We weren't "lucky", we were well led, highly motivated, had excellent intelligence, outstanding training, great equipment and a public that supported the effort.
You miss the point. I didn’t say we were lucky to win the war, I said we were lucky to be presented with such a fat target. One of the cardinal rules of terrorism is never to concentrate forces or establish bases that will be vulnerable to a superior military force. Al Qaeda did this in Afghanistan, and paid the price, though we could have made the price higher. I was all for that invasion, it is very rare, in a war against terrorism, that such a target is presented. As I said elsewhere, I don’t think Iraq is an analogous case at all.
It’s true, yes, that we had leadership, motivation, intelligence, training, equipment, and public support. It also helped that we were fighting a lightly armed and disorganized opponent that had zero antiaircraft capacity and no trained leaders. It helped that the Taliban had antagonized their own people to the point that most of the fighting force was provided by domestic opposition. We shouldn’t be patting ourselves on the back too assertively.
We should also recall that while we won the war handily, we have been much less successful at winning the peace. Our vaunted representative government barely controls Kabul and controls almost nothing outside Kabul. Most of the country remains in the hands of warlords who tell us what we want to hear and do what they want to do. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that Al Qaeda people are moving across the Afghan/Pakistani border with impunity.
The precedent is not entirely encouraging.
For the record, I think that our armed forces are perfectly capable of invading Iraq, defeating any armed force that opposes them, and toppling Saddam. I have enormous faith in our military commanders and capabilities. I have much less faith in our ability to translate that military victory into the effective attainment of the political objectives behind the war. I know we can win the war. I’m less sure that we can win the peace. |
