America is discovering that the road to victory in Iraq runs through Tehran and Damascus. It is also discovering that a military strategy based on a ?limited war? doctrine and confined to Iraq cannot defeat an Iranian enemy engaged in a broader war of conquest.
The asymmetry of fighting a "limited war" in an existential conflict first surfaced during the Truman administration, in its confrontation with communist North Korea. When the Chinese drove the United Nations forces out of North Korea in its quest to conquer the South, Truman (to the surprise of the Chinese) failed to escalate the conflict and adopted the limited objective of fighting the war in South Korea rather than destroying the enemy to the north. As a result, American forces quickly became bogged down in a defensive South Korean conflict with no clear end to the war in sight.
In 1961, President John Kennedy and his brain trust of social theorists, including Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Dean Rusk, George Ball and others, institutionalized this policy of ?limited war? as the doctrine of ?flexible response.? It assumed that the enemy would "get the message" that America was determined to fight based on a gradual escalation of the conflict depending upon the extent of the threat. Unfortunately, ?flexible response? did not take into account that the North Vietnamese (like Al-Qaeda, Iran and Hamas today) were ideologically committed to total victory and were prepared do whatever was necessary to achieve it - short of their own destruction. While Ho Chi Minh set out to wage total war on the South, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson treated the conflict not as existential (which it was for South Vietnam) but as limited. As a result, five hundred thousand American troops were confined to a strategically defensive stance in South Vietnam (as in Korea) with no thought of marching on Hanoi. By failing to threaten the continued existence of the North Vietnamese communist government, North Vietnamese leaders were able to drag out the war until America's will to fight was broken by its own anti-war propaganda at home.
This same failed ?limited war? strategy has dogged American strategic war doctrine ever since. During the Iranian embassy crisis, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini disclosed that he had no fear of an American army marching on Tehran, since President Jimmy Carter?s only serious response to the hostage-taking was to impose ineffectual diplomatic and economic sanctions, an embargo on Iranian oil and a break in diplomatic relations.
President Bill Clinton also followed the ?limited war? approach even as Americans were being harvested by Islamic terrorists from New York to Saudi Arabia to Kenya. He sent cruise missiles to blow up empty tents in the Afghan desert and pharmaceutical factories in the Sudan, signed agreements with dictators based on the belief that America would somehow be "safe," hamstrung American intelligence services in the name of civil liberties, shrunk the American military in the name of economy, and chose to use the courts as the battleground, rather than engaging with the terrorists and taking the war to them and their sponsors.
This doctrine has now been transposed onto Iraq. How can America possibly win a "limited war" in Iraq, when its enemies (Iran and Syria) and their terrorist proxies (Al-Qaeda and Hizbullah) are committed to undermining American efforts there and are pursuing "total war" against them, with the intention of driving them from the region and establishing a global Islamic Caliphate? America has limited its war objectives to stabilizing, democratizing and reconstructing Iraq before it has vanquished those in Iran and Syria who are doing all in their power to see the American enterprise fail. If the American people have grown weary of Iraq, it is because the average American sees no merit in having a national debate on how to wage a futile war.
Americans want victory and, like it or not, the road to victory leads through Tehran and Damascus. The American public will never support a war predicated upon a limited, drawn-out and failed war strategy against an enemy dedicated to the destruction of American influence in the Middle East. Destroying Iran?s nuclear capabilities, capturing its oil fields, destroying its government offices and regime change are absolutely critical if Iraq is to be secured and the larger war against Islamic fascism is to be won. America?s enemies (specifically Iran and Syria) must be convinced that the price of pursuing conquest in Iraq or elsewhere in the world is simply too high for them to pay.
If the United States sends a message that it considers victory in Iraq too costly to pursue, how then can Iran and Syria be blamed for concluding that Washington may be unwilling to pay the costs of avoiding defeat? During World War II, it would have been unthinkable for Allied forces to have stopped at the German border after liberating France without destroying Adolf Hitler, the Nazi war machine and the entire cult of Aryan supremacy.
In the final analysis, just as Israel will eventually be required to vanquish the terrorist infrastructures in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon if Israelis are to be secure in their homeland, so America will be required to carry this war to Iran and Syria if it is to end the threat they and their proxies represent to Iraq and the world. Iraq can not be, and never will be, stabilized so long as these nations are free to undermine American interests and pursue their global Islamic war.
