Purposefully Misunderstanding the Iraq War

The misshapen lump of jaundiced flesh, Richard Perle, is now claiming We have already won in Iraq. As an aside the use of we always makes me laugh especially when uttered by a chickenhawk warmonger who ensured he wouldn't soil his lily white breeches by experincing direct fire.

However, in his article Perle hedges his bets and also writes in the same article, the war is far from over. You see Perle is a political scientist, which is one of those soft and lumpy sciences. So, it's a perfect fit for Perle. It allows him to make contradictory statements even in the same article.

Perle was a Champion of Iraq War as a member of the Project for the New American Century. But, of course Perle is a rear echelon commander, he envisions all these great benefits from sending the American military into action without understanding anything about war. And I don't mean what the day-to-day grind being in theatre does to a man's pysche and the other individual horrors men face for the rest of their lives after being used as pawns. I'm writing about the a complete ignorance of what an "enemy" is bound to do on the field.

This underlines a basic misunderstanding of the war The Bush Regime lied to start and continues to lie about today. The battlefield in Iraq is a 4th generational war. In 4GW, physical conflict is the least important component by the non-state entity (the insurgents), other than ensuring they do not allow themselves to be fixed on the battlefield and obliterated. Therefore, when it comes actual confrontation, the insurgents fail when they allow themselves to be concentrated in a one place (like Fallujah 2004) and they succeed when they employ force multipliers such as IEDs, suicide bombers and snipers.

When the US Surges extra forces into the battlefield, the insurgents understand they need merely to lay low, knowing the Surge can not be maintained indefinetely. This lowers the number of deaths (which are still appallingly high) and is why Bush wants to keep the extra forces in Iraq for the reminder of his Dictatorship. The illusion of reduced violence in Iraq, with special thanks to the US news media which refrains from mentioning the daily deaths of Iraqis and Americans, provides a winning formula for Bush to claim the Surge worked, he "won" and Iraq is a Grand Old Success before he stumbles his way out of the White House.