The goal of the enemy is not to defeat us militarily. The goal is to break the will of the United States, to make us leave. - Gen. John Abizaid, US Central Command
A couple of things are going on with a statement like this. The distinction Abizaid is making between being defeated militarily and leaving Iraq may seem strange to most people. Even downright weird. I mean, if the enemy wants the US troops to leave, and the US troops wind up leaving, the enemy has achieved their goal, haven't they?
But there's a sense in which it's really pretty straightforward. In the prevailing Army doctrine, "military defeat" means defeat in conventional warfare. If the guerrillas don't overrun US positions in a conventional military clash, that's not a "military defeat" in Armyspeak. Successful guerrilla attacks are just "terrorism."
In an earlier post, I referred to the analysis of Andrew Krepinevich, Jr. in The Army and Vietnam (1988) about how the Army processed the lessons of Vietnam in terms of conventional warfare doctrine. This is another example.
The other implication of Abizaid's statement is, don't blame the military. If we fail in Iraq - and who can clearly define victory at this point? - he is implying that it won't be because of any failure of strategy, training or doctrine on the part of the military. It will be the gutless civilians who lost heart.
In other words, he prepping us already for a stab-in-the-back interpretation of the inevitably disappointing conclusion of the Iraq War. No matter how long it make take us to reach that point.
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