Henry Kissinger says military victory Impossible in Iraq! Duh, or not duh?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stated that it was impossible to militarily win the war in Iraq. I, for one, tend to believe him. I think it is irresponsible to think otherwise. That said, I would like to know how most others feel about the war, and our chances at winning.

If the general wisdom is that it is closer to impossible... then would that merit a completely new angle? Like brokering a peace deal woth all the variables in the conflict? Remember the baltic states? Is it feasible to carbon iraq in the mold?

AAC






news.yahoo.com... er

In other breaking news, water also runs downhill.

Definitely a big fat DUH!

Obviously Kissenger hasnt taken into consideration ALL possibilites. Like using nukes for example or for deployment of irregular militias in iraq or mercenaries. Or for operating outside the limitations of the Geneva conventions or Heabeus Corpus!

Victory is always possible, the question is how much is that victory worth ??

He's probably dismissed those possibilities out of hand, as the political repercussions internally alone would be catastrophic. IE: sure we could "win" by leveling the place and slaughtering civilians en masse, but is it worth starting a civil war here in the US to win a war in Iraq? I don't think so.

It's over. The only remaining practical course of action is a pullout, sooner or later.

Nobody in the US would bother enought to start a civil war especially when its in some other country in a continent far far away.
Like I said, the question is how much is a victory in Iraq worth to America ?

I disgree.

If it comes to the point where we're openly murdering civilians en masse, instead of in little dribs and drabs, you'll almost certainly see a political uprising here that will make the civil unrest of the Vietnam period look like a tea party.

If it comes to the point where we nuke Ramadi or something?
I can guarantee there will be violence. And I'll be one of the first ones signing up for it.

Military victory has already been accomplished. Political victory (to actually win the "war") is impossible. Propaganda is used by our politicians exceedingly well in America, remember those god awful political commercials? .. It amazes me they where no good at propaganda in a war zone to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

I need to only ask one opinion in order for you to know my opinion. When was the last time that Kissinger was right about anything? Has he ever been right?

Originally posted by Rockpuck
Military victory has already been accomplished.

Yes it has. Now it's time for the Iraqis to take over the security of their own country. They are slowly doing it. It needs to be turned over faster.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
When was the last time that Kissinger was right about anything?

GOOD POINT! In this latest blathering Kissinger also basically said that we need to take a consensus of what the nations surrounding Iraq want and to let them have a say in what Iraq does.

HELL NO!! I can just imagine what Iran wants .... Actually we are seeing it now because the insurgent fighting is really a proxy war with Iran.



[edit on 11/20/2006 by FlyersFan]

Originally posted by Rockpuck
Military victory has already been accomplished. Political victory (to actually win the "war") is impossible. Propaganda is used by our politicians exceedingly well in America, remember those god awful political commercials? .. It amazes me they where no good at propaganda in a war zone to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

That all depends on how you define "military victory" - Saddam's regime was unseated, his military was defeated, so in that sense, yeah, "victory" was acheived back in 2003. On the other hand, the methods we used to acheive that victory - which included widespread destruction of civil infrastructure and other decisions that left an Iraq incapable of ruling itself or providing basic services to it's citizens - ensured that the occupation would be a disaster.

People like to harken back to WW2 and the fact that we did a lot worse things to Japan and Germany, yet were still able to occupy both and restore order fairly quickly. But this ignores the fact that by the end of WW2, the populations of both countries were sick and tired of a war they knew they had started. Not so in Iraq - it was certainly a hostile regime, but we attacked them, not the other way around. And thus we are seen as aggressive foriegn invaders, and our cause as unjust.

[edit on 11/20/06 by xmotex]

plus people in europe and in America are different than us in the Middle east, for instance in Iraq we don't like to be occupied by anohter country, and there's also widespread poverty which makes spreading propaganda by fake, fanatic, and extremist politicians/religious leaders/militia leaders much much easier, and in turn all this makes up the situation we haver right now. no european country has ever as far as i know been occupied for more than 5-10 years, while the middle east has been under other coutries and empires feet since what a 1000 years, right after the abbassids and ammayids came the ottomans, and the crusades, etc. and after the fall of teh ottoman empire, there came the french and the british, and only recently have the middle east been free, so there are grave sentiments against occupation, especially when ou have religious extremism playing a role in conflicts like these it becomes very hard to control...

many of those in iraq and elsewhere are pretty backstabbing, you make a deal with them at night, by the morning they've changed they're minds, and the big guys are not always the only ones in play, there are smaller ones who don't obey the big ones, so it's all a big mess, and the only way to settle things down is to use ruthless tactics like secret police/military rule, etc. and you need a strong military, because if you look back to the 70's and black september in jordan, if the jordanian military wasn't a strong one, jordan would have turn into a country under the rule of arrafat(well he's dead, but before he died, he would've probably been the "president") and i sure wouldn't have liked that!!! but because the jordanaian military was strong, in little more than 15 days or so, the fedayin were completely expelled fromt eh captial and out of bussiness in jordan....

Given certain defining conditions for victory and politically accomplishing the task is different than from militarily accomplishing the same task with the same set of goals absent the political considerations.

From the OP’s source (emphasis added):

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible,"

Kissinger is speaking about an acceptable victory in a given time period under the current political light that the governments involved can would/could/will not... politically support. This is the key statement he is making, not what the BBC wants to broadcast to the word.

Really what he has opinioned is that political constraints on the conflict will prevent some or all of the listed conditions of victory from being realized. Not that the conflict is wholly ‘un-winnable’, there is a huge difference.


mg

'Victory' was never the point of the Iraq war.

That politicians keep pointing to whether we are winning or losing shows that they lost track of the original intent.

The intent was to remove Hussein from power.

He's gone now, and the goal has been achieved.

It's time to get out, and it will happen, sooner or later. If we decide to get out now then we can use our timetable. If we decide to extend the war we will get out on 'their timetable'.

I agree with Kis that we will never 'win', but what would that look like anyway? All we are creating is more terrorist enemies against the US.

No one 'wins' in a military conflict. We 'won' the war in wwII with an atomic bomb...but now we are worried that rogue nations and terrorist groups are now going to blow us up with the bomb we created 50 years ago.

A bomb that would not be in existence if we hadn't created it in the first place.

Originally posted by INc2006
plus people in europe and in America are different than us in the Middle east, for instance in Iraq we don't like to be occupied by anohter country,

many of those in iraq and elsewhere are pretty backstabbing, you make a deal with them at night, by the morning they've changed they're minds,

ok, I agree that Iraqis don't like occupation. But that doesn't make Iraqis any different than anyone else. I can assure you that if Iraqis were occupying the US, they'd have the same problem with angry Americans.

No One likes to be occupied, and this is one of the problems we could eliminate by leaving.


On backstabbing, I can't tell that any country is much different from that. Name a country that hasn't backstabbed....