Get Ready for Another Iraq War by Seth Moulton, Washington Post
Losing a friend in war is always hard. Losing a friend to a battle we already fought and won is worse.
That’s how my close friend Lt. Col. Ehab Hashem Moshen was killed recently by the Islamic State near Fallujah — refighting a battle in Iraq that the Marine Corps fought a decade ago. The Marines won that fight. The problem is that the Obama administration didn’t follow through on a political plan to maintain the peace.
In April, I visited some of the almost 5,000 troops that President Obama has put back in Iraq, and I witnessed a recurring theme: We have a military plan to defeat the Islamic State — and, as initial gains in Fallujah this week demonstrate, it’s going well in many respects — but we have yet to articulate a political plan to ensure Iraq’s long-term stability.
Sometimes it’s impossible to tell whether it’s 2007 or 2016. The battle plans I hear from our commanders in Iraq today are the same ones I heard at the beginning of the surge, down to the same cities and tribal alliances. My question is: How will this time be different? The silence is deafening.
Carl von Clausewitz taught us nearly 200 years ago that “War is a mere continuation of politics by other means.” We have to have a political endgame, or the sacrifices our troops continue to make will be in vain. It’s not the military’s job to develop that political plan — that’s where the administration comes in — but it’s painfully clear there isn’t one…