We are now approaching four years of involvement in the second go-round for Iraq. Four years is not a long time on a geological scale, but is quite substantial in the context of war. The U.S. Civil War was only four years. World War II was six.
An aside... If you think the bulk of WWII was fought in France, England, North Africa, and the Pacific, I beg to differ. An estimated 23 million Soviets died in the war--military, civilian, and Holocaust. That's 24 times the combined deaths of the UK and US.
But, back to Iraq.... Those were wars that had clear winners and losers, so it's easy to see where the tide turned and fortune smiled on the eventual victors. Not so for Iraq. In fact, I don't think it's clear who is winning, but it is surely not us. (Think on that). I also think I know why.
We choose not to win. Yep, choose.
A conventional military cannot defeat a determined guerrilla campaign without exceedingly harsh measures. That same military cannot defeat a suicidal guerrilla campaign without extreme measures. Let's look now at some successful methods of dealing with such campaigns from the past.
1. Genocide. This is clearly the most effective method. If a people is giving you trouble, you kill them all. Simple and long-lasting. The historical precedents are too numerous to list. Our military is more capable than any in history to make this a reality.
2. Assimilation. You destroy a culture by breeding it out. Effective, but time consuming. Our military is not well equipped to handle this chore.
3. Destruction by alliance. This is really two methods: (a) Turn the populace against the guerrillas and (b) arm one faction and let them fight the other. Method (a) requires harsh and certain retaliatory measures against the populace so that they are vastly more scared of us than the guerrillas. We could easily accomplish this. Method (b) is even easier.
4. Bribing. As of this writing and according to this site the total cost of the war is over $360 billion. That's a lot of money. With that much money, you could give all 27 million Iraqis around $13,500 with that amount of money. This is in a country that before we invaded has a per capita GDP of around $1200. The equivalent of giving $465,000 to an American, when you adjust for purchasing power. You buy a lot of "democracy breaking out" for that.
We do not choose any of these options. Thus, we do not choose to win. We could easily accomplish all of the options save assimilation. We choose not to because our hearts are not hard enough. We don't have the stomach for it.
On September 11, 2001, I sat on a good friend's back porch and said that I thought that what had just happened would make us worse as a people--that it would make us more evil. I don't think it really has. We are still the country that lost Vietnam. We are not hard core enough to play games with people who have nothing to lose. Sadly, I think that means that we should go home and accept our loss. Sure, we killed Saddam and if that's a win in your book, then huzzah! But the whole "let's-make-a-bunch-of-sectarian-backwards-tribal-illiterate-
barbarians-into-4H-loving-Lutherans" just isn't going to happen.
We went there to make sure they didn't use or contribute to the use of weapons of mass destruction. I don't think that's going to happen now. As John Derbyshire of the National Review put it in 2003 (but has since recanted), "There is no trouble from rubble." Amen.
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You forgot about occupation. We could reinstate the draft and flood the country with a million troops. I guess that's not "winning", but it's not "stay the course" either. Or we could tone it down a bit to, say, 21,500 more troops and call that "victory". Or we could just accept our loss, like you said. Or, to be more exact, we could accept the Project for a New American Century's loss. Idiots.
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