Iraq Is Not Vietnam. It is Stalingrad by Kevin

Al Qaeda has rebuilt itself:

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.

They achieved this goal, in part, because of a truce with the Pakistani government which allows them safety in the border regions. That truce and this reconstruction would not have been possible if the United states was still focused on Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. But its not focused on either — it is focused on Iraq and the civil wars underway there. Iraq is creating more terrorists and sucking the life out of the American military. It is generating daily propaganda for the terrorists and it is creating instablaity, in the form of refugees and the beginings of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, throughout the region. It is, in other words, a complete and total failure when looked at form the point of view of the war on Al Qaeda.

And yet, Bush, Lieberman, and McCain — really, almost the entirety of the conservative movement — insist that we must show enough will, that any acknowledgment that the war in Iraq is harming the war against Al Qaeda is a victory for Al Qaeda. If we just have enough will, they claim, if we don’t show any doubt about anything, then we must win. That is dangerous nonsense. Winning a war means being able to adjust your tactics and strategies as the situation changes. It means being flexible, recognizing when your tactics are not working, and admitting that it is time to change tactics, even if that change means temporarily giving way in one area or another. Will has nothing to do with it.

Will is useless, meaningless, without intelligence to back it up. We will not out will the insurgents in Iraq: they are fighting for their homes and they will never stop as long as they see us as the enemy. We will not out will Al Qaeda: they believe they are on a literal mission from God. Will cannot bring victory out of bad tactics, will cannot compensate for a bad strategy executed badly. Will did not save the German Army at Stalingrad, or the Confederate Army in 1865. Will is bollocks by itself. Pretending otherwise is an admission of failure, and admission that you don’t have any idea how to win on the Eastern front other than standing firm at Stalingrad.

Iraq is George W. Bush’s Stalingrad: one theater out of many in a larger conflict that comes to define, erroneously, the totality of the conflict for the political leadership. Fortunately for the world, Hitler fixated on taking and holding Stalingrad and it cost him one quarter o more of his Eastern forces. It would be a tragedy if Bush’s and the conservatives movement’s fixation on Iraq and Iran were to allow Al Qaeda to emerge stronger from 9/11 than they were before. Unfortunately, that is precisely what is happening. And no amount of “will” can change that.