here is a list of things that we did wrong, in removing Saddam Hussein:
10 We failed to keep the Iraqi army in one piece-had we kept them on, and paid them, much fewer weapons would be available to attack Us troops.
2)we failed to forge links with Shiite, sunni, and Kurd leaders
3) we never had a plan to impose a government
4) we did not immediately secure all the ammunition scattered around the country
5) we destroyed the baath party
Finally, as we continue to see the insurgency grow, we have NO exit or backup plan-just (apparently0 what Rumsfeld dreams up from day to day.
So how will this mess play out?
Some possibilities:
Stay the course-accept 5-10K more dead, billions in costs
“cut and run”-leave immediately
30Remove the army to strong points in the south(near basra), and announce that attacks will be met by total destruction
I’m afraid this whole adventure is rapidly coming to a close-and a bad one at that-what’s your take?
Hubris in launching the war. Foolishness in believing the never-true promises of a short war (home before the leaves fall) with few losses. We underestimated Those People. A rookie mistake.
A lack of professionalism in the officer corps. We had a decade to prepare for this war. Why were we unprepared? Not enough Civil Affairs, not enough Arabic-speakers, not enough armor. Not enough anything.
Lack of robust doctrine. We did not know how we would rebuild a country. We did not know how to do interrogations.
It is a truism amongst us officers that ‘The Troops Never Let You Down.’ This time they did. The brutality and casual savagery shown by our young soldiers has stained the honor of the American military. We will need centuries to live it down. Worse yet, I suspect they are simply reflecting the society from which they came.
We never should expected a country that was a false construct to survive intact. You have 3 groups that despise each other, the only way to hold it together was through a dictatorship.
That’s a pretty damning post, Paul. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
Can you expand please, on what you mean about the soldier reflecting society? All I know about modern solders I’ve learned at the movies ie, “Jar Head” and “Black Hawk Down.”
Speaking from an utterly cold-blood, realpolitik view - we should have installed Chalabi.
Who? Chalabi! Come on, you remember! Extra special guest at the State of the Union Address? Iraqi patriot? That was the plan, and it would have worked, perhaps long enough for us to get the hell out and get our troops home in time for the Re-Elect Our Heroes and Support Our President campaign rally.
How? Leave everything exactly as it was, pluck out Saddam, shoehorn Chalabi into his place, declare it all a democracy, and get the hell out of BaghDodge. Give him enough money to pay for a loyal military force that would crush dissent and bingo! freedom, peace, and justice. Or close enough.
There was no “Iraq”. What there was - a geopolitical fiction from whole cloth, a made up state without a nation. So long as there was an iron fist, there was a nation. In all probability, that would have fallen apart too, Saddam was a bad-ass mofo, Caligula without psychosis. Chalabi is a used car-time share condo salesman, sooner or later he would have been eaten alive.
But we would have been home by then, victory declared, and if things went wrong, well, gee, not our fault. We gave them Chalabi, fer cryin’ out loud, and they screwed it all up! Dumbass towel-heads. Now, about that outdated, useless Amendment curtailing our freedom to elect The Leader to a third term…
In rhetrospect probably one of the biggest fuckups of the war. At the time I suppose they just wanted those folks out of uniform and felt that disbanding the army was a good way to get it out of the field. I don’t think they forsaw the insurgency, nor what a bunch of bored soldiers could or would do with time and their hands and nothing much to do…and no jobs in the short term. Short sighted of them…
I’m not sure how valid this one is. We DID forge links with all those groups. Also, forging links is a two way street. I’m not sure what more could have been done that wasn’t attempted in this reguard.
Um…why would imposing a government on the Iraqi’s be a good idea? How would this have worked in any case? Hell, if they are shaky about the government they elected, how much more pissed off would they be about a government we imposed on them by fiat? I think this, had Bush done it (and I’m surprised he didn’t as it would have been a disaster), would have been one of the major disasters of the whole sorrid mess.
