What is the criterion? [Archives:2007/1025/Community]

By: Maged Thabet Al-Kholidy
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Is there today a new criterion for winning or losing a war? In the case of the American occupation of Iraq, or war in Iraq as some prefer to call it, many opinions expose great sorrow at the failures of the United States. Does the United States consider their actions an adventure or is this only the view of the interested politicians, analysts and others, while for the U.S.A. it is something else.

The adventure-criterion includes time as a factor in winning or losing that adventure. Accordingly, those who consider the U.S. occupation of Iraq as a failure justify themselves by saying that four years have passed without establishing a new stable, democratic Iraq. The U.S.A. is stuck there since militants daily murder soldiers of the American or allied forces.

What America has lost in Iraq has been considered extremely costly, having a clearly negative impact upon the economy. They actually claim that current estimations as to US losses of 25000 soldiers, 25 warplanes, 5000 armored cars and $400 billion, are in fact far less than the reality. The reality is that it is a great loss. So let us therefore consider it as an adventure. But both parties involved must be taken into account in order to find out who are the winners and the losers.

The equation becomes clearer if we make a comparison between the losses and gains of both sides. When we consider that America has now spent four years in Iraq, it is fair to say that “Iraq has been being occupied by the U.S.A. and allied forces for four years””.

This clearly shows who is paying the cost of these four years out of the invaders or the invaded. Who are the ones living in a state of fear