Are the Iraqi uprisings abetted by Rumsfeld's "lean & mean" force size strategy?

[astro]

Just wondered if these uprisings could have been avoided if we were there in greater numbers and had a more significant miltary presence.

[Rashak_Mani]

More visible and “bigger” troops would have only a bigger supressing effect but would hardly “solve” the problem… these uprisings have clear political reasons and no amount of troops will solve bad governance.

So Rummies “lean and mean” isn’t responsible.

[sailor]

More troops can provide a temporary relief for a very short time but just create more pressure which will explode later with more force. I do not think any amount of troops is going to resolve the underlying problem which is that people do not like to be ruled by foreigners. In this case, the general Muslim Anti-Americanism just makes things worse. I think there are good chances that America will have to leave Iraq to solve its own issues even if it means a civil war. That’s what happened in Vietnam and it wasn’t the end of the world. I do not think there is any way this is going to end well.

[Kimstu]

According to one of the former chief planners for Garner and Bremer, Colonel Tom Gross, pre-war plans for reconstruction did suggest that the “lean and mean” troop sizes wouldn’t be adequate, but Rumsfeld stuck to them anyway:

Gross said there were detailed plans and assumptions—from both the State Department and the military’s Central Command—about what would be needed to transition from a post-war occupation to a self-rule. He said that at a meeting with Garner, Wolfowitz was told it would take 36 months to put a viable Iraqi government together and that a sizeable American military force of more than 100,000 troops would be needed for five, maybe 10 years. When Garner’s office told Rumsfeld that they were ready to write a detailed political-military plan based on those estimates, Gross said “Rumsfeld said no.” […]

“I think I know why” Rusmfeld and Wolfowitz acted this way, said Tom Maertens, former National Security Council director for nuclear non-proliferation for both the Clinton and Bush White Houses. “They apparently thought that [Iraqi exile leader Ahmed] Chalabi had some sort of popular following in Iraq. They flew in Chalabi with his cronies and they thought that was the new Iraqi government.”

So maybe a larger-scale post-war plan (which, however, might have been impossibly unpopular with US voters) would have meant a better transition to Iraqi independence. However, I agree with RM and sailor that revamping the scale of the occupation at this point would probably make things worse instead of better.

[London_Calling]

Just to say that to a British mindset a situation in which a politicain is involved – let alone influencing – military strategy is bizarre, to say the very least.

On what possible basis can a self-serving, short-termist non-professional (like Rumsfeld) command any credibility with career professionals, at any level including strategic and frontline ?

Just send him on his way with a bag of toys and a pat on the head while you get on with the job you’ve been given by the boss.

[Kimstu]

LC: *On what possible basis can a self-serving, short-termist non-professional (like Rumsfeld) command any credibility with career professionals, at any level including strategic and frontline ?

Just send him on his way with a bag of toys and a pat on the head while you get on with the job you’ve been given by the boss.*

Makes sense to me; the trouble is, Rumsfeld is the boss, for all intents and purposes. The above-linked article discusses how the “career professionals” doing Iraq reconstruction planning were essentially bypassed by Administration higher-ups:

[…] the top staffers at the National Security Council and at the departments of State and Defense do almost nothing but plan, strategize, evaluate contingencies and sometimes get orders to act. But what people who were riveted by Richard Clarke’s testimony may not realize is that the most powerful figures in the Bush administration—–from its earliest days—–dispensed with the interagency planning process prior White Houses used to evaluate threats, make decisions to go to war, and plan and carry out those actions.

[…] the president’s war cabinet—–Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice—–didn’t want to cede any decision-making powers to senior State Department or Pentagon officials. What becomes apparent in Mann’s book is that not since Henry Kissinger was both national security adviser and secretary of state for Richard Nixon have presidential advisers held and exercised so much war-making power.

[…] As Mann’s book makes abundantly clear, the Bush war cabinet—–Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Armitage, Powell and more recently Rice—–have a decades-long history of distrusting both career diplomats and Pentagon generals who do not believe in American supremacy on the global stage or are reluctant to forcefully use American military power. Thus, the Bush White House purposefully unplugged the so-called interagency process, which in effect had been a system of shared responsibilities—–and checks and balances—–in the way America used its military power around the world.

And it doesn’t look as though things are going to get more balanced any time soon:

Gross said Rumsfeld has now given his deputy, Wolfowitz, the job of dealing with Iraq.

“It’s interesting,” he said. “My take is there is now a huge rift between Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. What I think is Rumsfeld’s agenda is military transformation. Iraq is a sideshow. What he has done is turned the Iraq keys over to Wolfowitz…”

[…]“Wolfowitz is the most dangerous guy in America right now,” Gross said. “He doesn’t listen. The interagency process is broken. The bad thing is nobody will call him out. Condi doesn’t say anything about it. Cheney is not going to do anything about it. And Rumsfeld is doing military transformation.”

So while Rumsfeld goes back (I presume) to trying to implement missile defense plans, the even more radical (and even less cooperative) Wolfowitz is going to be in charge of the Iraq strategy, while the trained diplomatists and strategists continue to be ignored? Gee, now that sounds like a recipe for foreign-policy success, huh?

[Apos]

More troops and a real occupation plan at an early stage would have made a huge difference. The more people see that someone is in charge, the more they’ll trust in the future and refrain from minor incursions. We could have stablized the country far more, far earlier. But then, we could have done the same for Afghanistan… but apparently we had to hold back so that we could go after Iraq.

At this point, I agree its not clear what should be done. As much as the military would still like to delude the US public that the violence is just being done by just a few recalcitrant Baathists or Al Qaeda fighters, the real core of the insurrection seems to be coming more and more from just regular Iraqis who decide that they want to fight the foriegn enemies.

Something too many people forget: before Saddam, the hated colonial oppressors were… (drumroll) none other than Britian and the U.S. (cymbal crash). The Brits and us were exactly who Saddams eventual group threw out of the country in the first place. So while most people are surely happy that Saddam is gone, I can’t see them being all that crazy about going back to basically where they were when they started: feeling like the peasant pawns of Western colonialist oilguzzlers.