This morning I read a piece by Andrew Sullivan in which he excoriates the US war effort in Iraq for its mistakes.
I don't follow Sullivan so was unaware until this morning that he was a big war supporter who at some point turned against the war. It's unfair to analyze a commentator on the basis of a few brief essays. Yet it struck me that Sullivan, like the majority of Americans, is steeped more in the business mindset than any particular political ideology. Perhaps that's why the war has been hard for the majority of Americans to support once the US failures in Iraq piled up.
In business, when a product isn't selling you quickly replace management, ditch a division, or simply recall the product. War is not business, and failures in war are not defective products. Once war is set in motion you can't recall it.
It helps to keep in mind that America did not start this war, that Iraq is just one theater in the war, and that Iraq is where the US foreign office and defense establishment are learning to fight the kind of wars that will characterize the first part of this century.
To quickly intuit how warfare in the new century is shaping up, consider the oil pipeline bombings in Mexico. No standing army arrayed against you, just lethal shadows that vanish when you move toward them.
This morning I also read Marine Gen. Peter Pace's mea culpa. General Pace is retiring as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He acknowledged that he overestimated the ability of the Iraqi army to hold together after the invasion, and as a result underestimated the number of U.S. troops needed for the post-invasion phase in Iraq.
A general with too much hindsight is unforgivable, yet if we removed such generals from history there would be maybe three pages about war.
The truth is that a larger deployment of troops needed to be backed by a new strategy for dealing with the post-invasion phase, and which needed the close cooperation of the Pentagon and State. Both these took time to develop and implement.
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