Demosophia

Why Iraq?

Anticipatory Retaliation has an excellent new post up in their new digs, about why Iraq was anything but a mistake in the War on Totalitarianism. Strategically it was a master stroke. A few key grafs:

Where, then, does Iraq fit into all of this? Those of you who have followed military actions closely may be familiar with the notion of a 'center of gravity' and once you hit that center hard enough, the system gets damaged and we start heading to a 'tipping point' after which failure cascades through the other guy's system and he falls apart.

To be fair to some of the war's critics, there are a lot of very clear and present threats a good deal spookier than Iraq ever was. What those critics may not apprehend is that Iraq was the most important center of gravity we could hit given political constraints. Think about this - look at the map. When Iraq goes, Syria and Iran are now surrounded by US troops and US allies in all directions (think about the value of economic sanctions now that Syria is cut off from the sea). The threat of armed force against Saudi Arabia is mooted and allows troops to be pulled out and placed on the flanks of American enemies. The swatting of Hussein for WMD did affect Libya, but more significantly it lead directly to the uncovering of a huge amount of information about the Iranian program. Both of these in concert allowed the proliferation black market to be dealt a grevious wound. You could also argue that the flypaper strategy on this has been effective, but more significantly, it takes some of the political heat of off Israel, because now they are not the only people being screamed at.

So, a better analysis is not that we went to war for any one reason - but rather that we were striking at a center of gravity in a larger, much older conflict, in an effort to disrupt our opponent's systems.

So then, how does Fallujah play into this? Well, the bad guys still operate under the assumption that the US is terribly casualty intolerant. On this, only the historians will be able to tell. The fact of the matter is however, that they could increased their survivability by going to ground, but they have, instead come to the surface, expsoing themselves in an effort to Black Hawk Down us. By way of analogy, think of a ballistic missile sub hiding under the surface. Once she launches a missile, then everyone will know where she's at. It's bad insofar as the missile has been launched, but great insofar as you now know exactly where the other 23 missiles are. Live with the launch, but sink the damned boat.