David Warren: Elements in Iraq (Now is not the time to go wobbly in the Iraq war)

There are two sides to every war (at least two sides). In being compelled to read On War by Karl von Clausewitz recently, for the sake of some colloquium in which I was participating, I was struck by his repetition of this elementary fact. The “prophet of total war” — who is anything but that, as one quickly discovers upon actually reading him — is at pains to remind us why there can be no “theory of war”. It is because the enemy has free will, and need not play along with the theory.

Elementary this is, yet almost impossible to explain to persons of the post-modern, “liberal” persuasion. Indeed, having once tried to explain it to someone who was teaching at West Point, I do not underestimate the challenge. War is not only hell, it is mush. “Fog,” as Clausewitz almost called it. The opposite of a “total warrior”, he could appreciate the delicate business of keeping political ends in view, while wading through carnage on the battlefront.

There are, incidentally, no “conventional wars”. War may be a continuation of politics by other means, but these means are, by definition, unconventional. A country at peace is living within conventions; a country at war is going beyond them. And not always by choice, either. You do not go to war because you have weapons (“boys and their toys” as the feminists liked to say), but because you have an enemy.

Hence things like the Gitmo prison camp, that countries such as the United States do not open when they do not have enemies. Hence irregularities and surprises constantly emerging in Iraq.

David Warren:

...I expect no definitive progress until the Marines are allowed to cross the frontier, and devastate Syrian-sponsored terrorist staging areas -- at the cost, of course, of incurring the wrath of the international media.
The urgency in this should be more obvious. For while the Marines, and the Iraqi forces supporting them, get better and better at reading the physical and human landscape, their enemy is also improving his tactics. And not only is the Syrian regime playing for time. Its continued survival, in the face of American attempts to isolate it, is an encouragement to Islamists in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the region.
President Bush spoke on TV last night, to the need for patience. The struggle for a free Iraq is not something the West can walk away from. But time is beginning to tell against the Bush administration. It must be able to reduce the U.S. military in Iraq to much smaller, more permanent, regional bases, within three years, or the next president of the United States is not going to be a Republican.
That is however not my concern. It is instead that the U.S. might fail to consolidate a victory which has brought more hope to the Middle East than any event in recent history. For this, Clausewitzian ruthlessness is required.

David Warren PING!

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expect no definitive progress until the Marines are allowed to cross the frontier, and devastate Syrian-sponsored terrorist staging areas -- at the cost, of course, of incurring the wrath of the international media

It is simple military reality. If we want to cripple the insurgency we take out the current Syrian government. If we don't want to do anything but continue with the status quo, then we leave the Syrians to their own devices.

Syria is the current tipping point in this war.

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