How is it possible that we win every single engagement in Iraq, yet people think we are losing the war?

Question

I just saw another question who referred to Iraq as a "meat grinder". Are people really this ignorant? 3000 people in 3 years. Tell you what a meat grinder is/was: Verdun. 1,000,000 people dead, on the battlefield, in a matter of months. In 1916.

Answer 1

The public only knows what the media tells it. And with the media being amazingly left-leaning, they only show negative aspects of very positive things. They downplay every victory and accomplishment, and magnify every downfall. The media hates Bush and everything he does, and they will say anything to beat down on his reputation.

Answer 2

Because war isn't just a game where you keep points and the team with the most wins. It is a complex series of events, with a myriad of military, political, and ideological goals for each side. Tactical sucess does not nessasarily equal strategic sucess. Have you ever heard of a Phyrric victory for example? That's when one side wins, but losses so much strength it might as well be a loss. That's not exactly what's happening to us, but it is similiar.
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Verdun was a conventional fight between huge mechanized armies. That is hardly a fair comparison. Besides, the advances in medical technology and evacuation proceedures have skewed the casualty killed to wounded ratio. If Verdun had these same advances less than half as many would have died.
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I've seen at least three posts that say it is just the liberal media printing bad news. Okay, if this were true, why don't the President and SecDef and Generals speak up and correct the record? If this is true, why are so many middle class Iraqis fleeing Iraq? CNN has them fooled too? Why is it we can't find our POW? If this is true, why did the President himself say "We aren't winning, but we aren't losing either"? For the first 4 years of the war the President had a compliant congress, as much money, troops, and equipment as he wanted and as much as his generals requested (supposedly), and the American people supported him. Yet it is the medias fault Iraq is a failure? Sounds to me like the media is more powerful than a nuke, maybe we should build battalions of reporters instead.

Answer 3

Ok I will try to answer this in two parts. First I will address the first part. If we stay in Iraq there are pros and cons. The pros for staying in Iraq are, that the terrorists, will continue to be weakened as a result of our troops being stationed there. Also, think about this, if we were to leave anytime soon, that would mean the terrorists in Iraq would follow the troops back to our home country creating more a problem. They would be stationed here as terror cells, meaning they would have a greater opportunity to attack on our soil because they are already here. Now for the cons. The cons to staying in Iraq, are that we are constantly losing soliders in Iraq daily. This is a growing problem because what will happen is that the army reserves will become weakened. As it stands right now, we don't have a lot of volunteers in the army. So if we stay longer in Iraq it could pose an opportunity for a draft. Secondly, of course we all know that this war is taking a toll on the economy. We are in over our heads in debt because of the spending on weapons, and military supplies. Finally, with the soliders dying everyday our borders have become weakend. So if a terrorist attack should occur and most of our forces are fighting in Iraq, we can not properly defend ourselves. You have to look at boths sides in order to understand what we should do as a country. The bottom line is, that wisdom should be applied to this situation, and hopefully the next president will use his head wisely about Iraq..

Answer 4

Does Vietnam answer your question?

The US won essentially every single engagement of company size and above, yet we lost. Same thing is going on in Iraq.

Everybody needs to wake up. We can't "win" and only the people of Iraq can lose. Until the Iraqis end the sectarian strife there will be no peace in Iraq. Since that won't happen we can't "win".

Answer 5

Because we aren't "winning" every single engagement in Iraq. More than 3,000 Soldiers have died. We may gather our wounded and flee back into the Green Zone, but we aren't winning every engagement. On top of which, the war isn't being fought between armies. It is being fought by Militia's and other groups of people. We can't win by just killing all the "bad guys." The only way for victory is for a vast majority of the Iraqi people to agree with us, and that isn't going to happen. We can't win until all the sectarian violence stops, and we can't stop the sectarian violence.

Answer 6

Winning every single battle in a war is not the same as winning the war. The US learned this the hard way in Vietnam. In Vietnam, the US won every battle, yet lost the war. A war, to paraphrase Clausewitz, is merely the eruption of politics at another level.

Wars are not won by killing enemy troops. Wars are won by defeating the enemy's attitude. Most people don't understand this distinction. From this statement - which Sun Tzu identified in The Art of War - one could theoretically win a war without ever having to fight a battle.

Hitler understood this principle in the early years of World War 2 - before it turned into a "hot war". Hitler, in an interview with retired British General J.F.C. Fuller in 1933 said that wars could be one by other means - psychological means - without ever having to give fight. Hitler proved this point by taking back the Ruhrland from France and then taking over Austria and then Czechoslovakia without firing a shot.

Because of these early success', Hitler became too arrogant and initiated a hot war against Poland which began WW2.

In Iraq, the American people are intuitively aware that this war is being lost, just the same as they were during the Vietnam era.

In Vietnam, North Vietnamese General Giap understood that he could win the war even if he lost it on the ground, because he could win it in the minds of the American people who were watching it every night fron their TV's safe and sound inside their homes in America. He realized he could force the United States out of Vietnam, even if the US won every battle, leaving North Vietnam to take over South Vietnam. That is what happened.

Now in Iraq, the same thing is happening. The United States has already given up forcing Iraq into the American camp which leaves its future - at best - undetermined - and at worst - ruled by entities hostile to the United States.

Essentially, the war in Iraq has already been lost by the United States, regardless of what the President says or hopes for. All we can really do now is to get out with the least additional cost in life to our troops, the least amount of additional damage to our national image and credibility and the least amount of damage to Iraq.

There are very few means that remain available to win this war in Iraq. All require exceptional political interactions which this Administration seems incapable of achieving. My own Strategy of Peace describes one possible process.

Answer 7

I'm offended when you talk about Iraq as if talking about a peice of merchandise or a peice of cake. Why don't you look at the misery of the people there? Every day at least fifty Iraqi civilians are dead! What engagement do Americans have in Iraq except destroying it into religious city-states so that the oil and all other resources would be easier to control and abuse?!!! How could you always be fooled by your different governments' "promises" of spreading democracy, freedom and prosperity. We, in the third world, see America as full entropy, a force of destruction and chaos, a force that we pray won't ever interfere with our affairs.

Answer 8

Yeah we're doing so well in Iraq that the president fired the secretary of defense, just replaced all of his top generals, and now wnats to add an additional 20,000 troops. Get real. Our millitary isn't dealing with a conventional army that fights you head on and will surrender when killed. We're fighting insurgents who have been fighting each other for thousands of years over something as stupid as "who the the real successor to Muhamad"? There is no clear objective anymore so the media has a responsiblity to report what's going on. If you don't like it go watch fox news.

Answer 9

Because no politician dares to announce a visit to Iraq in advance of suddenly arriving.
No member of the Iraqi government can walk down a street in Baghdad.
Because journalists and other foreigners can only survive by living in the Green Zone in Baghdad or in military camps.

Answer 10

Maybe because there seems to be an endless amount of engagements, with no end in sight? Stopping those engagements would be winning the war. And last I checked we have completely given up on several large areas of Iraq and given up control to local militants.

Answer 11

The liberals and the AP (made up of foreigner that hate the U.S.) want Bush and the Republicans to lose and so they inflate the destruction and the enemy. They don't care about the Iraqis. From my guess and the information I have found, the U.S. troops will start to be going home in the first or the start of the second quarter of 2008.