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War: How do you win?
Fri, 20 Apr 2007

They were going on about Iraq on 680 News Radio, and in words upon the CBC and CNN websites so I was stirred to wonder. Apparently another US senator has declared the war in Iraq a loss. Aside from anything else you can say (for or against, and is it a 'war' when it is not nation versus nation, and all that hubbub), it brings up some interesting questions about winning. I mean - How does one, in fact, win a war? Or lose one? What are the criterion? Do the Americans every have a victory condition? (I know in Civilization the game doesn't even begin until I've checked off sed details. Amateurs.)

At first impulse I would say 'taking land over' (since I played Risk a lot as a kid), but obviously that isn't true in the presence of a grass-roots resistance. France lost a lot of land up front in the last great war, but the war itself was on-going. The US "won" the Iraqi ground in a matter of days but akin to Vietnam (I think) and Afghan for the Russians in the past .. winning that battle doesn't end the conflict. The resistance will keep it going. Nation to nation if you grab the land and keep up a presence maybe you've got something, but even then .. the war could last decades so it is difficult to say exactly when the 'win' occurs.

I suppose when the major conflicts are over the military role is nearly complete .. thereafter things are a policing and reorganization matter. Politics. Hopefully people not killing each other. So the US certainly won militarily, but not yet politicly, and not yet socially (surely some natives support the US presence, while many are neutral or against it.) - not yet the war. When you think of war you think of military, but as we all noted years ago at the beginning of this mess, its not really about major battles anymore.

So then, this is what occurred to me when they mentioned all this futz on the radio -- It must be a tough place for the army, to be charged with 'winning the war' when it turns out war really isn't about the military. After all.. if it was it would be easy -- the military could just eliminate the population, and they win. An empty victory. Thankfully we include minimizing destruction and loss of life in the tally. So maybe the senator is correct -- the US is good at winning battles, but a skirmish here or there does not a war make. Is this what happened back in Nam? Did they not learn this crucial element, that knocking over a government doesn't make you the winner?

So how is war against a resistance 'won'?

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