Posted on 08/15/2005 7:28:35 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
As I've said in earlier columns, I have no particular skill for predicting the future. I discover the future the same way as most other mortals: one second at a time. But I can predict certain things with uncanny accuracy.
For instance, if I send my teenaged son to clean the front bathroom, I know exactly how events are going to transpire. He'll grunt, stomp around a little (just in case I don't realize that cleaning the bathroom is a serious imposition), and eventually gather up a random selection of rags and cleaning products and head down the hall toward the bathroom. He'll spend a few minutes generating industrious-sounding noises, and then things will get quiet.
At this point, my psychic abilities kick into overdrive, and I can predict exactly what he will say next. In fact, I know what we're both going to say, nearly word-for-word.
“Dad, can you come check the bathtub?”
“What's wrong with the bathtub?”
“Nothing. I mean I cleaned it.”
“Good. Why do I need to check it?”
"To see if it's clean enough.”
Look at it. Does it look clean?”
Him: “How do you tell?”
“What color is it supposed to be?”
“White.”
“Is it white?”
"Uhhhhh… not really.”
“Is it clean?”
“I guess not.”
This pronouncement is followed by a sigh that rattles the windows. He spends another two minutes making industrious-sounding noises, and then…
“Dad, can you come check the bathtub?”
“What's wrong with the bathtub?”
And the cycle begins again.
It would be much easier for me to simply check the bathtub myself. I could save myself a great deal of frustration. For that matter, I could clean the bathtub myself. It takes all of five minutes to do a thorough job. But I bite my tongue, and remind myself that this isn't about the bathroom, it's about preparing our son for life.
When he finally emerges from the bathroom, looking bedraggled and generally put upon, we have to have the talk . The contents of that conversation are as predictable as the tub dialogue. I'll spare you the interplay and cut to the central issue: the job is done when it's finished. The job is done when it's right.
You can apply the same standard to anything. Suppose you hire someone to repaint your house. When is the job done? When he gets tired? When he runs out of paint? When he discovers that painting a house is harder than it looks? No, the job is done when the house is painted and the cleanup is finished. It's that simple.
Would you settle for anything less? Would you accept half a root canal from your dentist? How about half a haircut, or most of a car wash? Of course not. Anyone can look at a half-painted house and see that there is still work to be done.
That leaves me wondering how people can get so wrapped up over the lack of a formal Exit Strategy for Iraq. I've heard it at least a hundred times over the past two years: “America got into Iraq without a plan for getting out.”
This line of thought began to surface almost immediately following the onset of military action in March of 2003. U.S. forces had been in Iraq for less than two weeks when the word ‘ Quagmire ' began appearing in the media. The Vietnam comparisons were cropping up even before that, shortly followed by those two deadly words – Exit Strategy.
The implication attached to those words is clear. No government should ever enter a military conflict without a comprehensive blueprint for getting out. Buried in that idea lies the assumption that the master plan ought to include a detailed timeline. The sheer orderliness of the concept is so seductive that Senators, journalists, and private citizens are drawn to it in droves.
If we were talking about an undertaking with a high degree of predictability, that might be a reasonable demand. But fighting a war is not like building a house. You can not plan for every contingency, for the simple reason that you can't even identify every contingency. In any competition, your adversary will do his or her best to hit you from an entirely unexpected angle. This is a truism in everything from chess to tennis, but it's doubly true in warfare.
In ‘ The Art of War,' Sun Tzu had this to say: “ All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
Even a cursory examination of insurgent tactics in Iraq shows that our enemies are in a constant state of evolution. The attacks our military personnel face today are much different that the attacks of a year ago. Our adversaries change and adapt, just as we do. This has always been true. In light of that knowledge, the very idea of mapping an entire military conflict from start to finish seems naive at best, and ludicrous at worst.
To build a detailed Exit Strategy in advance, military and political leaders would literally have to know the unknowable. For similar reasons, it's impossible to build a meaningful timeline. We can gauge the readiness of the Iraqi Government and security forces. We can make intelligent estimates as to the end strength and activity of the insurgents. But we can't predict when they will strike, or how long they will keep up the fight.
A true Exit Strategy would either have to perfectly predict the plans of the insurgents, or ignore their plans entirely. The first is impossible, and the second is suicidal.
Even if we could create a comprehensive Exit Strategy and timeline, we could never make them public. As soon as we set an ironclad date for withdrawal of forces, we have communicated the limits of our endurance to our enemies. We've given them a date to mark on their calendar -- hold out until this date, and you win.
