Another reader tells me that I “should join [Ralph] Peters and beat the drum for W’s view that we must stay the course and do whatever it takes to win.”
I should be astonished and dismayed to learn that that is truly the President’s view, or Peters’. Suppose, for example, the Joint Chiefs determine that in order to win, we must turn the Sunni Triangle into an irradiated wasteland. (Not, I think, a particularly implausible determination.) Would GWB be willing to do that? I don’t think so. There are things we are not willing to do, and there are sacrifices, financial and otherwise, we are not willing to contemplate. Not me, not the President, not Ralph Peters, not the American people, and not my correspondent. And that isn’t cowardice or moral weakness, just plain cost/benefit calculation of the sort that underlies all geostrategic decision-making.
The difference between the Peters/GWB view and the Will/WFB/Derb view is not that the former opinionators are willing to “do whatever it takes to win,” while the latter are not. The difference is, that the two factions have different estimates of what it would take to win. (Defined to mean: Create a reasonably stable, strong, orderly, and friendly Iraq.) And that the former estimate lies inside the boundaries of what the American people are willing to do, spend, and sacrifice, while the latter lies outside those boundaries.
The question is not “are we willing to do whatever it takes to win?” The question is: WITHIN THE PARAMETERS OF WHAT WE ARE WILLING TO DO, can we win? My answer, based on my best judgment as to what the American people are willing to contemplate doing, and such knowledge as I have of Iraq, and of human affairs in general, is: No, we can’t.
Of course different opinions are possible. I’m paid to offer mine, though, and there it is.