For Long Years: Loose The Battle, But Not The War

I keep hearing that the war in Iraq is only a small sliver of the so called larger War on Terrorism (which, because of the lack of time, I will refer to whatever it is we are doing to eradicate Al-Qaeda), yet a loss in Iraq would mean victory for the terrorists. Well, if Iraq is only a small subsection of the War on Terrorism, then isn't the war in Iraq just a battle in the War on Terrorism?

In wars, there are battles...and, to my knowledge, the United States has never gone undefeated in battle in wars. We've always lost a battle or two in a war we later won. The case is also true elsewhere.

Take Dunkirk...when the British retreated from the European mainland at Dunkirk, did that end the Second World War? Were the Nazis victorious then? No. They had a small moment of victory, but later lost the war. It is theorized that had the British stayed in Dunkirk and fought the full force of the Germans, they would've been decimated, leaving the home island vulnerable to the inevitable German attack and perhaps destroying morale so bad, Churchill's government could have collapsed with one willing to surrender. Yet the British abandoned Dunkirk, fleeing across the Channel to fight another day...and fight they did, in the next battle, they successfully defended their homeland against all odds.

The American Revolution wasn't an easy victory for the Americans...in fact, it was very nearly a defeat. The Americans lost at Bunker Hill, the Battle of Long Island leaving the British to take New York City, the British held Philadelphia while the Americans suffered at Valley Forge. It was only after some quick thinking and sly moves by General Washington and support from Britain's European enemies that we were able to make some real ground. Victories at Cowpens in South Carolina, Saratoga in New York and Princeton in New Jersey were supplemented with losses at Savannah, Georgia, Charleston, South Carolina, Groton, Connecticut and Guilford Court House in North Carolina.

Even during the War of 1812, the British had come so close to defeating the Americans, they had actually successfully captured our capital and burned it to the ground. We couldn't defend our capital, well, then we must be weak, right? WRONG! We drove the British out, it just took time and we had to concede some defeat, including the loss of our capital city, before we can salvage enough of a victory to drive the British back into Canada.

The American Civil War was a disaster for the Union for a good long while. The Union was forced to accept losses at Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia and allowed the Confederate army to reach Southern Pennsylvania before they were able to turn the war around. Bull Run was especially hard to stomach as it was a loss for the Union less then 30 miles outside the borders of their capital city. Can you imagine surrendering Annapolis to Osama Bin Laden?

Back to World War II, our long war against the Japanese didn't go without our losses. MacArthur was forced to surrender the Philippines to the Japanese. (Britain was forced to give up Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore and the Netherlands surrendered Indonesia.) Focusing on the Philippines would have required too much single attention by the American forces. Giving up in the Philippines allowed us to focus on other areas of the Pacific theater. We did, shortly after, defeat the Japanese at Midway and successfully island hopped our way back to the archipelago two years later.

The Americans have suffered losses in wars before, but it has never broke our resolve to win one. It is in obsessing over a battle in a war, that's when we loss the war. Perhaps it is time to look at Iraq has a mere battle in the larger war. Perhaps Iraq is like Dunkirk, or the Philippines, or Bunker Hill, or Bull Run.

I always had a motto: Even the Boston Celtics lost the occasional game in the 1960's.