Centerfield

Jon,
Having read several books on the subject lately, I don't know what I could add. Thomas Ricks seems most precise.

I am not sure torture by coalition forces is going on much and destroying all the militias seems to require more troops than we have. In the end, Iraqis must decide if they wish to remain a united country or one with three parts. Perhaps we could use some help from Iraq's neighbors such as Jordan and Egypt to supply police and border security, but that doesn't seem likely.

How about working a deal with Saddam and bring some Sunnis back into service? He can stay in jail and not face execution, in exchange for calling Sunnis to return to the table where Shiites could give every Iraqi household a Constitutional piece of the oil wealth.

The real problem with present fixes is that the world is in bad shape and getting worse. World opinion may have to get squeezed before it will change towards the constructive. Russia is refusing to leave Georgia. China continues to alarm its neighbors. India now says Pakistani intelligence was behind the Bombay bombing. France renounces the use of sanctions as more than 400,000 have been slaughtered in Darfur. North Korea unloads reactor rods to make nukes while China does nothing and the Japanese consider rebuilding their military. A solution for Iraq cannot be created outside of the global context with the US footing the bill. With Syria and Iran as their neighbors, a near-term fix for Iraq does not seem likely. Disbanding the Iraqi army, leaving more than a half million pounds of munitions around Iraq, banning Sunnis from professional society and government, refraining from defeating militias and holding strongholds all screwed our strategy. Ricks called it “using tactics without strategy”. Perhaps getting a better handle on our whole Middle East strategy would be a start. Without the world playing a more constructive role, I am not sure we can fix things by ourselves.

With Jihadist calling all to help build wmd to use on “Christians, Jews and Hindus”, I think the problems in Iraq reflect a larger problem the world must face. If Darfur is a guide, I am pessimistic.

The two worst mistakes:
1) Disbanding the existing Iraqi Army. Not because we should have kept it as an army in the long term, but because it provided an initial large group of armed (and now unemployed) young men . . . with weapons. Better to have announced that all troops should return to their barracks, and that pay and allowances would continue as usual for those who did. Then, once things were under control, weapons could have been gathered up and units disbanded or re-formed, or whatever.
2) Barring all Ba'ath party members from future government service. Again, better to have left all of them temporarily in place. Announce that, since at least nominal Ba'ath party membership had been required for most government jobs, it wouldn't be held against anyone per se. Senior government ministers, and those who had committed specific crimes (including much of the secret police, of course) would be prosecuted for what they personally had done. But not discriminated against for merely being members.

If we hadn't made those two mistakes, much of the initial popular support for the resistance, especially in the Sunni areas, would not have existed. But then, that would have required some thought and planning beyond the first 30 days of the operation.

Invading it.

Here's some other major mistakes-

Reconstruction -
Putting untried and untested yougsters in charge of various Iraqi agencies. Where were the seasoned diplomats and bureaucrats - American, Iraqi etc.?

Closing reconstruction bidding to all but a few companies. Many local Iraqi businesses were cut out of the rebuilding process early because "we can do it better" (re: we need to make sure Haliburton and Bechtel get the lion's share).
They should have opened up the bidding process, gotten more countries involved which then might have given them cover to send more of troops to Iraq to protect their people.

Not getting the utilities up and running right away. Whether it was not enough personel or money(?!?!?) water and electricity are STILL a problem after more than 40 months. A precursor to Katrina.

Gotten the Arab league to supply troops and security when they offered to do so.

"go it alone' = clusterf**k

that's my short list.

1. Failure to plan for the occupation.

By all accounts, Rumsfeld et al simply planned to not stay long (remember the plan to have U.S. troops down to 30,000 not long after Saddam fell?) We apparently had good plans ready in case of a humanitarian crisis, but nothing to handle the normal tasks of government.

The State Dept put together massive, detailed plans for the post-war, but the Pentagon took control and ignored the State Dept plans.

2. Disbanding the military, as wj said. I must respectfully disagree with Jon -- and I think Jon loses the point for violating Godwin's Law ;) ...

Uh...do you really want a list?

> I think Jon loses the point for violating Godwin's Law ;) ...

Bwahaha! Unfortunately, I think Godwin's Law is dead. It did great service for a long time, though. Mind you, I'm not using the Nazis as an ethical comparison, which was Godwin's Law's point.

> Uh...do you really want a list?

;-)

Electrons are cheap!

Pure conjecture of course, and hindsight is 20/40 of course, but:

If you are of the mind that our goals in Iraq are unattainable or not worth the cost then Nic's point is the most valid one.

Underestimation of Saddam's long term defense strategy, which seems to have been to hunker down, fight a guerilla war until the US withdrew, and then use the remaining military and Baath power structure to move back in. Rope a dope.

Trying to follow the path of least resistance to keep the US popular support. That strategy led to several of the tactical mistakes people like to point out.

Caveing to political pressure early on. The US rushed the elections and constitution (pandering to political and popular pressure again) and thereby lengthened the whole process. Kissinger had a bottom up process he was proposing instead of the top down one now in place. It would have taken longer in the short run, but might have made the finish line closer and more in line with what we are trying to achieve.

Someday we will have computer simulations accurate enough to run alternate histories. For now I find myself in agreement with most of what Jon says. As to the why question, explicit and implied on other points, I think the administration were too fearful of losing public support.

Jean, I would love to see a list that is thought out and not just a anti-rant.

I have to support wj and Maxtrue, Jon is dead wrong about disbanding the Iraqi army. What that act did was release tens/hundreds of thousands of armed men, many of whom previously had no grievance against us, with no job and no skills other than killing to join the insurgency, for the pay if for no other reason. The problem is not that no one had proposed alternatives for reforming the Iraqi military, the Iraqi opposition and probably others had, it's that Rumsfeld was too arrogant to listen to anyone who had. This mistake is related to the mistake with how deBa`athification was done. The Transition to Democracy in Iraq (PDF warning) by the Conference on the Iraqi Opposition had a section on deBa`athification. One item in that section was the critical need to distinguish between Ba`athists and Ba`ath party members. Not doing so is the failure in our deBa`athification.

The other failure I'd raise now was caring more about us than about them in the reconstruction/making a priority of building a conservative utopia over rebuilding the institutions of society. For example, in rebuilding the health system, when it became apparent that it injuries from terror attacks were becoming a major problem, the administrator we sent kept his priorities on building a system where Iraqis would pay for health services received whereas they were used to receiving them for free.