No, we didn’t. Again, in rhetrospect this would have been a smart move for us to do…and we’ve certainly paid for it. That said though, the original plan, knowing what they knew then, was reasonable. It was to drive to Baghdad as fast as possible and depose Saddam and his regime. The thinking being, if the government falls the military would fold its hand as well. Then there would be time for going back and sorting out all those other issues (like this one).
The MAIN problem, IMHO, is related to this. It was that we tried to do this invasion on the cheap, with minimal forces. I think Bush and Chaney were looking at the bottom line, and wanted to do this thing without spending any more money than was absolutely necessary (thus making the burden on the American people lighter…and so, making the administration more popular for not only winning the war but for doing it without harming the economy). Rummy I think was just facinated by the thought of taking out a regional military power like Iraq with as little US force as possible…sort of a military intellectual excersize. Whatever their real motives, it was (IMHO) a major fuckup by not going in with sufficient force initially to do the job right.
I disagree this was a mistake.
Well, its untrue (or at least there is no way for you to prove) that we absolutely have no exit strategy or back-up plan. Its also not true that the insurgency is growing…at least not that I’ve heard. If you have some evidence to back this up, I’d love to see it.
That said, we are certainly hip deep in Iraq for the forseeable future. I had HOPED that we would be able to start seriously turning things over to the Iraqi’s this year and begin pulling out (not least because my son is over there). This has turned out to have been a false hope on my part however.
In theory we are buying time for the Iraqi’s to get their shit together, politically, economically and militarily. Even with all the fuckups the Iraqi’s ARE (slowly) getting their shit together. EVentually they WILL be able to take up their own defense and we can start pulling back…assuming the whole country doesn’t fly apart in a bloody civil war. I’m starting to think that maybe…just maybe…this isn’t going to happen now and that they will hold together after all.
5-10k ‘more’ US dead? Or just dead, including Iraqi and US, civilians, soldiers and insurgents? Even then, you are talking years (5-10) at the current casualty rates and I don’t see the US being there for that long. Billions though…yeah, its still going to be billions and billions at this point.
Not going to happen in this reality. Its sort of like the wishful thinking of some to impeach Bush for incompetence (or because of his grin or monkey face). Bush is committed to staying the course and all that…and frankly things just aren’t that bad in Iraq that there is a general movement in the US to get out right this minute. Given a couple more years of whats been happening though, and given a new administration and all bets are off…but cut and run ain’t happening as long as GW is in the White House.
And I’m not convinced that it would be a good idea right now to ‘cut and run’. We aren’t at the point where the writing is on the wall and the thing is obviously a failure. There is still some hope and potential that things may work out. When the militia groups from the various sides start squaring off to go at it hammer and tongs…THEN we’ll be at that point.
No idea where you are going with this one at all, or why you think its a viable option.
The US didn’t install Saddam. He was the previous leader’s cousin, who made him vice-president, and Saddam eventually squeezed him out and then went on to arrest or kill everyone in the Baath party who he thought might challenge him.
We deluded ourselves into thinking that liberators and occupiers are the same thing. Compare and constrast our liberation of France with our occupation of Japan and West Germany in WW2 with Iraq.
I don’t understand this terminology of ‘occupiers’ as if its a negative connontation.
For instance, Germany after WWII was occupied by the Allied Powers and they had final say on the use of German security forces in the way they conducted themselves and operated, even the structure of Government was changed. All of which was done by an Allied ‘Occupation’ Of that example, I see the same being done in Iraq, with the exception that there is a large scale insurgency.
Now, considering nearly the entire population of Iraq couldn’t vote or disagree with the main governing body which ruled them (Baathists) how does Occupation translate into something negative if we’ve enabled those people to elect who they want into office? Although the US Coalition have final say on their military operations, and Iraqi Army operations, it only makes sense due to the fact that the IA and Iraqi Police are ‘works in progress’ which need oversight. Also, since the country is fracturous on ethnic and religious grounds, it also makes sense for US diplomatic efforts to be involved in Iraqi affairs, in order to ensure that progress is made on reconcilation and building unity between them.