Imagine how well that idea would work for law enforcement. “ Attention Bank Robbers! This is Special Agent Peterson of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We intend to pursue you until two-thirty p.m., next Tuesday afternoon. If you have not surrendered or been captured by that date, we will cease all attempts to apprehend you! ”
We don't need an Exit Strategy in Iraq for the same reason that firefighters don't need one to tackle a burning building. They go home when the fire is out. They don't roll up the hoses until the job is done.
We need a plan of action, not an Exit Strategy. We need a strategy for achieving the objective. Luckily, we've got one. We've had it since March 19, 2003. Assist the Iraqi people in forming stable and secure self-government.
On July 21, 2005, a scant few weeks ago, Congress reiterated that strategy when it voted against early withdrawal from Iraq. Attached as an amendment to the Department of State appropriations bill, the resolution stated that the U.S. should not leave Iraq until national security and foreign policy goals relating to a free and stable Iraq have been achieved.
That's pretty cut and dried. The house is painted when it's painted. The fire is out when it's out. The bathtub is clean when it's clean. The job is finished when the objectives have been met. Anything else is either a blind guess, or a call to leave the job half complete. © 2005 Jeff Edwards. All opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.
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Thanks, Excellent points.
Attn: Kerry, Kennedy, Biden, Dean, Pelosi, Boxer, and all the kids at the Democratic party.
military PING
I don't know what the hell an "exit strategy" even is. We still have troops in Germany and Japan, we still have troops in the Balkans, the Union still had troops in the South a decade after Lee's surrender. War is about winning, exiting doesn't have a damn thing to do with it!
Copied and sent to a Commander in Iraq. I know he will love reading this story.
Yeah, like asking Truman what his exit strategy was for Normandy on June 7, 1945.
THANK YOU Mr. Edwards. I can never figure out why that is so doggone hard for people to understand.
1944 you meant?
An exit strategy is a means of escaping a very difficult situation. An army without an exit strategy is presumed to be in a quagmire; a quagmire (from "quake" + "mire") is, literally, shaky, miry ground; as a political term used to describe a foreign military campaign in which there is either no foreseeable possibility of victory or the objectives are unclearly defined, and at the same time no clear exit strategy has been formulated in the absence of victory. The military campaign is likened to a kind of swamp or marsh in which the warring nation is unable to remove itself.
At worst, an exit strategy will save face; at best, an exit strategy will peg a withdrawal to the achievement of an objective worth the cost of continued involvement. An exit strategy is understood to minimize in either case what military jargon [calls blood and treasure].
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/exit+strategy
Wise Commanders always listen to their Chief Petty Officers.
Bump to the VERY TOP.
Excellent.
Nailed it, I think.
Oops! Something didn't look right while typing... :(
I will have to have my beloved reply to your comment. I am certain, but since not part of this conflict, that they always have an exit strategy. But, I could be wrong. So I will ask.
If that "encyclopedia" is a leftist site, my apologies. I thought it was a neutral site with a neutral definition. As they say, you gotta know your sources.
I may be entirely wrong on this, and the two of you would probably know better than I would, but from what I can tell the whole concept of an "exit strategy" was something thought up by the left during Vietnam. The objective of any military operation should be clear and obtainable; throughout our nation's history, the objective of each war has always been clear to all. However, the left was so against Vietnam, that they began to complain about there not being an exit strategy (never mind that the objective was to prevent the communist overthrow of South Vietnam and if possible topple the communist regime in the north). Eventually, the leftists in Congress drastically cut the funding for the war, when it was obvious to the Pentagon that the military would not be ALLOWED to accomplish their objective, the notion of an exit strategy became necessary.
If you look back, the only time you will ever see an "exit strategy" referred to is when we are engaged in an operation that the left is steadfastly opposed to; in contrast if the left is in favor of the operation (the Balkans), conservatives will never scream about an exit strategy, and this would be the same even if we opposed the operation. So basically, "exit strategies" are what the unpatriotic will always complain about, while the true patriots will support our troops and the mission at hand regardless.
We have an exit strategy. Our strategy is to kill as many terrorists as we can while training the Iraqis to take over their own security and to help them develop a representative government while we're doing all the other heavy lifting. When they're ready to run their own country, we'll exit. What part of that don't you understand, Senator Biden?
Well said.
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