Paul Pillar: The American Fantasy of Irreversible Victory!

Is Obama the "man from La Mancha"? Chris Preble's piece about fragile and reversible gains provides excellent insight into a frequently heard theme of discord concerning military operations overseas, and into how arguments to extend those often stray from a sober consideration of the costs and benefits of doing so. The yearning to go beyond minimal accomplishments of military objectives and to try to achieve something grander and more lasting is partly rooted in universal human psychology, such as the disinclination to treat sunk costs as TRULY SUNK!!! Preble even refers to Pericles as having voiced one of the themes in question. The tendency to keep stretching for absolute, irreversible victories is, however, disproportionately American! This tendency is more pronounced among Americans than among others, for reasons related to the unique circumstances and history of the United States. Living in a peculiarly powerful and successful republic makes it easier to believe that the nation really "can" achieve absolute, irreversible victories. Sure, the United States has had failures, including some REALLY big ones such as the Vietnam War, but even that costly failure, given the passage of time, and of generations and the attitudinal balm of a splendid victory, such as "Operation Desert Storm" - the reversal in 1991 of the Iraqi seizure of Kuwait - has not prevented restoration of hubristic optimism about what the United States can use its power to accomplish. One of the reactions to Desert Storm - specifically, the neoconservative reaction, featured once again the idea that accomplishment of a limited military aim is not enough, and that the United States should "go for the gold". Reversing Saddam Hussein's aggression was not enough to sate the neocon's hunger for something even grander in the Middle East, involving the elimination of Saddam altogether! That hunger, coupled with an arrogant belief in the ability to accomplish a big, irreversible victory, led to another costly military adventure a decade later.