To Israel, armed with the hammer of F-16 aircraft and Merkava tanks, Hezbollah looked like a nail. But that proved to be untrue. Asymmetric warfare methods by Hezbollah (and Israel's own miscues) allowed Hezbollah to achieve what appears to be at least a short-term military victory out of the rubble of Lebanon.
To the American hammer of "Shock and Awe" in 2003, Saddam's armed forces looked like a nail. But today, the greater problems of the Iraqi people and IEDs look like nails unsuited to our hammer in the streets of Iraq: the United States Army.
The enemy has evolved and created a new situation in Iraq, unlike what we found (and planned for) in 2003.
This happened in Afghanistan as well. In an interview with Jim Lehrer on the PBS News Hour on November 7, 2001 , Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said of the Taliban, "They also know their country well. They've got lots of caves, lots of tunnels. They use horseback and mule and donkeys to move around. They've been able to find ways to re-supply themselves."
Secretary Rumsfeld often speaks about the ability of the enemy to adapt to U.S. actions. Like the Hezbollah, no enemy wants to serve the other's hammer too well.
This doesn't mean that the IDF was ineffective against Hezbollah or that the U.S. Army won't ultimately prevail in its plan for Iraq. But we need to reassess what costs we might be willing to accept and what possible new assets we might bring to the war.
One potentially helpful discussion could come from renewed hearings on the progress of the war in Congressional committees. Not political grandstanding committee meetings meant to score political points by skewering Secretary Rumsfeld, but genuine, bipartisan and adult discussions on how to proceed as a nation to achieve what we want in the war.
Because we have to either open the tool kit of our thinking or put our hammer away and go home. The alternative is that the President's rigid methodology will continue.
Vice President Cheney echoed some of the president's recent pronouncements on Iraq at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno on August 28, saying, "Some in our own country claim retreat from Iraq would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone. A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be ... a ruinous blow to the future security of the United States."
Journalist Bill O'Reilly, in a nationally syndicated essay on August 28 wrote, "Despite what revisionist historians say, the USA did not lose militarily in Vietnam; we simply did not defeat the Communist enemy. And shortly after we withdrew, they violated the signed treaty and took over South Vietnam."
What Mr.O'Reilly and others seem to miss is this: winning militarily is not the objective.
What we need in Iraq is to get what we want.
To the American hammer of "Shock and Awe" in 2003, Saddam's armed forces looked like a nail. But today, the greater problems of the Iraqi people and IEDs look like nails unsuited to our hammer in the streets of Iraq: the United States Army.
The enemy has evolved and created a new situation in Iraq, unlike what we found (and planned for) in 2003.
This happened in Afghanistan as well. In an interview with Jim Lehrer on the PBS News Hour on November 7, 2001 , Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said of the Taliban, "They also know their country well. They've got lots of caves, lots of tunnels. They use horseback and mule and donkeys to move around. They've been able to find ways to re-supply themselves."
This doesn't mean that the IDF was ineffective against Hezbollah or that the U.S. Army won't ultimately prevail in its plan for Iraq. But we need to reassess what costs we might be willing to accept and what possible new assets we might bring to the war.
One potentially helpful discussion could come from renewed hearings on the progress of the war in Congressional committees. Not political grandstanding committee meetings meant to score political points by skewering Secretary Rumsfeld, but genuine, bipartisan and adult discussions on how to proceed as a nation to achieve what we want in the war.
Because we have to either open the tool kit of our thinking or put our hammer away and go home. The alternative is that the President's rigid methodology will continue.
Vice President Cheney echoed some of the president's recent pronouncements on Iraq at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno on August 28, saying, "Some in our own country claim retreat from Iraq would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone. A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be ... a ruinous blow to the future security of the United States."
Journalist Bill O'Reilly, in a nationally syndicated essay on August 28 wrote, "Despite what revisionist historians say, the USA did not lose militarily in Vietnam; we simply did not defeat the Communist enemy. And shortly after we withdrew, they violated the signed treaty and took over South Vietnam."
What Mr.O'Reilly and others seem to miss is this: winning militarily is not the objective.
What we need in Iraq is to get what we want.
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