The Ignorant Way of War

Glenn Reynolds:

MCCAIN ON IRAQ: "Well in war, my dear friends, there is no such thing as compromise; you either win or you lose."

People love straight talk, but the trouble with this analysis is that it's, um, wrong. Wars frequently have somewhat ambiguous outcomes. Think of, say, Korea which ended in a stalemate. Or Israel's war in Lebanon just this past summer. Or, for that matter, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. This began as a fight between the United States' government and Saddam Hussein's Baath regime. The regime was toppled, but a Sunni Arab insurgency that was, in important ways, continuous with the Old Regime stayed in the field. At this point, though, it seems overwhelmingly likely that neither side of that conflict will achieve its main objectives.

Comments

Even assuming St. McCain is correct, what's the intended point? One still has to, you know, do the things necessary to win in order to win. Or maybe the reduction to two outcomes gives us a 50/50 shot no matter what?

Posted by Pooh | December 4, 2006 9:15 PM

Matthew's right on the substance (although that's not to say that we ought to compromise in this case, of course). But what really bothered me is that "my dear friends" affectation. Yeck.

Posted by Al | December 4, 2006 9:27 PM

Why do you bother to read Instahack? Anyway?

Posted by Joel | December 4, 2006 9:34 PM

McCain's a pandering ass

Posted by Patrick | December 4, 2006 9:36 PM

well, we already know that bush has no meaningful definition for "winning" (the metrics they announced some 12-14 months ago in their strategy for victory not looking anywhere close to either good or empirically knowable); i think it's fair to assume that mccain doesn't have a meaningful definition of "winning" either, although, of course, it sounds tough as all get out....

Posted by howard | December 4, 2006 9:44 PM

Is that the stupidest thing a prominent American politician ever said about war? In the top four?

Posted by Pithlord | December 4, 2006 10:25 PM

How's about World War I? 9 million troops dead...and what did the major combatants get out of it--besides Stalin and WWII, that is? I mean, we're supposed to put a couple of colonies and repatriations in the "win" column?

That said, I think the US will come out losers in Iraq.

Posted by theorajones | December 4, 2006 10:27 PM

Well, WWI gave us the League of Nations, which prevented all wars, forever.

Posted by Jeff Fecke | December 4, 2006 10:34 PM

"Well in war, my dear friends, there is no such thing as compromise; you either win or you lose."

I forget who said it, probably one of those French existentialists, but ~ A victory explained is indistinguishable from a loss.

I love that quote.

To break war down into a win or loss is unconscionable. And it seems the American people know it... unaccounted for billions, the verge of ethnic cleansing, that's not what a win looks like. McCain is no philosopher.

Posted by A different matt | December 4, 2006 10:38 PM

Yeah, McCain really ought to know, being a veteran of our glorious Vietnam triumph. I guess he figures that "Captain Bullshit" is a better campaign image than "Saint Straight Talk".

Posted by sglover | December 4, 2006 10:58 PM

How do you win a war in which you are more or less getting in the way of the principal combatants rather than being among the principal combatants?

Posted by Linus | December 5, 2006 1:38 AM

Good grief. Aviators. I admit the cocky buggers are handy to have around if you want a plane flown somewhere, but they should seriously be barred from public office. Bush I, Bush II, Rumsfeld, Cunningham, McCain...

Posted by ajay | December 5, 2006 5:20 AM

The best laugh line from the McCain interview is this:

The senator expressed his concern that Russian President Vladimir Putin is destabilizing the Middle East . . .

Doesn't the Middle East need destabilizing? Shouldn't we be thanking Putin for helping to kick over the ant-hill?

Posted by David Tomlin | December 5, 2006 6:38 AM

McCain apparently has started taking advice from Rove: preach to the worst attributes of the stupidest segment of your audience.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | December 5, 2006 8:11 AM

That's the problem. What McCain says is ridiculous. But, to Joe Idiot on the street, it sounds like straight talk that makes sense.

Another example is a few months back when he said that, if he were president, he would tell the Sunni and Shi-ite leaders to "cut the shit". Wow, what a brilliant idea!

Posted by Jim W | December 5, 2006 9:53 AM

jesus. Even if you just restrict your attention to the "Good War", there was a whole slew of compromising at the end of it.

These people have never heard of Yalta?

We attained *most* of our objectives in WWII. A really, really high percentage--which is why it has set an unrealistic model for war-enthusiasts ever since.

But even there, the outcome contained some things we didn't want. We could have tried fighting the Soviet Army back to Moscow. But it would have cost too much. Was that a win or a loss? Or just the normal way that wars end, i.e. with neither?

Posted by kid bitzer | December 5, 2006 10:59 AM