Winnable or Unwinnable?
Anthony Cordesman has a short article in the Washington Post in which he tries to boost the chances for victory in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He is, at least, honest about what would be required, including a massive boost of troops for Afghanistan and more resources committed to both theatres. And most significantly, the amount of time that would be required.
What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war. Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don't end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020.
If the next president, Congress and the American people cannot face this reality, we will lose. Years of false promises about the speed with which we can create effective army, police and criminal justice capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot disguise the fact that mature, effective local forces and structures will not be available until 2012 and probably well beyond. This does not mean that U.S. and allied force levels cannot be cut over time, but a serious military and advisory presence will probably be needed for at least that long, and rushed reductions in forces or providing inadequate forces will lead to a collapse at the military level.
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Any American political leader who cannot face these realities, now or in the future, will ensure defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Any Congress that insists on instant victory or success will do the same. We either need long-term commitments, effective long-term resources and strategic patience -- or we do not need enemies. We will defeat ourselves.
Are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winnable? I don't know, and neither does Mr. Cordesman, really. There is no certainty to predicting what will happen over the next decade in both countries and in their neighbours, which will affect the outcome. And one of the things he misses when he talks about those governments, is their legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan and Iraqi people. So long as they are considered as little better than puppets of the Americans, their effectiveness really doesn't matter. Effective local forces like those being bragged up in Iraq have no loyalty to the central government and will just as soon overthrow them as not.
One thing I do know, is that the US and what's left of its allies do not have sufficient military resources to successfully prosecute both counterinsurgencies. Only the US maintains a large standing army anymore, and it is at the limit of what it can deploy. The same goes for most everyone else. Short of a draft, which will make the wars even more politically untenable than they are now, there is no way put enough boots on the ground in both theatres. To have even a chance at victory in one of the conflicts, the other has to be sacrificed. Anyone who can't face that reality, dooms the US to defeat in both conflicts due to insufficient resources applied to either.
The other thing I'm fairly certain of, though in this I can't really know, is that after better than five years of being strung along on a Freidman timeline, so popular that even al-Sadr is now using it, and given the relative unpopularity of the war, the American public doesn't want to be told that they should continue pouring money and blood into the Iraqi desert for another five to ten years for just the possibility that they can pull out something resembling a victory.
Dishonesty and false promises have already doomed these wars. It is only a question of when.