The asymmetry of fighting a "limited war" in an existential conflict first surfaced during the Truman administration, in its confrontation with communist North Korea. When the Chinese drove the United Nations forces out of North Korea in its quest to conquer the South, Truman (to the surprise of the Chinese) failed to escalate the conflict and adopted the limited objective of fighting the war in South Korea rather than destroying the enemy to the north. As a result, American forces quickly became bogged down in a defensive South Korean conflict with no clear end to the war in sight.
In 1961, President John Kennedy and his brain trust of social theorists, including Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Dean Rusk, George Ball and others, institutionalized this policy of ?limited war? as the doctrine of ?flexible response.? It assumed that the enemy would "get the message" that America was determined to fight based on a gradual escalation of the conflict depending upon the extent of the threat. Unfortunately, ?flexible response? did not take into account that the North Vietnamese (like Al-Qaeda, Iran and Hamas today) were ideologically committed to total victory and were prepared do whatever was necessary to achieve it - short of their own destruction. While Ho Chi Minh set out to wage total war on the South, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson treated the conflict not as existential (which it was for South Vietnam) but as limited. As a result, five hundred thousand American troops were confined to a strategically defensive stance in South Vietnam (as in Korea) with no thought of marching on Hanoi. By failing to threaten the continued existence of the North Vietnamese communist government, North Vietnamese leaders were able to drag out the war until America's will to fight was broken by its own anti-war propaganda at home.
This same failed ?limited war? strategy has dogged American strategic war doctrine ever since. During the Iranian embassy crisis, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini disclosed that he had no fear of an American army marching on Tehran, since President Jimmy Carter?s only serious response to the hostage-taking was to impose ineffectual diplomatic and economic sanctions, an embargo on Iranian oil and a break in diplomatic relations.
President Bill Clinton also followed the ?limited war? approach even as Americans were being harvested by Islamic terrorists from New York to Saudi Arabia to Kenya. He sent cruise missiles to blow up empty tents in the Afghan desert and pharmaceutical factories in the Sudan, signed agreements with dictators based on the belief that America would somehow be "safe," hamstrung American intelligence services in the name of civil liberties, shrunk the American military in the name of economy, and chose to use the courts as the battleground, rather than engaging with the terrorists and taking the war to them and their sponsors.
This doctrine has now been transposed onto Iraq. How can America possibly win a "limited war" in Iraq, when its enemies (Iran and Syria) and their terrorist proxies (Al-Qaeda and Hizbullah) are committed to undermining American efforts there and are pursuing "total war" against them, with the intention of driving them from the region and establishing a global Islamic Caliphate? America has limited its war objectives to stabilizing, democratizing and reconstructing Iraq before it has vanquished those in Iran and Syria who are doing all in their power to see the American enterprise fail. If the American people have grown weary of Iraq, it is because the average American sees no merit in having a national debate on how to wage a futile war.
Americans want victory and, like it or not, the road to victory leads through Tehran and Damascus. The American public will never support a war predicated upon a limited, drawn-out and failed war strategy against an enemy dedicated to the destruction of American influence in the Middle East. Destroying Iran?s nuclear capabilities, capturing its oil fields, destroying its government offices and regime change are absolutely critical if Iraq is to be secured and the larger war against Islamic fascism is to be won. America?s enemies (specifically Iran and Syria) must be convinced that the price of pursuing conquest in Iraq or elsewhere in the world is simply too high for them to pay.
If the United States sends a message that it considers victory in Iraq too costly to pursue, how then can Iran and Syria be blamed for concluding that Washington may be unwilling to pay the costs of avoiding defeat? During World War II, it would have been unthinkable for Allied forces to have stopped at the German border after liberating France without destroying Adolf Hitler, the Nazi war machine and the entire cult of Aryan supremacy.
In the final analysis, just as Israel will eventually be required to vanquish the terrorist infrastructures in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon if Israelis are to be secure in their homeland, so America will be required to carry this war to Iran and Syria if it is to end the threat they and their proxies represent to Iraq and the world. Iraq can not be, and never will be, stabilized so long as these nations are free to undermine American interests and pursue their global Islamic war.