Stardate 20031207.1931

(Captain's log): Michael writes:

I was wondering if you'd spent any time trying to develop metrics for victory in Iraq. Clearly, this is a prickly and amorphous thing to measure, but all the more reason for an analytical mind such as yours to tackle it. Such a framework would be of immense value, even if you yourself could not initially use it - e.g., for lack of data. Others, with more immediate access to data (e.g. military bloggers in Iraq), would be able to use these metrics; moreover, simply knowing what questions are worth asking will *generate* data. You have doubtless encountered the phenomenon that, when you know what you are looking for, you note and record events that you would otherwise have ignored. That is how usable data get generated.

It's not that simple.

It's going to be a long process, with progress seeming achingly slow. The real struggle will take decades, and there will be setbacks. And we may lose.

Let's consider an analogous case from our own past. When I was a kid in the 1950's, homosexuality was broadly viewed as perversion, sin, and/or mental illness depending on who you asked. Few were openly homosexual, and many of those were persecuted or prosecuted. (Computer Science demigod Alan Turing committed suicide in 1954 while under forced medical treatment to "cure" him of his homosexuality.)

Nowadays homosexuality is open, widely accepted, and even legally protected to some extent, and indeed almost unremarkable. There are still many who hate homosexuals, but they're a declining minority. It's an indication of how much things have changed that the biggest legal question of the day regarding homosexuals is whether they should be permitted to legally marry, rather than how long they should be locked up for. A lot has changed.

When, exactly, did that change happen? What metric would you apply to permit us to determine the day and hour when gays became free?

You can't. There isn't one that makes sense. It's not like that.

The war we're in has already included two major battles, and will involved ongoing military operations of various kinds and intensities for a long time. But we won't win with guns and tanks and bombs. It won't be won with big events, things that make headlines.

The real struggle, the one which will win the war, is not like that. The critical battle in the war is being fought in a billion locations: the minds of a billion Muslims. Each such battle is separate, and we'll win some of them and lose some of them. If we win enough of them, we'll win the war, but it isn't possible to describe how many is "enough".

I just made a post which describes one element of that: liberation of Arab women, and the ongoing liberation of Japan's women. Japan's women were given legal freedom and equality by the constitution we put in place (Japan's constitution was mostly written by MacArthur's staff) but it's only in the last fifteen or twenty years that they are truly becoming free, and it will be decades before the majority of Arab women begin to become free. But there's no clear threshold one can designate for "success" in this.

One good indication in the US that gay rights had made serious progress was when openly-gay candidates started running for office and actually got elected. Likewise, when we start seeing Arab women holding powerful elective offices we'll know that a lot of progress has been made. The first female Arab head-of-state will be even more important. (Benazir Bhutto is not such a case. Pakistan isn't Arab, and Islam wasn't as dominant in Pakistan at the time, and Bhutto, like Indira Ghandi, was the daughter of a powerful male politician. What I'm talking about is an Arab Thatcher, an unknown outsider who eventually reaches the top.)

What we do have is an idea of the way we hope things will develop in Iraq, though we can't really be sure how long it will happen, or whether it may take a slightly different course. We know that eventually we want a constitution in place, and we want elections, and we want a government to form and take hold. We want a vigorous free press to thrive. There are a sequence of steps in future, and as those kinds of things keep happening it will mean we're not stalled.

One good example of that is the way that we have reconstituted an Iraqi police force in most of the nation which have taken over the more routine aspects of maintaining public order and safety. That was a major achievement which mostly flew by under the radar. Another is the diverse free press that now exists in Iraq.

But these are indications of progress, not victory. We can't claim we've won just because there's now an Iraqi police force or a lot of independent newspapers. And both of those happened gradually over a period of time. When did the police force come into being? When did a free press appear? Well, actually, it's been going on for months and both are continuing.

When a constitution is approved, that will be a major indication of progress. The first election will be another one, and the first time that a party in power loses to another party.

But there won't be any Berlin-wall moment that indicates that we've actually won. I know we'd all like one, but this isn't that kind of war.

At its deepest level, this war is unlike any I've studied in history. There have been wars of conquest and wars of extermination; wars to take colonies