormed the former American protectorate of Panama, toppling the government of long-time CIA asset Manuel Noriega. Apart from those three marks in the win column, U.S. military performance has been at best mixed. The issue here is not one of sacrifice and valor—there’s been plenty of that—but of outcomes.

Granted, this is a partial reading of US military history — Kosovo and Bosnia could be counted as recent successful interventions. But am I right in thinking that advocates for the Afghanistan surge don't even draw on that history very much? The sole justification for doubling down in Afghanistan seems to be that it worked in Iraq. But as Rodger points out, it is still way too early to declare that effort a success for the Iraqi people.