Cherished Myths About Who Is Winning in Iraq

In Cherished Myths About Who Is Winning in Iraq, James Dunnigan explains why it's difficult to determine who is winning the war on terror:

Partly, it's because we still don’t agree who won wars and battles in the past. Take Vietnam. The U.S. didn’t lose the war. When American forces withdrew in 1972, the South Vietnamese government was still in power. The north eventually won, not via a guerilla war (American and South Vietnamese efforts had destroyed the guerilla force in the south) but via an invasion with conventional forces (including lots of tanks), right across the border. The north tried it first in 1972, right after U.S. troops were just about gone, and failed. So they built up their forces for three years, tried again, and succeeded.

There are plenty of other myths in military history. How about the one depicting the Germans as the super soldiers during World War II, while Americans were considered a bunch of losers who needed superior numbers to prevail. While the Germans had a lot of good ideas, and were pretty lethal, their big advantage was better training, for both troops and leaders (officers and NCOs). But when combat experienced American units encountered German troops at the end of the war, if was often the G.I.’s giving the Germans a beating, and lessons on how it’s done.

Even World War I, long dismissed as a thoughtless head-butting contest, has been revealed as anything but as historians go take a closer look at what really went on. Seems everyone was coming up with many startling new ideas throughout 1914-18. The problem was that both sides were doing it, which maintained the stalemate until the very end, when both sides developed the weapons and tactics (for infantry, tanks and aircraft) that would define warfare for the next century. But if you just believed the “conventional wisdom,” you’d miss what was really going on. And you’d miss the real lessons of those wars, the lessons that can save your ass in future conflicts.

We can see this struggle between reality and “conventional wisdom” being played out in Iraq right now.

Examples of big shifts with little reporting:

• Extremely low casualty rates.
• Robots and networking on the battlefield.
• Modern policing and investigation methods applied to operations — CSI: Baghdad.