Interesting take on the Iraq War

The UK's Prospect Magazine has published a very, very interesting article about the Iraq War. I learned of it from LGF.

By the second half of 2004, the insurgency had had six months to show what it was capable of, and it became clear that its goal could not be the military defeat of the Americans. The Sunnis were now fighting not for a military victory but a political one, to win in the US congress and the newsrooms of CNN and the New York Times the war they could not win in the alleys and date palm groves of Mesopotamia.

I pulled this section because this is one of the worst aspects of the war. The ongoing bloodshed is designed for one purpose: to sway leftists in the U.S., who control nearly all media here (Fox News and a handful of papers, plus bloggers, are the only exceptions).

Vietnam taught leftists in the US that the US can lose a war. Vietnam taught the rest of us that when things get bad we shouldn't run away. Vietnam taught our enemies that while nobody on this planet can challenge the US militarily, a US defeat is assured by getting blood on the TV screens of middle-class Americans. This is why the left talks about how bad the war is 24/7/365. They know the tactic and are trying to force us to lose a war just to thwart a Republican.

Bill Clinton's mini-Vietnam was Somalia, when he ordered US military forces to leave after a single helicopter was shot down. The negative images in the US media overwhelmed Bubba's delicate, liberal sensibilities. It also showed he wasn't "in it to win it". He was engaged in a PR stunt that cost American lives. It is the foreign policy of a modern liberal -- despicable and disastrous.

Saddam Hussein's favorite movie was Blackhawk Down. He ordered cases of the DVDs. He handed them out to his generals, telling them it was a textbook example of how to defeat America. Liberals have damaged this country, and the only thing preventing them from doing it again/further is Bush.

The Sunni insurgents have recognised that there is little point fighting a strong and increasingly skilled enemy—the US—that is on the right side of Iraq's historical destiny and has a political leadership that—unlike that of the British in Basra—responds to setbacks by trying harder. (That is essentially the Petraeus doctrine: more resources more intelligently applied further forward.) There is even less point doing so when you are a discredited minority, as the Sunnis are after 35 years of Baathism followed by their disastrous insurgency, and the enemy is in fact your main guarantor of a fair place at the national table.

I found the following in the comments section of the Prospect article:

We have a project that has cost 20 times as much as projected (from 50 billion to 1 Trillion minimum), whose main premises (WMDs, AQ links) were shown to be false, and which has taken far more time than was originally projected by those who were war supporters.

Even if we are finally able to achieve a peaceful resolution in Iraq or some kind, it must never be forgotten that it was far more expensive, took far more time than the war supporters said, and was based on false premises as well. Supporters of the war conveniently ignore all that.

We'll never stop hearing about the so-called lie about the pretext (Bush lied about WMDs!).

Question: If Bush was eager to lie about the pretext for war, why would he not also lie about finding WMDs in Iraq? The latter lie is far easier to pull off than the former. A few long, aluminum tubes would do the job. Or perhaps some lead buckets containing uranium. I'd like to hear an anti-war leftist explain why Bush would tell one huge lie to get us into war, then refuse to tell a small lie to salvage his entire legacy for the history books.

Answer provided by Nancy Pelosi in 1998: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."