I am a former Marine Officer and I learned a few things during my training and experiences in the Marine Corps that I think are relevant to the situation at hand.

First, despite the complaints about the length of this war, you should know that there is no such thing as a definite time table for a war.  Wars are fought until one side or the other loses its will to fight. Only then does the war end and the side that loses their will to fight is the loser. In fact this does not mean that there is an end to violence. That depends on the will of the victor. 

A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq could very well mean a blood bath of innocent civilians who’s only crime was cooperation with U.S. authorities while we were there. It could be a mass migration of refugees seeking safety and asylum from the wrath of the victors. You only need to remember the exodus of refugees in rickety boats from Vietnam at the end of that war to understand this problem.

A withdrawal from Iraq also does not necessarily mean that we in the U.S. will be any safer. The Islamic Fascists that wish to rule Iraq also have another mission to spread Islam, and they will do this using all means at their disposal. History reveals that Islamic territories expanded through violent conquests. They believe that is their right to retake all lands that were once under their control. As they think of the United States as the Great Satin, standing in their way, they will not hesitate to attack us as well. And should they control Iraq they will have both a base of operations, and the economic wealth that comes from control over the oil to help them in their conquests. For these reasons alone we must stand firm in Iraq.

Other lessons that I learned in the Marine Corps have to do with the nature of this war. We are fighting a counter-insurgency war and counter-insurgency wars require more and different kinds of resources than do traditional wars. In the mid 1970s when I was going through the basic school the one example of a successful counter-insurgency war was that of the British fighting insurgents in Malaysia. At that point, one of the keys to success was considered to be overwhelming superiority in numbers of combatants. I believe they said that you needed to outnumber the enemy by a factor of 10 to 1. Modern tools of technology may have reduced that figure, but there is still no substitute for feet on the ground. Just so we are clear here, this does not mean that we have to have 10 Americans to one enemy combatant, but it does mean that we have to have a substantial number of Iraqis on our side.

Lesson three was that no war can be won without the explicit support of the civilian population. That means that the insurgents cannot win without the support of a substantial portion of the civilian population to give them aid and cover, nor can we win without that same support. You may gain their support through intimidation or persuasion. Of these methods persuasion is the more effective method. Witness the negative effects of intimidation in the Al Anbar province.  So, to a large extent the battle in Iraq depends on a battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. I could be wrong, but I believe that we are winning that part of the struggle, because a) we are the ones building facilities to help the Iraqi people; we build schools, we build hospitals and clinics, we build power stations, and our strategy of taking and holding territory is making life safer for the average Iraqi. You rarely see it on the major media, but our soldiers are more than just soldiers; they are ambassadors. In their day-to-day lives they demonstrate our values and care for innocent life. They are making friends among the Iraqi population.

An extension to lesson three is something I have learned from reading the book, The Sling and the Stone  By Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, USMC. What we are dealing with in Iraq and in Afghanistan is asymmetric warfare. Hammes describes these conflicts as 4th generation warfare. The other side may not have the same military might, but there are numerous ways that they can offset that advantage. In many cases their immediate goal is not to win battles, but to create havoc, which in turn undermines the confidence that the civilian population has in the opposing force. They believe that by doing this over time that they will wear us down or wear down the support of the civilian population and that can happen if we let it. They try to provoke our over reaction to events, another technique designed to separate us from the civilian population supporting us. 

They follow a Maoist strategy which says that when the enemy attacks you retreat, when the enemy holds you harass, when the enemy withdrawals then you attack. Another thing that they have learned to do, and this was something first employed in Vietnam, they have learned to use our own press against us. Their propaganda machine is very effective. They provide film footage that is often misleading. They stages violent attacks at times when there may be positive news or when such things as elections are nearing. All of this is designed to demoralize our population and reduce support for the war effort. Unfortunately many in our media, I believe, have not learned to discern truth from fiction, real versus staged events. Until and unless we learn to tune out that kind of propaganda we will have problems. 

I know that I will be criticized for this statement, but I believe that vocal opposition to the war, especially by our elected officials is the greatest single barrier to our winning the war. Calling the commander-in-chief a liar is helping the enemy. Calling him stupid does not help. If you disagree, then you should disagree in private inside meetings at the White House or the Defense Department, not on Television. In my mind, if you give moral aid and comfort to the enemy than you are a traitor.  I am not calling anyone in particular an traitor. You should decide if the shoe fits.

To win in the fall Republican should make an absolute and unequivocal commitment to finishing the job in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We should do this because the cost of failure is far greater than any cost that we now bear while trying to win.

It took more than 20 years of cold war to defeat the Soviets. We are still in Korea with thousands of troops and land mines protecting the South because we didn’t finish the job then. We are still in Europe and Japan, though under far better circ-umstances; then why are we being asked to leave Iraq before the job is done?