Iraq War: "Will" and facing reality

There's been such an incredible amount of very telling information coming out on the state of the Iraq War lately that it's enough to make even a political junkie dizzy.

Today I came across the statement below that has to do with the argument that we must show "will" and steadfastness, etc., by keeping on fighting in Iraq.  As I've said before, it's very important for the US, as it is for any country, to show consistency and to show that it won't be intimidated by threats and attacks.

But it's one thing to state that in a general way like I just did.  How to apply it in particular situations is the job of political and military leaders in balancing a large number of priorities.  In one sense, the criticism that "if we had just been tougher we would have won" can never be completely refuted.  That's mainly because some people will always prefer bluster to facing unpleasant facts.

There's no doubt that the jihadists of the world will interpret the failures of the US in Iraq as a sign of "weakness."  (Failures and misdeeds - no need to be mealy-mouthed about it.) But continuing to do something that counter-productive is also a kind of weakness.  And if we go one step beyond airhead analogies to schoolyard bullies, one of the great - and for the US, tragic - ironies of the Iraq War is that it was based on a macho blowhard view of American power as being able to impose our will anywhere we choose.  Instead, what it has demonstrated once again is that the American "superpower" does have very real limits to its power.

This comment from Fighting has U.S. grasping for a plan: June 30 deadline leaves everything 'up in the air' (San Francisco Chronicle 05/05/04) has one answer to the "showing will" argument for staying in Iraq forever:

William Odom, a retired Army general who was director of the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration, said Iraqi public anger at the U.S. troop presence has spun irretrievably out of control. "The only question is how long we're going to wait to leave and what price we're going to have to pay if we try to stay," he said.

Odom, now a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, addsthat the UnitedNations and Arab countries might be persuaded to send in peacekeepers to pick up the slack after the American withdrawal.

"But even if they don't, any continued U.S. troop presence is a losing proposition. Once you've done a stupid thing, you don't fix it by keeping doing it. Our troops are exposed; we're going to take more casualties without any capacity of destroying the enemy. That's a losing proposition."

Showing the "will" to be "tough" is important in foreign policy.  So is having the "will" not to be stupid about what we're doing.