(Light blogging, schmight blogging.)
My military education is limited to one semester of Society and War back in college, so I’m not prepared to make a big announcement about the ongoing battles in Iraq. Well, actually, I am, and it’s that here at home the pro- and anti-war arguments appear to have become completely unfalsifiable. The usual suspects on either side have taken the events of the last couple of days to signal that we’ve now completely blown it, the Inevitable Revolution has begun, and we might as well pack our overweening nanny-state imperialist bags and go home; or that our desperate and savage enemies are acting like complete idiots and we have a golden opportunity to mop the floor with them and pave the way for Iraqi democracy in one fell swoop. “Failed war” and “we’re winning”–it appears that whatever happens, adherents to one or the other of these narratives will find that said happening fits neatly into their storyline.
Me, I’m not so sure. The closest comparison to the current goings on seems to be the Tet Offensive (about which I did learn in that Society and War class, thanks). Of course it’s not exactly the same–Tet was more or less coordinated throughout NVA and VC ranks, whereas it’s unclear how much collusion there is between disparate groups like Sadr’s militia, the Fallujah insurgents, Syrian infiltrators and so forth; much of the current hostilities seems to have stemmed from an extremely unlucky confluence of circumstances, such as the Fallujahn lynching and the shuttering of Sadr’s newspaper. But it’s similar in that it’s difficult to see an outcome to the battles that, in military terms, isn’t a complete disaster for the insurgent groups. Fallujah and Sadr City could have remained relatively untrammelled hotbeds of rebellion and murder for months, but now the insurgents in both places have handed the Coalition an excuse to squash them, an eventuality that the poorly disciplined and outmatched insurgent groups will not long prevent. Like Tet, the outbreak of fighting is surprising, but in the end it will likely be a nightmare for the enemy.
However, like Tet, what matters is not the reality on the ground but the perception both here at home and abroad. Do these battles represent some sort of massive intelligence failure? Can they be seen to represent popular sentiment about the Coalition, even though the people doing the fighting command little general support? Will they produce more casualties than the public can bear, either on our side (doubtful–Americans seem to have learned the lesson of Mogadishu) or among civilians (possible, despite the care being exercised by our forces; these groups are renowned for their use of human shields, residences, and mosques as both safe havens and propaganda generators for the credulous media)?
Which leads us back to our two rival, unfalsifiable narratives. In a situation where the outcome is more or less a given, the spin is everything. Will Fallujah, Ramadi, Sadr City et al mark the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning? It may come down to which of those narratives is shouted the loudest.