Blame Canada

"Retired Generals Criticize Bush’s Plan for Iraq," The New York Times reports on a Senate committee hearing last Thursday:

The American effort in Iraq has gone badly because the United States did not understand the consequences of deposing Saddam Hussein, said Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, a former director of the National Security Agency. He said the principal beneficiary of the war was Iran and al-Qaida, not the United States.

“There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests,” he said.

So, more than 3,000 American service members killed, half a trillion tax dollars down a hole, and the primary beneficiaries are Iran and al-Qaida. That's not good.

But I'm most interested here in Lt. Gen. Odom's statement that "There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests."

Let's illustrate that with a hypothetical example. If the United States went to war with Canada, we would lose.

Sure, on paper, we could take 'em. Even in its current overstretched state of extreme unreadiness, the American military is much bigger and much better armed than its Canadian counterpart. We have bigger and more expensive toys. So the U.S. could certainly win the fight and rack up far more points on the Who Killed the Most People scorecard.

But none of that would matter. America would still lose, because there is no way to win a war that is not in your interests.

"Victory" would not be among the available options. No matter how many troops we sent to go door-to-door in Toronto. No matter how many bombs we rained down on the streets of Ottawa. No matter if American forces were decidedly victorious in every battle waged "in the field." None of that would ever lead to winning, because winning would not be possible.

America would therefore lose. Our defeat might never appear "in the field," but it would be real and substantial, perhaps even devastating.

Our security at home would be grievously harmed by the presence of a new, chaotic destroyed state. Our prestige and influence around the world would be crippled. Our economy would suffer — from the loss of resources misallocated to this fiasco, from the alienation of our international trading partners, from the instability wrought by a war that created two new enemies for every old one killed. And we wouldn't just end up at war with Canada, but with all of Canada's friends. (Canada has a lot of friends.)

A certain kind of leader would be unable to grasp that. They wouldn't be able to see beyond our mightier military and superior firepower, beyond our unrivaled capacity for killing people and blowing stuff up, beyond our unbroken string of battles "won in the field." Obsessed with all of these impressive facts, such leaders would convince themselves that we could turn the corner and rescue victory from defeat with one more surge of battles and bombs.

But that's not the way to win a war that is not in your interests. There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests.

Eventually, the nature of reality would begin to sink in with even the most obstinate and obtuse. They would realize that, since victory was not an option, more battles and more bombs would only constitute losing harder.

And then — this is the scary part — then they would order more battles and more bombs. They would do so without expecting, or even hoping for, victory. They would do so in order to buy time to sow, nurture and cultivate an explanation for why anybody and everybody other than them was really to blame for the defeat they chose and pursued with such zeal.

"There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests."

If that sounds depressing or "defeatist," take heart. This was just a hypothetical example. No one yet has been foolish or reckless enough to start such a perverse and unnecessary and doomed-to-fail war.

At least not against Canada. Yet.