What Went Wrong in Iraq
If you want to encapsulate what went wrong in Iraq, you need to look no further than look at who gave the briefing during Gulf War I: General Schwarzkopf the Commander in Chief of the US Central Command during the war. Remember him showing us the "luckiest guy in Iraq", a truck driver that just crosses a bridge in Bagdad right before a smart bomb blows the bridge up? Now compare that with the person that did the briefings during Gulf War II: the civilian Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. This underscores the difference between the two wars: a successful Gulf War I run by military professionals, and Gulf War Two which suffers from civilian meddling in a war that seems to be heading towards defeat. The unfortunate truth is that the professionals in the military had all the formulas for success, but were prevented from using them by the Administration’s civilian leadership.
A good example is security personal ratios. US military doctrine states the ratio of civilians to security personal needed to maintain order is 50:1. These aren't numbers that are just made up, rather they are the result of empirical studies of past wars by military experts and learned through actual experiences in places like Kosovo. With 27 million Iraqis1, that translate to 540,000 security personnel. I'm sure it's with this formula in mind when, prior to the war, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki made his famous statement to the US Senate Armed Services Committee that predicted the need of several hundred thousand soldiers not to win the war, but to keep the peace2. This was a notion that was publically rejected by the civilians Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz3. Note that the security force levels are total levels, and not all those needed to be American troops, unless you do what the civilian Coalition Provisional Authority did when it disbanded all the Iraqi security forces immediately after combat ended in a process of de-Ba'athification. The initial head of the Coalition Provisional Authority was an ex-military man: Retired United States Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner who understood the need for several hundred thousand security personnel, and therefore refused to implement de-Ba'athification which would have left Iraq with woefully too few security personnel. His recalcitrance resulted in the Administration replacing Gartner after less than a month as head of the CPA with the civilian L. Paul Bremer, who then quickly implemented the Administration’s demands for de-Ba'athification.
It wasn't just in the number of troops that civilian meddling cost America, but also in the overall lack of planning. Military Doctrine divides war planning into four phases: Phase I covers preparation for combat, followed by Phase II, initial operations, and combat, Phase III. Post-combat operations are called Phase IV. Brigadier General Mark Scheid, chief of the Logistics War Plans Division after 9/11 is quoted as saying in regards to Rumsfeld and Phase IV planning4:
“I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that,” Scheid said. “We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.”
Examples of the civilian lack of understanding and arrogance in the civilian leadership can been seen in time and time again prior to the war, such as the following exchange between Vice President Dick Chaney and NBC Meet the Press' interviewer Tim Russert on March 16, 2003:
MR. RUSSERT: If your analysis is not correct, and we're not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators…the read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.
MR. RUSSERT: The army's top general said that we would have to have several hundred thousand troops there for several years in order to maintain stability.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I disagree. We need, obviously, a large force and we've deployed a large force. To prevail, from a military standpoint, to achieve our objectives, we will need a significant presence there until such time as we can turn things over to the Iraqis themselves. But to suggest that we need several hundred thousand troops there after military operations cease, after the conflict ends, I don't think is accurate. I think that's an overstatement.
The Vice President's comments reflects a consensus of the civilian leadership in Washington prior to the war. This exchange reflects not only the civilian refusal to accept the military's recommendations on troop strength levels, but also the optimistic assessments of post war conditions that caused them to refute the need for robust post-war planning.
On both fronts, at personal costs to themselves and their careers military professionals stood up to the civilian leadership and tried to speak truth to power, but in the end the Administration’s civilian leadership had the last say and proceeded with neither the troop levels necessary to maintain order, nor a proper post war plan.
It wasn't just civilians making the wrong decisions about matters they knew nothing about, they also failed to do their job. Another military doctrine is the Powel Doctrine, which codifies the lessons learned from the Vietnam War. Among other things, it states that any war needs to have a clearly defined exit plan. The responsibility for an exit plan resides with the Commander-in-Chief. Ultimately it's the Commander-in-Chief's call to go to war and it's his responsibility to define victory. George W. Bush's father in Gulf War One may have taken some criticism for not removing Saddam, but the goals and exit strategy was clear: Free Kuwait. Nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately, Bush Jr. didn't come up with a clear definition of victory, so the military never knew when the mission was truly accomplished. The administration's own confusion about the mission is evident by the now famous "Mission Accomplished" banner that accompanied a speech by President Bush on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May, 1 2003. There seems to have been a series of goals: to defeat the Iraqi Army, to rid Iraq of WMDs, to kill or capture Saddam and his sons, the democratization of Iraq, and finally the opaque platitude: "we'll stand down when they stand up". In the mist of the confusion of an ever evolving definition of the mission the inevitable occurred as different individuals and constituencies pursued their own goals and interpretations resulting in much time, energy, and money being spent on implemented things like a flat tax, rather than tasks more central and critical to providing for a stable Iraq.
History is littered with civilians who political power has fed an oversized ego, causing them to believe they are smarter than the trained military professionals and in almost every case the result was costly. Had Hitler not fancied himself better military strategist than his generals, the Germans might have won World War II. It's always dangerous to explore "what-if" history, but assuming that the right number of troops had been on the ground after the invasion of Iraq, and assuming that they had been able to keep the peace and implement a well thought out post-war Iraq plan that included clear goals and an exit strategy, could it be that our troops would be home in their barracks and Iraq could be a safe, stable, and free beacon of hope that the Administration's NeoCon leadership envisioned? Unfortunately, we'll never know. It’s likely the military will examine the mistakes made and lessons learned by incorporating them into current military doctrine and teaching it to next generation of military leaders. If we were only so lucky on the civilian political side. As George Santayana put it: "Those who ignore the lessons of history are destined to repeat them." One can only hope American political leaders learn from Iraq.
Sources
1 United Nations Development Program, Iraq Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation. Iraq 2004 Living Conditions Survey, Vol 1: Tabulation Report. New York: UNDP, 2005.
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Shinseki#_note-Schmitt2003 (rejection of General Shisinki’s several hundred thousand troops)
3 http://www.defenselink.mil/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=134 Wolfwitz' response to Shinseki
4 http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_09_03-2006_09_09.shtml#1157727623 and http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009469.php (Rumsfeld and Phase IV)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24891-2004Dec24?language=printer (Phase IV)
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009469.php (Phase IV)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_Provisional_Authority (CPA)
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/teachers/lessonplans/iraq/powelldoctrine_short.html (Powel Doctrine)
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/cheneymeetthepress.htm (Dick Cheney quote) Also, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10272-2004Sep9.html
