America & Iraq: Definitely Not a "War"

You know, if daveawayfromhome keeps making good points, I'll never be able to write anything relevant about the NBA:

No. 21: "it is possible to win the War On Terror.

"For now we'll also put aside the idea that there even is some sort of a Orwellian "war" on terror (no. 6), and I'll just say that I think WWII has warped the American way of thinking about war. Wars are almost never that neatly ended. Hell, even WWII wasnt neatly ended, since it spawned the Cold War, which spawned the Korean War (still going on) and the Viet Nam War (repercussions of which are still being felt in this very war in Iraq), and the mess that was Afghanistan in the 1980's, which led to a base of operations for bin Laden which led to 9-11.

But terrorists are not soldiers. They are criminals, murderers and thugs, who have turned to violence to get their way (or vengeance for not getting there way, or both). Bush has made many mistakes since 9-11, but I suspect that one of the biggies will turn out to be the legitimization of al-Queda by treating them with the seriousness one would give to a rogue nation. They are serious, but they are police serious, not military serious. Or, rather, they werent military serious, until the Bush Administration gave them sovereignty.

To piggyback on this: we should call a spade a spade on this "war" thing. It's really an occupation, isn't it? As that DailyKos diarist put it, the difference between war and occupation is very simple:

In war, your objective is to seize (or defend) territory, kill or capture the enemy, and (hopefully) depose the enemy government.

In an occupation, your objective is to subjugate and manage a foreign population with peace and stability, while building up infrastructure in and/or exploiting the resources of that population.

So really, which "thing" do people believe the US military is doing right now? War isn't about peace, it's what happens when peace fails. When two countries can't make peace, the bigger/stronger/smarter/richer one destroys the other one. Peace prevents war and you can't "war" somebody to make peace with you (surrender isn't peace).

Because the Iraq government isn't exactly our enemy, because Saddam is dead, and because our mission was never to seize any territory in Iraq, it's safe to say America is involved in an occupation.

One thing I'm certain of: it isn't a war.