[sweetjazz]

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The basic premise is that we will win the war as long as we don't give up.

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Interestingly enough, to a large extent, this was the rationale that the British government used when trying to defeat the American "insurgency" of 1776. And they were essentially right -- the British ALWAYS could have supplied enough troops to keep the Americans from being victorious, at least for the foreseeable future.

However, the British public tired of the cost of trying to defeat the Americans, both in lives lost but primarily in taxes raised. The British government was in massive debt already at this point (due to a previous war with France, which was known as the French and Indian War over here), and eventually the politicians were swayed by the general sentiment (of the voting public -- universal suffrage had not yet caught on) that America just wasn't worth the trouble. (The French being willing to help us probably led to this decision, as that was clearly going to up the cost of lengthening the stalemate between the British military and the American rebels.)

Obviously, there are moral differences between the American insurgency then and the Iraqi insurgency today. (Though it should be pointed out that the British considered many of our tactics in the American revolution to be barbaric by the standard of the times, e.g. the Boston Tea Party.) And there are strategic differences as well. But the general principle still holds true that people everywhere eventually tire of fighting a battle to maintain a stalemate. That is essentially what is going on in Iraq -- our military presence prevents the insurgency from gaining political power, but the insurgency has been a consistent thorn in the side of our goal for increasing stability and prosperity.

Historically, merely "staying the course" has always been a losing strategy -- the costs of our military occupation are much higher than the costs of the insurgency. What is needed are tactics that will strip the insurgency of its support. While the administration has repeatedly suggested that the insurgency is in its last throes, I have not seen any evidence that they have a particularly effective strategy to dramatically move the balance of power and support in the region to the U.S. military. In fact, despite the fact that our intentions are to build infrastructure in the region (whereas the insurgents seek to destroy it), our military is significantly better trained at handling these kind of operations than in the past, and the Iraqi public gave us a fairly long grace period in the beginning, the insurgency has actually grown in strength over the past two years. Why?

(1) We have failed to addres the ethnic divisions in the country effectively. (This is no easy task and it is unlikely to be accomplished anytime in the near future. The main criticism of the administration on this matter is not that they have failed here -- as just about any administration would have -- but they failed to see early on how serious and difficult a task lay before them.)

(2) We have failed to engage the marginal supporters of the insurgency. We have not done a good enough job of getting into communities where the people support the insurgency out of fear of reprisal or misinformation about the American campaign. These are missions that are very high risk and cannot be conducted inside the comfort of the Green Zone. But these are the missions that would actually strike at the heart of the insurgency if they were successful.

(3) Our horrendous standards of interrogation, as well as similar practices by Iraqi authorities, have seriously undermined our message and made too many people suspicious of a return to Saddam's way of rule.