Back in 2003, as the insurgency in Iraq started to pick up speed, I did some thinking about the inherent asymmetry between the goals of the two sides in the conflict. For the US to achieve victory, they had to essentially fix the country and make everything work again. For the insurgents to achieve victory, they just had to keep breaking things. Obviously, breaking things is very much easier than mending them: it was pretty clear that the insurgency could blow up infrastructure and murder people far faster and less expensively than the US could put Iraq back on its feet. It struck me then that putting yourself in a situation where your conditions of victory are very hard to accomplish and your opponent’s are very easy is probably a tactical error.
Fast forward eight years, and that same asymmetry is repeated, this time in the American political arena. For the President to achieve victory, he needs to fix a thoroughly broken economy, while burdened by the costs of two wars, lavish tax cuts, and at least two rounds of buying off the Wall Street vandals who trashed the economy in the first place. All his opponents at home need to do is prevent him doing that. So the Republicans have been conducting an insurgency of their own, blowing things up and generally putting roadblocks in Obama’s way at every turn. Once again, one side’s victory conditions are nearly impossible to achieve, while the other has a much easier task.
Of course to conduct a spoiling campaign - as the Baathist ‘bitter-enders’ and the jihadis of Al-Qaeda in Iraq did, and as the Tea Party and their servants in Congress now seem to be doing - requires a measurable contempt for your fellow citizens, a feeling that it doesn’t matter how many innocents get caught in the cross-fire as long as the hated enemy doesn’t accomplish his goals. But some people don’t have a problem with that.
