http://www.slate.com/id/2171510/In 1975, Army Col. Harry Summers went to Hanoi as chief of the U.S. delegation's negotiation team for the four-party military talks that followed the collapse of the South Vietnamese government. While there, he spent some time chatting with his North Vietnamese counterpart, Col. Tu, an old soldier who had fought against the United States and lived to tell his tale. With a tinge of bitterness about the war's outcome, Summers told Tu, "You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield." Tu replied, in a phrase that perfectly captured the American misunderstanding of the Vietnam War, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."
Today, in Iraq, we face a similar conundrum. Our vaunted military has won every battle against insurgents and militias—from the march up to the "thunder runs" that took Baghdad; the assaults on Fallujah to the battles for Sadr City. And yet we still find ourselves stuck in the sands of Mesopotamia. In a New York Times op-ed published Monday, Brookings Institution scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack argue that "{w}e are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms." They go on to describe the myriad ways the surge is succeeding on the security front. But in emphasizing this aspect of current operations, they downplay the more critical questions relating to political progress and the ability of Iraq's national government to actually govern. Security is not an end in itself. It is just one component, albeit an important one, of a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy. Unless it is paired with a successful political strategy that consolidates military gains and translates increased security into support from the Iraqi people, these security improvements will, over time, be irrelevant.
O'Hanlon and Pollack report progress from several diverse Iraqi cities, including Sunni-dominated Ramadi, Arab-Kurdish-Turkman Tal Afar and Mosul, and Shiite-Sunni Baghdad. Curiously, the scholars' dispatch ignores Baqubah, Samarra, Kirkuk, and the areas south of Baghdad—places with the highest sectarian tensions, worst fighting, and least progress.
The short, selective itinerary raises questions about who planned the trip, whom O'Hanlon and Pollack were able to talk with, and what they actually saw—as opposed to what they were briefed on during visits to U.S. bases. At best, these two men saw enough of Iraq to get a glimpse of reality there. At worst, they saw a Potemkin Village of success stories, not unlike the picture shown to visiting congressional delegations, that left them with a false vision of progress.
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