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The Illusion of Control

I'm sort of a football fan. I watch games from time to time and I like my home team (the Bucs) except when they suck. The most enjoyable games are where there's 30 seconds left, the team with the ball is down by 2 points and has the ball at mid-field. The game could be won or lost by either team and could turn on a single play. A nail-biter, as they say. The games I usually wander away from are the ones where it's the fourth quarter and the score is 34 to 3. While it is statistically possible to score 4 touchdowns in a single quarter, there's really no chance and if you're that far behind, the kind of day you've had so far is not likely to improve much. Yet, there's 15 minutes of play left and it's crunch time. Full speed ahead. Besides, there's always next Sunday.

War is a little different. It's not a football game. You don't get tackled, you get your legs blown off. When the opposing team scores, lots of your guys are dead. If you're losing, you're dying in large numbers and there is no next Sunday. And when the head coach more interested in the cheerleaders than in the game, you're in deep shit.

There's a lot of conversation these days about what we should do in Iraq. In fact, most of them start with the phrase "here's what we need to do". That somehow suggests that all it takes is the right plan, we go in and execute it and voila, victory! There is this illusion that we have some sort of control over what we're doing there. This naivete was best summed up by the cheerleader-in-chief (Bush) when he said recently, "We have a plan for victory. It's called winning".

Actually, we have very little control over the situation there. That's why there are so few options, if any, and that's why we hear people like Henry Kissinger saying that there is no possibility of military victory. Kissinger said that. Like so many statements, those are code words for something a bit more ominous. If there is no military option, then all that's left is a diplomatic course. Okay, who do we negotiate with? Al-Maliki? He can't do anything. Iran and Syria? They have the high ground. How about the insurgency leadership? That would mean negotiating with those who we've labeled as terrorists. And besides, want do we have to offer them? Do we threaten them with military strikes? How about sanctions? The fact is that no one in that region has any reason, or need, to negotiate with us. All anyone there wants from us is for us to leave. If we leave, they win. If we don't leave, they still win because it's the fourth quarter and we're down 56 to zero, we've benched our hapless quarterback, the coach is an idiot, the players on the field are all tired and there's no second string.

They say failure is not an option. They're right. It's a foregone conclusion.