Unexpected outcomes of the war

“When it comes to war,” the bookmaker told me, “we make a killing.”

He, of course, is not the only one.

Still, accurately predicting the outcome of a war is no strawberry sundae. Lots of people try it, but few, if any, succeed.

I decided to investigate further, and called up Ivor Goodtip, an old friend at the Washington Institute for Military Forecasting, Strategic Speculation and Expensive War-Gaming.

He helped set the record straight.

“It’s in the nature of man to want to know the future,” he told me, laughing at my prediction. “My job isn’t so different to that of a tea-leaf reader, a crystal ball gazer, or an astrological charter. Only I don’t wear a headscarf. And I have a lovely big house in the suburbs. A caravan would never do.”

“The fact is, I’ve retired more tea leaves than you’ve had cold sushi. Unfortunately, none of those traditional methods provide the kind of accuracy we are looking for. Despite the efforts of many, war is not an exact science. The results are not always clear, and rarely agreed upon. Some see war as executing objectives. Others see war as executing civilians. Some might say a war has been successful. Others say the fact that there was a war is a failure. You can’t win!

“Take the current conflict in Iraq as a not-so-random example. Since the bugles first started sounding in 1991, everyone who is anyone, as well as everyone who isn’t, has thrown their two cents worth into the debate. Never has a war been so speculated on, so pre-enacted, so imagined, so war-gamed, so forecasted, so simulated, so betted on. But then, when it finally gets going, no one knows what to call it. Is it Gulf War II, or Gulf War III? Is it the War in Iraq, or the War on Iraq? Is it part of the War on Terror? And is the War on Terror part of World War III? Or is World War III in fact World War IV, with the Cold War as World War III? No-one can do the math on this one.

“So you see how difficult this is? People like me have become the sages, the soothsayers, of modern civilisation (or is it post-modern civilisation? Who knows?). No one likes to embark on a war when the odds are against them. No one except Saddam Hussein anyway. Guys like me, we make the odds. I’m like the George Soros of conflict. The Sun Tzu of the New Economy. When people ask me what war is good for, I say, “For me. For all of us in the military forecasting game.” Business is booming!”

“Before this Iraq war thing got going, we had our work cut out. Every minute on every TV station, every inch in every newspaper, every particle on every internet page, some bozo was making a prediction. They fell into three main camps. The first lot thought the war would be a picnic, albeit one with bombs. The second lot thought it would be the biggest injustice and the worst disaster in the history of mankind. The third lot covered their bases, endlessly repeating the line, “When it comes to war, expect only the unexpected.” I hate people who say that! They can’t really be wrong, but, of course, they are never right either.”

So, was the war a picnic?

“Not exactly. The picnic people expected to see Iraqis dancing in the streets, like Mick Jagger and David Bowie. That hasn’t happened so much. Instead, people have been looting in the streets, like LA rappers. But everyone’s laughing at the doom-mongers. All those people who predicted another Vietnam, millions of deaths, nuclear strikes, oil well blazes, terrorist strikes, refugee crises, and so on, they look like real assholes.”

You mean the French?

“No. The French are just assholes, full stop. Who cares what they predicted? They were on Saddam’s side, for God’s sake! How much more wrong do you want to be?”

So, who got it right?

“I did. This war – Gulf War II or III – was the first TV war. And war, let’s face it, makes great TV. The difference, of course, is that war is no game show. I know, I’ve checked. The rules governing game shows are much stricter. “

“History moves in steady progression, with a few minor blips on the way. Desert Storm was the first Nintendo war. The First World War was the first world war. The Battle for Troy was the first wooden war. Nobody knows what the Boer war was. This war – The TV War – was inevitable. It’s over forty years since we had the first TV President, for God’s sake! This war was long overdue.

“The trick is to focus on the smaller things. The things that can easily be proven right or wrong. The only big thing one can prove is that America won the war. Nobody can dispute that. Everything else, people quibble about – was it necessary, legitimate, successful, vindicated? Me and my colleagues decided to focus on the smaller things. Here are a few examples of what we got right:

“1. The fiercest resistance that American forces met in Baghdad was from a British woman. We predicted that. As cheering Iraqi men pulled down the twenty foot statue of Saddam in Firdos Square, kissed the American soldiers, jumped on Saddam’s face, threw their shoes at him, and smashed him with sledgehammers, a British woman with unkempt hair and a long flowing skirt – in Baghdad as a ‘human shield’ – berated the US soldiers, calling them “cowards” and “oil-grabbing imperialists”. We were spot on with that one.

“2. Like the Europeans, the ‘proudly nationalist’ Saddam cared more for Palestine than he did for Iraq. His last official words were “Long live Palestine!” Issued just before he fled Iraq, like a pussy. Journalists reported from the Palestine hotel, unable to find Hotel Iraq. We had monitored Saddam’s speeches over the last year and found five thousand and sixty-seven references to this ‘Palestine’ place. Iraq was mentioned three times.

“3. As soon as the Saddam regime fell, left-wing groups in America and Britain started complaining that the plans for the democratisation of Iraq went too far. George Bush and Tony Blair’s promise of an Iraq “run by and for its people”, was met with anger by ‘radical’ Americans and Brits, who claimed that Iraq was getting a better democracy than they had at home, and that this was now the “the biggest injustice and the worst disaster in the history of mankind.”

“4. We were the only ones to propose that Donald Rumsfeld has a heart. No one else thought such a thing possible. When he said ‘Your heart breaks [when] someone is killed or taken prisoner,’ we were rewarded in our risky wager.”

“5. When the Iraqi military plans fell into US hands and showed how the Republican Guard was relying on animals for transportation, our prediction that US firepower and technology would probably be greater than that of their enemy was beyond doubt. Chickens are no match for B52s.”

Now why didn’t I think of that?