Something that has helped provide a basic understand of whether we are winning or losing wars in the past: The Front. In its simplest form, move the Front forward and you are winning, give up ground and you are losing. One of the problems with understanding the “War on Terror” is defining a front for the American people to root for; after all, we are a nation that likes to win and when we are told we are not winning, even if we are not losing, we are just not happy. Without a front to define how well we are doing, without a geographical enemy to declare victory over, we are somewhat disoriented.
Even if we consider Iraq to be the front line in the “War on Terror”, we are somewhat challenged in defining progress in terms that we can easily understand because there are no geographic objectives defined beyond Iraq. It is not as if we are planning to continue on to other terrorist states beyond Iraq. So instead of viewing Iraq as a front, we start viewing it as a quagmire; in essence, because there is no line to move and we are staying in one place for an extended period of time, there is no obvious progress and therefore we are not winning.
Well, it appears as if our enemy does see Iraq as a key battleground in this war:
AP 12/20/2006 – “I want to tell the Republicans and the Democrats together … you are trying to negotiate with some parties to secure your withdrawal, but these parities won’t find you an exit (from Iraq) and your attempts will yield nothing but failure,” al-Zawahri said on the tape.
“It seems that you will go through a painful journey of failed negotiations until you will be forced to return to negotiate with the real powers,” he said, without identifying these powers.
So, even if we narrowly define the enemy as those who attacked us on 9/11, and if we are in agreement that al-Qaida is this enemy we are fighting, how can we not believe that Iraq is an important battlefield against this enemy when their leaders tell us that it is?
Those among us who are promoting a retreat from Iraq, whether it be called a redeployment, gradual withdrawal, or some other euphemism… those who are calling for the United States to pull out of Iraq are actually calling for the United States to retreat from the front line of this war.
Do we need to find a better way to fight this war? Yes. But we can not afford to retreat from the front and hand our enemy a victory they have not earned.
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