The history of Western warfare is based on
the metaphor of chess. The winner is the one who has lost the fewest
important pieces and the loser concedes defeat. Until 1955 that defined nearly all of our wars.
Since 1995, America has won four wars that don't fit the metaphor and we are confused.
The Cold War was won by the U.S. but the losing side never conceded defeat. Very few troops had been lost on either side. The best metaphor for the Cold War is arm wrestling. The winner pushed the loser's arm to the table after a forty year long battle of power. But the winner could not announce victory, lest the Russian loser demand a rematch. Eastern Europe was freed because the loser got up from the arm-wrestling table and left the room.
The Second Iraq War was won in April of 2003 when the U.S.
forces defeated the Iraqi forces of Saddam Hussein, in six brilliantly executed weeks, but
the losing army ran away and the Hussein government evaporated. There
was no government left to concede defeat. No metaphor here. Pure
ancient military conquest with the responsibility for creating a new
government left to the American forces.
America won two insurgent wars. We won in Vietnam and in the aftermath of the Second Iraq War.
An insurgent war ends when: one side leaves the battle field or the insurgents lose the will to continue fighting.
In
Vietnam, the American forces and the South Vietnamese Army clearly won
the army-to-army battle against the North Vietnam Army and vanquished
the insurgents. The U.S. and the South Vietnamese won the war when a
concession of defeat emerged as a peace treaty with the North, which was signed in
Paris.
Because Americans have no understanding of victory in an insurgent war, America turned victory into defeat by leaving the battlefield and left the North to sweep in and win the war unopposed.
The Second Iraq War Insurgency ended in September 2007 when Anbar province and Baghdad
were cleared of insurgents, the insurgents realized they could not
provoke a civil war, the Sunnis realized the Americans wouldn't leave
and the Iraqi government gained the support of the entire nation.
America wasn't listening in September when the Iraqi Prime Minister thanked America for defeating Saddam and his Baathists, for giving Iraq an elected and popular government and for making Iraq safe from insurgents.
We won in Iraq! We
won for the entire Middle East.
I know we won for three reasons: The Prime Minister of Iraq said so. All the major Arab nations are coming to a peace conference in the U.S. and Hezbollah conceded defeat by beginning a prisoner exchange.
WE WON. Toasts, parades and parties are in order.