Guerilla wars are not easy things to win. History is full of great powers -- ranging from the United Kingdom to France to the Soviet Union to the United States of America -- losing guerilla wars. I think that it can be stated with authority that guerillas tend to win guerilla wars.

The Jewish groups fighting the British and Arabs for the state of Israel won their guerilla war. The Mujahedin in Afghanistan won their guerilla war. The Viet Cong won two wars against two great powers. The Khmer Rouge won their war. The Tamil Tigers aren't necessarily winning, but they're not necessarily losing either. The Irish Republican Army won, at least to some extent. The African National Congress won. The Kosovo Liberation Army won, and the FARC now control 40% of Columbia. The British lost in Iraq the first time around, and in Mandatory Palestine too. The Sandanistas won, at least for a while. The Algerian guerillas pushed the French from Algeria. The American rebels beat back the British redcoats.

Hundreds of guerilla conflicts can be listed, and in only a handful of cases could the superior military power be called the victor. And, when the superior military power wins it's generally only with significant losses.

There's a very good reason for this. Guerilla wars are usually wars in which the outcome matters an incredible amount for one side and not nearly as much for the other. Groups that engage in guerilla warfare are generally invaded or occupied peoples. They feel they are fighting for their very freedom, for their very lives. On the other hand their opponents are usually less invested in the conflict. The war they're fighting is often very far from home and very far from the actual national interests of their own countries.

... Strictly speaking, militarily speaking, the Iraqi insurgents are no match whatsoever for the might of the American military assembled today in Iraq. But if the history of assymetric warfare has taught us nothing else it is that assembled military might means little when a conflict matters incredibly to one side or another. Those who engage in guerilla warfare don't need to win on the field of battle. They don't have to completely decimate the enemy's forces. Instead they simply have to do more damage to their enemy than their enemy considers the conflict worth.

... There are two ways for America to "win" the occupation of Iraq. We can either completely and decimate the insurgency, crushing their ability to fight, or we can "win the hearts and minds" of the insurgents, thus removing their will to fight.

So far it appears that the United States is attempting to adopt a mixed-bag strategy -- attempting to both destroy the insurgency and win the "hearts and minds" of ordinary Iraqi people.

... I don't think it possible to completely destroy the insurgency.

The very nature of an insurgency such as that being conducted in Iraq is that the insurgents blend into the civilian population, using sympathy or fear (or both) to hide among innocents. The insurgents have been successful enough in hiding among the regular Iraqi population that the United States military has itself resorted to a campaign of intimidation and retaliation -- destroying the farms and, in some cases, houses of those who refuse to cooperate in the hunt for insurgents.

... What are the stakes for America in Iraq? The stakes are incredibly small compared to the Iraqi stakes. The entire invasion was predicated on the notion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat -- imminent or otherwise -- to the United States of America. It has now been proven that Iraq either did not have such weapons or at least that those weapons never posed a direct threat to America. The American pain threshold in Iraq, therefore, is very different than the American pain threshold in Vietnam. It is certainly measured in thousands of troops rather than tens of thousands, and may even be measurable in the hundreds.

I think that at this point America is down to only one option for "winning" in Iraq: abandonment. It's time for the Bush Administration to say, "We made a mistake, we screwed up, and we can't win this war." It's time to leave.