In addition, the thinking that even if we made the right moves that there wouldn’t be terrorism, thus blaiming the MNF (100%) for the insurgency is wrong, since there were people from all over the Arab world who were more than willing to perpetuate conflict in order to impede on progress we could of made in rebuilding the country.
Actually Bakr was dying from Cancer and Saddam took over day to day operations of running Iraq, and I think stepped down and thus Saddam took on the reins.
Engaging the Iraqi govt. prior to the invasion, outside of hostilities, was no longer possible. Iraq may have collapsed on its own into sectarian chaos and war, but all we have done, all we could possibly have ever done, short of a massive occupation require a draft, is hasten that collapse. Since we were unwilling (for good reason) to embark on such a daunting course of action, instead of doing the prudent thing, which would have been keeping the Iraqi govt. intact but defanged, we toppled it without any feasible means of replacing it responsibly.
I repeat, the entire enterprise was doomed from the outset, and our leadership should have known better. We never, ever should have even considered invading and occupying Iraq, especially whilst attempting to secure Afghanistan. They destroyed the only stabilizing force in the country without the resources or necessary will to replace it, and the entirely predictable has been the result. Again, civil war in Iraq may have been likely, but now we own it. A disaster.
Why, thank you my friend. I appreciate that. And I will certainly tell him…he actually knows who you are (well, as much as I do…he follows this board somewhat, or did when he was at home, looking over my shoulder :)). He’ll appreciate the sentiment…and get a kick out of the Uncle thing too.
I do not remember where I heard it, but someone said, “The definition of a bad government policy is one that leaves no good options.” We entered bad policy the second we attacked Iraq. I do not know that this was ever winnable, but there were some pretty serious mistakes, which sealed the deal.
#1 The assumption that we would be universally hailed as the heroes, freeing them from the evils of Saddam, complete with parades and flowers, was naïve at best. No matter how noble the cause is or how desperate the population, some petty dictator or local despot has been able to use our presence to shore up his cause. (Somalia comes to mind)
#2 There seemed to be no plan for policing once we had control. Any population has a percentage of people who revel in chaos, especially when they have been clamped down for a long time. The looting of the museum and the known nuclear sites was completely predictable, and the resulting humanitarian and public relation disasters are inexcusable.
#3 No one who any knowledge of the culture and the language seems to have been involved in the planning stages or even the occupation, unless you count Chalabi, who had his own agenda. Even high school football teams study their opponents. Once upon a time our inelegance communities studied the Soviet Union to the point they knew more about it than the Soviets themselves. This sure seems kind of basic.
4 Tolerating torture in any way shape or form is wrong. Even if it was not the official policy, there seem to have been a whole lot of blind eyes and winks going on. Especially when we really do need to “win hearts and minds”, there should have been a prompt clamp down by the military the moment rumors started circulating. Even if good information could come from it, it can’t make up for how much it turns the population from us.
Those seem to be the top mistakes. They mostly seem to be a product of arrogance and ignorance, which leaves us with no options that are not horrific. Cut and run leaves a civil war and bloodbath, which we created. Stay the course leaves our troops as an irritant to keep the insurgency going, so it stays a bloodbath.
As others have said, our big mistake was invading in the first place. Iraq under Saddam was stable, defanged, and secular. It was not an ally of Al Qaeda, had no weapons of mass destruction, and utterly lacked the means to harm Americans or American interests in any significant way. In addition it provided a useful regional counterweight to Iran.
Even if we’d done everything right we’d still be scarsely better off than we are now. We would still be facing a costly, long-term occupation of a broken state. We still would have pissed off the Arab street. Iran and Al Qaeda would still have benefitted. There wouldn’t be open warfare in the streets so our failure wouldn’t be so glaringly obvious, but the damage to American interests would have been virtually the same.