Newtonian War

Action:

FORT EUSTIS -- Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan.

Meet reaction:

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents....

One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost."

The Washington Post is kind enough to provide a map of Anbar Province. Don't worry, I'm sure it's a tiny, out-of-the-way place with no strategic value:



Oops. A third of the country, bordering Saudi Arabia and Syria (two countries implicated in fuelling the insurgency) and the US has totally failed to secure the peace there. Heckuva job, Rummy.

The anonymous Army officer has it exactly right - the US has been defeated politically in Anbar, and that's effectively it - defeat. We need to scourge from our minds the artificial and useless distinction between "military" and "political" defeat. It serves nothing but to salve some bruised Vietnam-era egos. The reality is that if the military is undefeated but not a single political goal is accomplished - roughly speaking, the status quo in Iraq - then you've been defeated, period.