Can the U.S. defeat the Iraqi insurgency?

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Donald Stoker, professor of strategy and policy for the U.S. Naval War College’s Monterey Program, argues in a new web exclusive for FP that Vietnam taught many Americans the wrong lesson: that determined guerrilla fighters are invincible. History shows that insurgents rarely win, he says, and Iraq should be no different. But just when the Bush administration has finally developed a realistic strategy, the bottom is dropping out of the American public's support for the war. Winning against an entrenched insurgency takes time, but time is the one thing the United States doesn't have. We're talking about an estimated 8-11 years, not the six more months that the pundits love to bat around.

Stoker may be right. The United States is wealthy enough to foot the bill and large enough to bear the casualties in Iraq, even if the strain on the military is causing serious problems with recruitment, retention, and maintenance. And Bush acknowledged last week that he's learned a few things from his many prior mistakes in Iraq. It's certainly encouraging that Gen. David Petraeus, who had great success in Mosul early on and then went on to literally write the book on counterinsurgency, will soon be running the war effort in Iraq.

But it may be too late even for America's top practitioner of counterinsurgency to reverse an ugly deterioration in recent months. Plus, U.S. troops are stuck in the middle of a sectarian bloodbath, which, as Stoker acknowledges, makes the situation greatly more complicated. And finally, what's the definition of success? Defeating the insurgency doesn't necessarily mean that democracy is just around the corner.

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