David MacDuff of A Step at a Time quotes, apparently in toto, an excellent analysis of the origins and status of the conflict we’re involved in (formerly known as the War on Terror) written by George Friedman of Strategic Forecasting. Over at Stratfor the analysis is subscription-only so get it while it’s hot!
IMO Friedman’s analysis is rational and reasonable and exhibits laudable sang froid. He opens by dividing the political responses to the events from the events themselves, tersely summarizes the major events in the conflict, and characterizes the actual reasons for the invasion of Iraq as follows:
- To bring pressure on the Saudi government, which was allowing Saudis to funnel money to al Qaeda, to halt this enablement and to cooperate with U.S. intelligence. The presence of U.S. troops to the north of Saudi Arabia was intended to drive home the seriousness of the situation.
- To take control of the most strategic country in the Middle East — Iraq borders seven critical countries — and to use it as a base of operations against other countries that were cooperating with al Qaeda.
- To demonstrate in the Muslim world that the American reputation for weakness and indecisiveness — well-earned in the two decades prior to the Sept. 11 attacks — was no longer valid. The United States was aware that the invasion of Iraq would enrage the Muslim world, but banked on it also frightening them.
Those of you who’ve been reading my blog for a while probably are aware that I’m a skeptic on the war in Iraq. Had the Bush Administration put forward those reasons for the invasion I might well have supported it. I doubt, however, that President Bush could have secured the support of the American people for the invasion with those reasons. Perhaps I’m underestimating us.
But I’d probably still have opposed the invasion for a very important reason. The folks at Stratfor are either younger than I am or had a very different view of the domestic response to the War in Viet Nam than I did at the time. President Johnson attempted to fight the war without mobilizing the American people or their support and without threatening his domestic agenda. President Bush has done the same and I believe that has resulted in many of the problems we face in Iraq right now. Had he had stronger support for the war with the American people he might have had the political ammunition to allow our military to sustain the level of casualties that would surely have emerged from a more strenuous disarming of the Iraqis and a more definite securing of Iraq than we actually achieved. Perhaps not.
Friedman concludes his analysis:
So far, neither side has won — but on the whole, we’d say the United States has the edge. The war is being fought outside the United States. And that is not a trivial point. But it is not yet a solution to the president’s problems.
Fighting our wars outside our own borders has been a guiding principle of American foreign policy since the American Civil War so that’s something. But not enough.
Read the whole thing.
