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In my sluggish attempt to read all of the Pulitzer Prize winners for General Nonfiction (damn you, Douglas Blackmon), I came across this from Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night.  When reading it, consider that it was written in 1968, and at that point more than half the names on Maya Lin’s wall were happy American kids with all the pleasures of life ahead of them:

Asia was best left to the Asians.  If the Communists absorbed those countries, and succeeded in building splendid nations who made the transition to technological culture without undue agony, one would be forced to applaud; it seemed evident on the face of the evidence in Vietnam, that America could not bring technology land to Asia without bankrupting itself in operations ill-conceived, poorly comprehended, and executed in waste.  But the greater likleihood was that if the Communists prevailed in Asia they would suffer in much the same fashion.  Divisions, schisms, and sects would appear.  An endless number of collisions between primitive custom and Marxist dogma, a thousand daily pulluations of intrigue, a heritage of cruelty, atrocity, and betrayal would fall upon the Communists…to leave Asia would be precisely to gain the balance of power.  The answer then was to get out, to get out any way one could.  Get out.  There was nothing to fear – perhaps there never had been.

I look at our continued involvement in Iraq with some measure of anger and sorrow.

The human cost is terrible.  As of today, 3,463 Americans have died in combat; perhaps more astonishingly, 3,355 since “Mission Accomplished” and 3,158 since the capture of Saddam Hussein.  The financial toll – well, we have spent over $1.5 trillion dollars in the sands, and the meter keeps ticking.  That money could have bought us national healthcare and the financial bailout.  And to what end did we spend the blood and treasure?

Note that only 108 Americans were killed invading Iraq.  Ready for one of those behavioral economics questions?  Here comes: instead of spending 3,355 lives holding Iraq (or even 3,158 since the last business we had there was settled), why not leave?  The common concern, that Iran would take over, is a bit flawed: why would it be any easier for them to run the place than it is for us; the Shiites might be more cooperative, but surely the Sunnis and the Kurds would be even more determined opponents?  And if Al Qaeda took over the government of the country, we could always invade again.

Conquering land is not particularly difficult for the US military.  The entire force is set up to get from Point A to Point B, where Point B is some defended GPS coordinate.  Holding land is well-near impossible.  We are not brutal enough to cow a population into submission (unlike China in Tibet, Israel in the West Bank), we are bothered by casualties (unlike China in the Korean War, Iran in the Iran-Iraq war), we don’t live off the land (unlike Napoleon’s armies or the Wehrmacht).  Holding, we are just sitting ducks that happen to distribute development aid.

So why not do what we do best?  If we are chasing Al Qaeda to the gates of hell, by all means, chase.  Race after them, a massive mobile force that can swamp any scraggly madrassa graduates they can press into service.  But don’t stand still, when there is nowhere worth standing.

During Vietnam – in fact, in the same few months Mailer was writing Armies – LBJ had a scale model of Khe Sanh built in the White House Situation Room:

He and the generals would pore over it.  Westmoreland believed it was the main battle of the war, believed it so much he became convinced the Tet Offensive was merely a diversion.  But no one in authority seems to have asked what in retrospect is the obvious question: why would anyone care about Khe Sanh?  It was merely a few mountaintops.  The best the North Vietnamese could do would be overrun it and get the press to make comparisons to Dien Bien Phu, but it’s hard to see how that would have any strategic significance if the US evacuated it.  We could always retake it, or take another hilltop, or bring battle to the NVA at the time and place of our choosing.  By becoming wedded to territory, we surrendered the initiative and allowed the NVA to control the pace of the fight.

Since no discussion of Iraq would be complete without a mention of oil, let’s deal with it.  First, the map of Iraq’s oil:

Conveniently, the oil is way up in the north (Kirkuk) and way down in the south (Basra).  Now, I don’t happen to believe it much matters who controls the oil.  It’s going to get pumped onto the world market one way or another.  So we’re fine to leave.  But suppose we wanted to play armchair Kissinger, and ask What Would Stalin Do?  Well, if you really wanted to be ruthless, you would simply expel the population of Basra and turn it into a military base.  Just declare it an indemnity for the war and pump it dry.  It’s what everyone else in the neighborhood would do, and it would send a pretty clear message to the rest of the Gulf that our good will should not be taken for granted.

If we are not prepared to do that – and I don’t think the American population is remotely ready for that level of hardball – then let’s have the self-awareness to admit we aren’t ready for this game.  Just pull stakes and go home, not stopping to redeploy outside the cities or in the desert or anywhere else.  As Oliver Cromwell told the Long Parliament:

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately.  Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!