Why we should pull out of Iraq

This is the first of a four-part series explaining, from a rather different point of view, why we should pull out of Iraq.

I subscribe to Mr. Obama's belief: "I'm not against all wars -- just stupid ones." There are times when military operations are the best solution to a problem. But Americans don't seem to have a rational way of determining when those times are. The attack upon Iraq was one such case. That was a dreadful blunder, and in these essays, I propose to explain why it was such a blunder and why a rapid pullout is the best option available to us.

How to run a war

Americans seem to approach war rather like a football game: it's something that you either win or lose. That's naive. Let's get back to basics. Let's start with the most important book on war ever written: von Clausewitz's On War. I don't recommend that you read it, for several reasons. First, von Clausewitz wrote in the mid-nineteenth century, and the history of those times colors his writing. If you're not intimately familiar with Napoleonic warfare, a lot of what von Clausewitz writes will be alien to you. Second, von Clausewitz was, guess what, German, and he wrote in the classical German style of the time, which means that his sentences drag on forever, which intricately interconnected clauses that are difficult to untangle. Perhaps there are more modern translations that make him more readable -- the one I read was a tough slog.

Nevertheless, von Clausewitz included in this, the most important book on war, the most important sentence on war:

War is the extension of policy to other means.

Sadly, this crisp version is not a lucid translation of the original German. Here are some variations on the original sense, none of which are correct (the above sentence is the best overall translation) but which help clarify the meaning:

War is the continuation of politics into other areas.
War is the extension of political conflict into a different arena.
War is national policy expressed in a violent way.

STEP 1: Specify the objective
Now that you have the basic idea, we can apply it to come up with a rational way to prosecute a war. The very first step is to define the national policy that we seek to pursue. Why do we want to fight a war? What's our political objective? When it's all over, how will the world be different in a way that we find desirable?

STEP 2: Devise a plan
Having established exactly what you intend to achieve, you create a military operations plan that will achieve the political objective you previously defined. This is important: the plan must accomplish what you want to accomplish. You must examine the plan critically, asking hard questions to determine whether the plan really will accomplish the political objective. The mistake so many people make at this stage is the assumption that the application of sufficient military force is certain to accomplish the political objective. This is not necessarily the case. We could, for example, pound the Afghan rebels hiding in the mountains with tens of thousands of tons of bombs and never accomplish anything.

STEP 3: Assess the costs
Now you must carefully assess all the costs of this military operation. The obvious costs lie in military casualties. These include the loss to the economy of young, healthy soldiers who would have contributed considerable tax money to your government, as well as the health care costs of all veterans of the war. You must also take into account the costs of munitions expended and equipment destroyed. Lastly, you must carefully assess the "soft costs" of military action. Whenever you use military power, you make people angry. The world's televisions will broadcast images of dead civilians, screaming orphans, children without arms or legs -- all of this will cost you the goodwill of other people. Of course, it will also gain esteem from the enemies of those you clobber, and that too must be taken into account. However, the general rule is this: when a big guy beats up on a little guy, most bystanders side with the underdog.

STEP 4: compare costs with benefits
Now that you have a fairly good assessment of the costs, compare those costs with the political benefits defined in Step 1. Are the benefits worth the costs? If so, proceed with the operation. If not, abort it.

STEP 5: execute the operation
Unleash the dogs of war

STEP 6: assess progress against predictions
You must continually re-evaluate the operation in light of the cost-benefit trade-off. If at any time the projected costs exceed the anticipated benefits, abort the mission as soon as possible.

This is the right way to run a war. In the next essay, we'll consider how well the Bush Administration carried out these six steps.