Iraq War: Is "losing" an acceptable outcome?

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who has been a supporter of Bush's "stay the course" approach in the Iraq War, writes about Iraq's grim lessons UPI (via Monsters and Critics) 12/14/05; also at the UPI Website.

He makes several good points in a short article.  But the following one is especially important in light of the administration's current posturing about "victory" in the Iraq War.  Cordesman says that one "grim lesson" the US public and policymakers need to learn is that  sometimes the United States is going to lose wars:

It is a lesson that goes firmly against the American grain, but it is a natural corollary of limited war. If the course of the political and military struggle shows the United States that it cannot achieve the desired grand strategic outcome, it needs to accept the fact that the United States must find ways to terminate a counter-insurgency war. Defeat, withdrawal, and acceptance of an outcome less than victory are never desirable in limited war, but they are always acceptable. For all the arguments about prestige, trust, and deterrence, there is no point in pursuing a limited conflict when it becomes more costly than the objective is worth or when the probability of achieving that objective becomes too low.

This is a lesson that goes against American culture. The whole idea that the United States can be defeated is no more desirable for Americans than for anyone else, in fact, almost certainly less so. But when the United States lost in Vietnam it not only lived with the reality, it ultimately did not suffer from it. When the United States failed in Lebanon and Haiti, it failed at almost no perceptible cost. Exiting Somalia was not without consequences, but they were scarcely critical.

This does not mean that the United States should not stay in Iraq as long as it has a good chance of achieving acceptable objectives at an acceptable cost. But it does mean that the United States can afford to lose in Iraq, particularly for reasons that are frankly beyond its control and which the world will recognize as such. There is no point in 'staying the course' through a major Iraqi civil war, a catastrophic breakdown of the political process, or a government coming to power that simply asks us to leave. In all three cases, it isn`t a matter of winning or losing, but instead, facing a situation where conditions no longer exist for staying. (my emphasis) 

Cordesman is writing as an analyst of military affairs, not as someone doing press releases for an elected official.  So he's not including obvious qualifications like the fact that lots of people in the US suffered from the Vietnam War, but he's saying that the national interest was not damaged by the US exiting the war.  I think that's a fair interpretation of what he says there.

The testosterone argument has been far too dominant in these kinds of discussions in the US.  "If our side backs down, the other side will think we're weak and come after us.  We have to show him that our God's bigger than his God."

But deciding that it's time to leave an untenable situation, or that the costs of continuing is greater than any foreseeable benefit, is not a sign of weakness or cowardice.  It's a question of making sensible judgments about the country's best interests.  Having a Lee-surrendering-his-sword-to-Grant ending is not a necessary component of a war.  In fact, the US should expect it to be a relatively unusual occurence.

"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05