Between Iraq and a hard place: Richard Jackson suggests that the United States is losing its war on terror.

• Author: Jackson, Richard

America is losing the war in Iraq because it has failed to appreciate that fundamental changes have taken place in the nature of warfare. Blinkered by their superior military technology, officials do not appreciate that the real revolution in military affairs has taken place at the level of strategy not technology, and that post-modern wars can no longer be won through the application of superior firepower. Military planners have ignored the lessons of previous campaigns in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia; as then, they will eventually retreat without having achieved any of their core political objectives. America is going to lose the war in Iraq because it has not revolutionised its thinking about security.

**********

President Bush is in serious trouble. He is electioneering as 'the war president', but it is proving increasingly difficult to sustain. Actually, this image was always going to be more smoke and mirrors than substance; only now the smoke is from burnt out American convoys. This is because Bush and his generals have failed to appreciate that wars can no longer be won with military force; they can only be lost by military force. And sending more battalions to Iraq is not going to make one iota of difference to the eventual outcome. The nature of warfare has changed--but not in the way that most people think. It is not yet clear if the failure in Iraq will mean failure to recapture the White House, hut like his young soldiers in Falluja Bush too is now in an unexpected fight.

Some have argued that the war in Iraq began to be lost when four military contractors were killed, their bodies mutilated, dragged through the streets and then hung from a bridge. A decade ago in Somalia, the exact same images led to a humiliating withdrawal. Others have suggested the war was lost when Shi'ite and Sunni rebellions broke out across Iraqi cities, opening up several new fronts for beleaguered coalition troops. I suspect though that it was actually lost long before this--perhaps as early as March 2003 when the first suicide bomber blew up four American soldiers at a checkpoint, or maybe it was in the mountains of Tora Bora in 2002; or in the alleyways of Mogadishu in 1993. It may have even been lost in the jungles of Colombia in the early 1990s when the 'war on drugs' first got into full swing. They are still fighting that war and it is costing billions. Others would go back as far as 1983 to the streets of Beirut, or even the embassy rooftop in Saigon in 1975. Wherever we locate the actual 'tipping point', there is no doubt that the Americans have actually been losing wars for at least three decades. But you will not hear any acknowledgement of this alternative history of warfare from the Pentagon establishment.

The so-called 'successful' wars of this period--Afghanistan in 2002, and Kosovo in 1999--are upon closer examination less than resounding military successes, and were won more through...