NationStates Jolt Archive

I finally watched Flags of our Fathers.

One comment I found interesting was one of the interviews where the old guy said a photo can win or loose a war.

The Iwo Jima picture turned a growing cynisim toward the war.

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-memorial/images/iwo-jima-flag.gif


while photo of the South Vietnamese officer executing a man lost us the Viet Nam war.

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0410/images/faas_execution.jpg

Could it be said the Abu Ghraib photos lost the fight in Iraq?

It could be argued as I know a couple ex-military types that changed their opinions on Iraq after that story broke.

Just some random thoughts as I try to avoid a project. :)

Second link is dead. I'd say the war in Iraq was lost before it even began. Or at least it was lost when we disbanded Saddam's army.

Second link is dead.


This (http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/Vietimages/vcexec.htm)is what he/she is talking about. Right up there with the burned girl (http://www.1stcavmedic.com/napalm_girl.htm) running from her napalmed village, and the Kent State (http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0005/filo.htm) photo for the most graphic/recognized photos of the Vietnam Era.

And they can have a huge impact, at least in public perception / 'stomach' for war. But not necessarily in ending any war. The General Nguyen photo was from 1968; American involvement in the war lasted another 7 years. Kent State was 1970; we were there for another 5 years after that. The photo of the girl was from 1972, so another 3 years went by before we withdrew (although I believe the drawdown was in effect around that time).

IIRC, the most important thing that the Iwo Jima photo did was make people buy more War Bonds. So you could argue that that photo had a tangible impact.

Actually, we won the 'war' when Saddam's regime fell (war, n.; a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air). Sorta like how we won WW2 after Germany and Japan surrendered.


After the original 'war', we decided to stay in there and nation-build (okay, that was part of the plan all along). President Bush did a horrible job of explaining what would happen after the 'war' and made a pretty bad PR blunder when he said 'mission accomplished' (even though he was technically correct, we had defeated Iraq). Most people lack a sense of historical perspective. Allied Forces officially occupied Germany until 1955, 10 years after the European campaign ended. Obviously, President Bush knew that the occupation of Iraq would take years. And obviously Congress knew that the occupation would take years. But nobody decided to explain this to the American people, who had been spoiled by military interventions lasting a few months at most in the 80s and 90s.


Don't jump down my throat for not having the sources in front of me, but this nation-building was actually moving along rapidly and successfully after Saddam was executed. There were some flare ups in Mosul and Sadr City, but the Coalition had everything pretty well under control.


Then came the Al-Askari Mosque bombing, February 2006. This put the Coalition forces right in the middle of a new war. There is one truth about extremely oppressive government's like that of Saddam Hussein. Even if there aren't civil rights, freedoms, and self-determination, there will at least be order. Centuries old feuds between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds were reignited (much like in former Yugoslavia, these tensions had been forced below the surface by a totalitarian regime; once there was some bit of freedom, it exploded). That is what we are dealing with now. Will America, or the Coalition, win this? No. Why? Because this isn't the Coalition's war. All we can do is hold on and try to ride the bull until it's over. Can we do that? Maybe. It all depends on whether America gives up on the Iraqis before they find a way to work all this out. I'm not too confident that the American people will have the patience for that.


We won the 'war'. We cannot 'win' this new conflict. Only the Iraqis can do that. And regardless of whether we should have overthrown Saddam's regime in the first place, we owe it to the Iraqis to give them the support they need. We supported our former enemies the Germans for 10 years, and we owed them far less than we owe the Iraqis (by that I mean the German regime that we defeated was more wrong than the Iraqi regime we defeated).


Now, about those photos... in retrospect, are we going to say they lost us the war? Possibly. I'm sure that the tolerance of the American people for the post-war occupation of Iraq was definitely lowered by the pictures. But how much? A month? A year? I doubt we had the resolve to keep troops in Iraq long enough anyhow.


If anything will be looked at as the thing that 'lost' the war in Iraq, it will be the mosque bombing. Had that not happened (and no other calamitous preciptating event happened either), we would probably be on easy street right now. But, had it not happened, I am positive some other calamitous event would have.


In retrospect, there are two ways we could have better handled the occupation:
1) Absolutely leveled the entire country, then secured the borders and started nation-building from scratch.

OR

2) Divided the country up into 3 sectors (Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd), then posted troops at the borders of these places to be sure that they stayed in their own little place (this includes keeping the Shiites from the Iranians).