It's Time to Stop Playing NFL Football on the Iraqi Soccer Field

This is a tale of two withdrawals. One is the possible confrontation between the Democrats in Congress and the President. The other is that of several members of the Iraqi Parliament in response to orders from cleric Muqtada Sadr.

Taken together these withdrawals present the US and Iraq with the best opportunity for a good outcome in the ongoing set of interlocking defensive and offensive insurgencies (defined in an earlier post). Whether the Administration wants to admit reality or not, the combination of American Democrats and Iraqi Sunnis have given it a lifeline. W and company had best grab it.

At least both SecDef Gates and Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki see the opportunity for what it is--a chance, a slim chance admittedly, but a real one nonetheless to change the course of the war. Neither man has specifically mentioned the impact of the parliamentarians' withdrawal as weakening the al-Maliki government, but the PM has acknowledged reaching out to insurgent groups including supporters of Saddam's regime.

Also it should be underscored that Gates rejected the idea of a timetable for US force drawdown. This is expectable. He is the Secretary of Defense afterall. Also, a cabinet member would be ill-advised to support a policy option in public that runs counter to that of his boss.

SecDef Gates is correct in bringing an old term from the intelligence racket when he characterised Sadr's motives as not being a "secret" but being a "mystery." The motivation of al-Maliki in exploring power sharing with insurgent groups is neither. He is perfectly well aware that his political base and his country are dissolving under his feet.

A few weeks ago a faction of his ruling Shiite majority decamped. Sadr's influence has been shown to be far from inconsiderable. The Mahdi militia remains a potent force in being. The level of violence in Iraq has not been damped by the "surge" of US forces. Iraqis are fleeing the country at a rate in excess of one thousand per day creating a major refugee problem for neighboring countries.

PM al-Maliki cannot be blind to the possibilty that the Democratic majority will ultimately prevail and some sort of timetable for withdrawal will be passed.

Even the Administration must be worried about the political future given that active duty Army tours in Iraq have had to be extended and rumbles of discontent grow louder as more and more National Guard and Reserve units are tabbed for rapid turnaround and redeployment to the theater. (Remember folks, LBJ and the Democrats decided back in 1965 to fight the Vietnam War with draftees rather than run the political risks of hacking off National Guardsmen, Reservists and their families.)

The Iraqi PM might even have come to realize that the American way of war is not the right way to go if there is going to be both an end to the war in Iraq and an Iraq at the end of the war. He may have come to recognize that while our approach can defeat conventional forces, it isn't so successful dealing with unconventional opponents.

Again, history provides a guide. Back in 1965 the new South Vietnamese President, a military man and native Southerner tried and failed to persuade the Americans not to send combat units, but dispatch only Special Forces, logistic support units and some air assets. He knew the disasterously negative potental in the American approach to war. As he told me years later, long after the fall of Saigon, his biggest mistake was not keeping the firepower heavy US units out of his country. "They meant well. But, they defeated us."

How can that be? How can we defeat the side we came to help?

In a very real sense we had lost the war before the first American boot hit Iraqi sand. Leaving aside several reasons for making this statement such as a failure to appreciate the nature and character of the Iraqi human terrain, let's take a look at the American approach to war--our basic theory of victory.

US military doctrine can be summerized in three words: find, fix, destroy! Use superior technology to find the enemy. Use superior air and ground delivered firepower to fix him in place and destroy him. It is presumed that technological superiority in shooting, communicating and moving will assure victory. The former Secretary of Defense, Rumsfield, stated this approach to war as, "Shock and awe."

Apparently, Rumfield believed that the truly impressive capacity of US forces to deliver incredible amounts of high lethality munitions on an enemy would kill many and leave the rest shocked to the state of gibbering idiots rushing to surrender and embrace democracy, capitalism and social pluralism.

As the First Iraqi War and the conventional force aspects of the Second demonstrated, the American approach works very well as long as the opponent follows our playbook. What happens when he doesn't, when the opponent has his own playbook?

We saw what happened in that case in Vietnam. We are seeing it now in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We are suited up, good to go, playbook in hand. We are the National Football League Champions of the Universe! (Make appropriate male grunts while grasping gonads.)

We run onto the field. Line up. Glower downfield. Paw the ground. And, then we discover something.

The other side is playing soccer--on a rugby field! He ain't playing the game we're ready to. He ain't playing the game we want to. The underhanded little guy is being unfair. Unfair I say! He's playing his game. On his field. The way he wants to.

Now there is a chance to call time out. There's an opportunity to stop the bloody game. Take advantage of the two withdrawals. If Congress takes a real stand, comfortable that it's on the side of the angels (or at least the latest poll showing that a bare majority of Americans feels we can't win in Iraq). And, the biggest "if" of all, if the Administration realizes that it's only chance for something other than a worst case outcome is withdrawal in a way that puts extra pressure on the al-Maliki government to continue with moves to real power sharing. If all these "ifs" come together, there is a very real light at the end of this tunnel.