What War?

I deny categorically that the thing going on in Iraq now is a war.

--But is that what I really meant to say? What exactly are we saying when we state that we deny or do anything else "categorically?"

We hear or read a word used in such a way that it impresses us, and we stow it away in our language locker, to trot it back out to good effect now and then. But much later, when the reality of things takes on a particular interest and urgency, we realize that we don't know or have forgotten what we are actually saying, if we ever really knew in the first place, and we have been too slothful and sure of ourselves to check up on it in a dictionary.

So I will do that right now, because I didn't have in mind filing something away in a particular box or category.

"Categorical." 1. Absolute; unqualified.

Sounds good to me!

--Most people, addicted to taking the easy way out and as usual using the language loosely -- which thereby causes them to run the strong risk of failing to gauge situations accurately -- would sneer at my assertion and say that there is indeed a war going on Iraq. What else would I call it?

My idea of war was shaped by being around and sentient (though thankfully oceans away from the battles) during a war that in many ways completely eclipsed all those that had come before and all those that have been waged since. The Second World War redefined what warfare could be, with its many large-scale battles conducted in many places around the globe. And I would have thought that we would have been extra careful thereafter, whenever we spoke of "war" again.

But since that time, whenever some effort is launched, such as trying to end the selling and taking of drugs, or in combating terrorists, the label "war" is taken down from the terrible shelf where it ought to stay, polished up, and quickly slapped on the campaign, to lend an air of commitment and to convey the seriousness of the perceived problem.

That's deceptive enough when used in those situations, which can never have the decisive endings that mercifully bring real wars to end. How can a War on Drugs or a War on Terror possibly end in a surrender, an armistice, when what is being fought against are not organized groups of people at all, but modes of human behavior instead?

But this misuse of the concept of war is equally misleading and in a way even more reprehensible when applied to efforts that involve actual military action, as in Iraq, because, if it is actually a war we ought to expect to see operations that approach what have come to be the classic definitions of warfare, that is, pitched battles, usually by large armies that are often nearly equal in strength.

Instead what we saw was a quick over-running of the Iraqi positions, a few skirmishes but an arrival of U.S. forces in Baghdad in a matter of days, with many Iraqi casualties due to the huge U.S. edge in firepower, but very few Anglo-American deaths. The Iraqi soldiers dispersed quickly, and a number of them hid their weapons and munitions in thousands of places across the country, to be used in another day ...which wasn't slow in arriving.

It has been, therefore, not a "war" at all but an "occupation" from the start, And now we have, on the one side, "just" a bunch of quick response teams, and on the other "only" bands of guerilla fighters and quite a few free-lancers.

So, since there is really no war in progress, the real question is not a win or lose proposition as in warfare. Instead it is: will the occupation be successful? Will the occupiers be able to stay in place and eventually subjugate those who resist them, or will they have to go home sooner or later with little to show for their actions?

Anything can happen, but all the pieces now in play say that this occupation will fail. It will fail because the guerillas are fighting on their own territory, and for the most part their cause -- to expel the foreign invaders -- is just. Meanwhile the American forces are not fighting on their home ground, but instead are thousands of miles from their own territory, and I am very sorry to say that for the most part their cause -- to take over the Iraqi oil fields and to impose their will on the Iraqis -- is not just.