The Iraq war has lasted three years, so far. There is nothing magic about three years. But it’s a measure you can use for comparison purposes. And milestones do provide convenient times for reflection.

First, comparisons:

Rebel forces under General Pierre Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Three years later we’d been through Shiloh and Antietam and Gettysburg. Grant had been made commander of all US armies, and his friend Tecumseh Sherman put in charge of the western army, just a month shy of the three year mark. Cold Harbor, where 7,000 men were killed or wounded in twenty minutes, was still to come.

Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941. Just a shade over three years later we were embroiled in the Battle of the Bulge and were softening up Iwo Jima. We had gone from a military of about 1.5 million at the start of war, (already greatly enlarged from the peacetime strength of less than 400,000,) to a peak strength of 6 million. During four years of war we built 88,000 tanks, 97,000 bombers, 100,000 fighters, 141 aircraft carriers. A hundred and forty-one aircraft carriers.

Three years into the Civil War there was great criticism in the north of Mr. Lincoln’s conduct of the war. The criticism was deserved. For all his gifts, Mr. Lincoln took three bloody years to find a winning general. Three years in, it was still possible to talk quite seriously of suing for peace.

Three years into World War 2 it was clear that we would win. Very few spoke of peace.

It took us three years to get a draw in Korea, while our involvement in World War 1 lasted half that time. The War of 1812 took less than three years. We have yet to spend half as long on the Iraq war as it took us to win independance, or half as long as we spent losing in Vietnam.

So far in Iraq we’ve had 2,317 dead and approximately 17,000 wounded. The total casualties, 19,000 plus, is fewer than were sustained at the battle of Shiloh when the popultaion of the US, north and south, was 30,000,000, about a tenth of current population.

Of course there is a flaw in comparisons to the War of Independence, the Civil War or World War 2: those were about the survival of the United States. Iraq is not that kind of war.

Some reflections:

In cold statistical terms, the number of casualties taken so far in Iraq is small. It’s not a small number to the mothers and fathers, husbands, wives and children of the dead and injured. But as a percentage of national strength it is a negligable number.

Our goal in Iraq, as confused as it is, and as far from any issue of national survival as it is, is not the least admirable goal for which we ever spilled blood. We took 1,700 dead and 17,000 wounded stealing California, Arizona and New Mexico from the Mexicans. No one seems to have a clear count of the number of men we lost pushing Indians off their land.

We are in trouble in Iraq. But nowhere near the trouble we were in repeatedly during the Civil War. At times the Confederate army was within a morning’s stroll of the White House.

The danger to us from defeat in Iraq is greater than the danger from defeat in Vietnam, but smaller by far than the danger of losing World War 2 or the Cold War. Add up all the Islamist terrorists in the world, toss in every angry ex-Baathist, consider all the damage they might realistically do to us, it’s still far, far less than a single deranged Soviet sub captain could have done.

Wars almost always have unintended consequences. Some, but not many, saw that the Mexican adventure would lead us into Civil War. Some, but not many, saw that the first world war would in fact be just the first. And some wise heads, but not many, saw victory in World War 2 leading to the Cold War. We don’t know where this war is going, but then, we never know where any war is going.

We’ve lost the strategic initiative in Iraq, that’s what troubles me, more than casualty numbers or the endless debates over how we got into this mess. We’ve lost the ability to impose, or attempt to impose, our will by sheer force of arms. We’ve lost control of the ebb and flow of this war. We never did that in the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World Wars 1 or 2. We did it Korea and Vietnam, a draw and a defeat.

I don’t know how anyone can justify surrendering the initiative. It doesn’t mean we’ll lose, we never had much of the initiative in the Revolution, and we dithered it away repeatedly during the Civil War though Grant and Sherman took it back and kept it. It doesn’t mean we’ll lose, but it means we are more likely to lose than we’d be if we had kept the initiative.

My criticism of the conduct of this war is not over its beginning — that’s a seperate, political matter. And it’s not that I expect we’ll make no military mistakes — of course we will. It’s that in this war we have a crushing superiority in men and arms and national wealth, a far greater superiority than we enjoyed in Vietnam, and yet, because of mistakes that could have been fixed early on, we gave up the initiative. We surrendered the advantages we brought to the fight, and we let the Baathists and Al Qaeda define the terms of the battle.

This failure required not just a single mistake, but a persistent pattern of mistakes, repeated, defended against all criticism. In a single phrase: we needed more men. Why the greatest power the world has ever known, should try to fight a war on the cheap and simply surrrender its huge advantages, will baffle historians.

Whatever the outcome now, nothing will save the reputation of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who threw away American lives, and perhaps American victory, so that he could prove a pet theory. And nothing will excuse the failure of President Bush to fire this manifestly incompetent man.

(cross-posted from The Mighty Middle.)