Thanks for the info. You paint a pretty bleak picture.
It is possible that the "Tet Offensive" of Iraq is about to occur. If so, I would expect it to be timed to peak around the "Night of Power" towards the end of Ramadan.
That would mean the next four weeks is when the war in Iraq will be won or lost. It is also possible that various other hot spots around the world will erupt at the same time. A coordinated combination of events is quite possible, even probable. The bad guys DO talk to each other, and they are quite capable of planning.
But no matter how badly things go in Iraq (and/or the rest of the world) in the next four weeks, the worst thing we can do is cut and run. Remember, we WON the battles of Tet. But because of TET the U.S. media/liberals/democrats lost heart, and the war was lost.
Military victory in Iraq is not assured. But we would not have to lose militarily in Iraq. All it would take is for the Democrats to take power in the next election. That election hangs by a thread. If we fail in Iraq, militarily or because of the loss of political will, the consequences will be devasting for the whole world.
Failure in Iraq will quickly lead to the worst war the world has ever seen. On one side will be a primitive barbarian ideology/religion armed with weapons and know-how they got from their opponents. On the other side will be a soft and decadent civilization that is barely willing to defend itself.
"It is possible that the "Tet Offensive" of Iraq is about to occur. . . But no matter how badly things go in Iraq (and/or the rest of the world) in the next four weeks, the worst thing we can do is cut and run. Remember, we WON the battles of Tet."
I normally avoid Iraq as a topic because my opinions are not popular and I don't have time for flame wars. But these are good questions rationally presented. So I'll bite. And in any case, I broached the subject.
I think folks have been expecting the Tet scenario to materialize at some point, but I do not think either we, nor they are capable of delivering a "knockout blow" to the other side's will to fight. You are right to observe we won Tet militarily, but not politically. So it is the perception of reality that matters as much as the underlying reality itself. We cannot disengage because unlike Vietnam, Iraq is not just regionally significant from a strategic perspective, but globally significant in terms of:
1) the global revolutionary jihad and their goal of constructing an imperial Caliphate initially headquartered in Baghdad and fashioned in the image of their fascist ideology
2) the perception of global American weakness vis-a-vis potential strategic adversaries such a strategic disengagement would create and the new crises such a perception would spawn
3) the source of the global energy supplies upon which determines the difference between global economic growth and global economic collapse.
It was none other than Jimmy Carter who first declared the Persian Gulf region an area of vital strategic importance, signaling the Soviets that we would go to war to protect our interests there. It doesn't matter who the next President may be, they can campaign on "cut and run" from the day after the election in November to Election Day 2008, but when they get into office, they would all face the same reality from day one -- if you leave with the situation in chaos you will be eventually forced to return to the region in a far worse state with far more cost because:
1) America allies in the region will come under colossal pressure and subversion from the revolutionary state or states that emerge from the Iraqi chaos and we will be forced to "re-intervene" to keep the cancerous Caliphate from spreading, or else watch our allies fall one by one, destroying our credibility and endangering our interests
2) The perception that America has left the region to its own devices will tempt others to fill the vacuum, and again, just as even someone like President Carter understood back in the late 70s, we cannot tolerate an attempt by future global adversaries to dominate that all-important region
3) The embryonic Caliphate and/or Iranian client states will gradually come to control more and more of the global energy supply. The smaller Gulf States will come under their sphere of influence or fall, KSA will either collapse from within under the perceived ascendance of the Caliphate to their north, or they will be overcome from without. Either way, even the Europeans and Japan would then be forced to intervene because their own survival would be at stake. Virtually every post-WWII recession has been preceded by an energy-related supply shock. Monopolization of a critical mass the global energy supply by fascist jihadi states or a single revolutionary Caliphate would enable them to either blackmail the rest of the civilized world with economic strangulation (our European and Asian allies are even more dependent than we are), or use the oil revenue from the civilized world to build WMD arsenals and long-range delivery platforms.
"But because of TET the U.S. media/liberals/democrats lost heart, and the war was lost."
"Hearts and minds" is a two-way street. Our center of gravity is our national will. The 9/11 plotters were targeting national will on 9/11, not buildings. Every time our national leadership makes a pronouncement or a promise that they cannot prove or deliver, they degrade the national will to some degree. And it has a cumulative effect.
"Hearts and minds" means framing your issue/message, and staying on that message until you win. You have to have the right message. You cannot appear to be selling snake oil. We have jumped back and forth from message to message over three years and not been convincing with any of them - - eliminating WMD in Iraq, fighting al Qaeda in Iraq (claiming their presence prior to the invasion), and democratizing Iraq to stabilize the region.
The reality is that each one of these three was and is a legitimate reason to wage war.
But because the ultimate verdict on each of these points seem to be destined to be delivered at a future date, and not conclusively proven in the present, the frustration has been building. The failure to deliver on any of these three core rationales has opened up both a gap between perception and reality, and an expectations gap between the national leadership and its citizenry.
Because we have not found the WMD or 9/11 "smoking gun", many, if not most Americans expected, their expectations were dashed. And their patience would not be so thin if there was a credible "plan for victory" (as the administration frames it these days), but with repeated and continual missteps and misstatements over the course of three years, their credibility has been steadily eroding.
The "expectations game" is no game. This is what determines national will.
If I tell colleagues all day I am treating them to a steak dinner tonight on the company credit card, then I treat them to fast food, their expectations have not been met and the gap between expectations and reality will be significant. But if I tell them that we might not have time to go out to eat as we are working on a deadline, but then I call out for pizza delivery on the company dime, they'll be happy they don't have to wait to eat, or run to get food for themselves.
When you continually build up expectations then fail to meet them ("end of major combat operations", "democracy is messy", "insurgency is in its last throes", etc) you destroy your credibility and therefore, you undermine the public willingness to continue along the path you set out because people begin to feel it is a road to nowhere and you don't understand where you are or where you are going.
It is not just far left dems that are bolting. Polling shows one-third of self-professed conservatives are no longer on board. That does not include moderates/independents, who have firmly turned against the administration.
I support the war. I do not support how it has been conceived, communicated or conducted.