Victory-Defeat, Success-Failure

On March 22, 2003, I listened to General Tommy Frank speak on C-SPAN. He said:”Because of the courage and dedication of these heroes, the mission of Operation Iraqi Freedom will be achieved.”

Then General Tommy Frank placed these objectives of the war in Iraq on a chalkboard (to which I have added two judgmental choices and my selection). Were these objectives also the “mission”? I believe so.

1. end Saddam’s regime; (Success or Failure?) SUCCESS! VICTORY!
2. isolate and destroy weapons of mass destruction; (Success or Failure?) FAILURE!
3. drive out terrorism; (Success or Failure?) FAILURE!
4. collect intelligence related to terrorism; (Success or Failure?) FAILURE!
5. collect intelligence related to trafficking of weapons of mass destruction; (Success or Failure?) FAILURE!
6. provide humanitarian assistance to Iraq; (Success or Failure?) FAILURE!
7. secure oil resources for Iraqi people; (Success or Failure?) FAILURE!
8. help Iraqi people make the switch to representative Government. (Success or Failure?) FAILURE!

Many people would like to hear a detailed, renewed mission statement from the President, rather than a neat slogan for his base to hang onto.

Going Counterintuitive on the Iraq War

Go big? Go small? Go away? Those questions frame the dilemmma. We now see the hardhead-in-chief staying the course while changing our strategy. Huh? Swapping “victory” for “success”. “Graceful exit”. Nonsense. Will he listen? The non-deliberative mind hard at work.

During WWII I saw a b/w film about fighter pilots. In a steep dive, the normal reaction in combat was to pull the plane out of the dive by pulling back on the control stick. But planes and men were being killed, crashing after that maneuver. Then the movie’s hero, a test pilot, in a rush of counterintuitive thinking at the critical moment pushed the joy-stick forward, and lived. Voila! The denouement!

I do not recollect if that scenario was drawn from real-life experience, a patriotic movie based on fact. Still, the analogy may be applied to the present moment of the Iraq war, saying that we should go big, really big. I reiterate my counterintuitive thinking in my previous blog statement, mobilize a coalition of all free societies in something like a “million-man march”. One Congressman has called for a renewal of the draft that would include all able-bodied youth, rich and poor, to begin to confront the world-wide conspiracy of the militant Islamists. (I was a draftee in WWII.) Many nations have universal military service as a primary duty of all citizens. Let’s have the debate!