By Paul Weiser
Though every conflict is different, we need - in seeking guidance - to consider not only American wars and interventions that have failed but those that succeeded. In other words, consider all possibly relevant examples based on their desirable or undesirable conclusions before seizing on one as a model.
Anti-war liberals choose Vietnam as their model for American involvement in the Arab world. Their preferred course of action - abandoning our allies through legislative interference with executive conduct of the war - led to massacre, diaspora, and a miserably unfree and unfriendly “unified” country. This result does not recommend that course of action, particularly if they admit that executive conduct has not been nearly as feckless in Iraq as it was in Vietnam.
Consider instead Korea as model. A bitter war of several years finally resulted in two Koreas (one free, the other a lunatic prison-state) and long-term American military presence maintaining that situation. The central Near East could - by this model - become West Dar (Iraq) and East Dar (Iran). The former could slowly develop into a liberal republic (South Korea took decades) while the former stews, contained, in its contradictions... until (to mix models with another success) it collapses like East Germany.
This analogy is not perfect - few are. Iraq and Iran differ racially as the Koreas and Germanies did not; their last open war with each other was Iraq-instigated, though under a now defunct regime.
But the point is that continuing commitment, though wearing on all parties, is at least a possible route to desirable end-states where surrendering to fatigue and abandoning the contest guarantee failure. The Islamic Revolution of East Dar will fail due to its manifest insanity; American presence and pressure must be maintained to limit the scope and scale of that failure.
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