The Iraq Effort
I have been ruminating on the term “Iraq War”, and the more I think about it the more I believe we have a nasty semantics problem on our hands. The issue came to the fore in another thread over at Dean’s World where a poster said that Obama will not withdraw from Iraq. He suggested that Obama would simply declare the “war” over and call the troops stationed there “peacekeepers.” This of course is simply semantics being used to justify the breaking of a campaign promise. No one who supports Obama simply because of his anti-war stance would accept this semantic change, which is why I continue to believe that should Obama win Iraq will lose.
Commenters to the thread made the case that what is happening in Iraq is best described as “war” or an “occupation”, but I have problems with both terms. The former term ignores the reconstruction and reconciliation efforts of our military, while the latter ignores the fight against al-Qaeda and Iran’s Quds force. But the semantics of the issue go much deeper than that when you look at the definitions of the words:
War: 1 a (1): a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations…
In Iraq there is no hostile conflict “between states or nations.” The Iraqi government is our ally, and our opponents are stateless and disorganized (with the exception of Iran, which is using the cover and support of various Shi’a militias to attack the Iraqi government and the United States).
Note the usage of the word “declared” in the definition: wars have a beginning and an end. Consider Vietnam: the war officially began with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and ended with the official surrender of South Vietnam to NVA forces in April 1975. If the USA left Iraq as Sen. Obama declares he will do once he becomes president, who would the remaining Iraqi forces surrender to? Al-Qaeda? Al-Qaeda is neither a state or nation: it’s at best an ideology. How do you surrender to an ideology? Given the reconstruction efforts and the fact that you need an enemy with a state or a nation to have a war, perhaps occupation would be the better term. Unfortunately the dictionary shows the limits of this term as well:Occupation: 3 a: the act or process of taking possession of a place or area : seizure b: the holding and control of an area by a foreign military force c: the military force occupying a country or the policies carried out by it.
On the face of it this word works better than the term “war” to describe the US military effort in Iraq; the US clearly is setting Iraqi priorities and policies and is doing so using military force. Where the word fails is in the attacks against al-Qaeda as mentioned earlier, but with the failure of the definition to note the effort to build (there’s no ‘re’ – Iraqi infrastructure was a shambles long before the attacked Iraq in 1991) infrastructure, private and government institutions and create a non-sectarian Iraqi military. The term also implies permanence, and the US has made its occupation conditional on the ability of Iraqi government and military to support an independent and peaceful Iraq.
So how about Peacekeeping?
Peacekeeping: the preserving of peace; especially : international enforcement and supervision of a truce between hostile states or communities (emph. add.).
Finally a term that appreciates the divisions within a state. Peacekeeping is necessary particularly in places with mixed ethnic and religious communities, as in Baghdad, and in southern Iraq where the Shi’a and Mookie are harassing the locals.
In short we are actually doing all three: warring, occupying and peacekeeping in Iraq. There isn’t a single term that sums up all our efforts Language fails us, and may fail Iraq if Obama takes power and ends the “Iraq War” as well as the “Iraqi Occupation” and the Iraqi Peacekeeping Mission”. History will ultimately be the judge, but a lot of good that will do the Iraqis who suffer from the catastrophe that follows Obama’s decision.
Iran » Blog Archive » The Iraq Effort:
[...] The Razor wrote an interesting post today on The Iraq EffortHere’s a quick excerpt” The Iraqi government is our ally, and our opponents are stateless and disorganized (with the exception of Iran, which is using the cover and support of various S… [...]
9 April 2008, 2:29 pmChad:
Something I was reading the other day on a blog was that technically we’ve been at war with Iraq since 1991. That conflict ended in a cease fire, then a truce. The quotes from the document declaring the truce defined it as a temporary cessation of hostilities as long as Iraq under Saddam met several requirements. And that if he breaks those requirements then the war goes hot again.
13 April 2008, 11:07 amThe requirements were very clear and he broke just about every single one in the lead up to 2003.