October 21, 2004
CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED:
Debate Lingering on Decision to Dissolve the Iraqi Military: The U.S.-led occupation authority's disbanding of the Iraqi Army over a year ago casts a shadow over the occupation. (MICHAEL R. GORDON, 10/21/04, NY Times)
When Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus flew to Baghdad on June 14, 2003, he had a blunt message for the American-led occupation authority. As the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, General Petraeus had been working tirelessly to win the support of Iraqis in Mosul and the neighboring provinces in northern Iraq.But the authority's decree to abolish the Iraqi Army and to forgo paying 350,000 soldiers had jolted much of Iraq. Riots had broken out in cities. Just the day before, 16 of General Petraeus's soldiers had been wounded trying to put down a violent demonstration.
Arriving at the huge Abu Ghraib North Palace for a ceremony, General Petraeus spied Walter B. Slocombe, an adviser to L. Paul Bremer III, who headed the authority. Sidling up to him, General Petraeus said that the decision to leave the soldiers without a livelihood had put American lives at risk.
More than a year later, Mr. Bremer's disbanding of the Iraqi Army still casts a shadow over the occupation of Iraq. The American military had been counting on using Iraqi soldiers to help rebuild the country and impose order along its borders. Instead, as a violent insurgency convulsed the nation, United States forces found themselves deprived of a way to put an Iraqi face on the occupation.
While Mr. Bremer soon reversed himself on paying salaries to the ex-soldiers, his decision to formally dissolve the Iraqi military and methodically build a new one, battalion by battalion, still ranks as one of the most contentious issues of the post-war.
Given the controversy and recriminations that still echo from Operation Paperclip, it seems unrealistic to argue that, as a purely political matter, it would have been possible to rely on the Ba'athist state structures. Regardless of whether the transition would have been a bit smoother on the ground in Iraq the hysteria in the U.S. would have been even more cacophonous than it is now. Combine that political consideration with the moral discomfort that would be caused by relying on Ba'athists and the point seems moot.
However, the aftermath of the war in Iraq provides an opportunity to rethink what appear to be some mistaken assumptions about what form our occupations should take as we go forward. Unlike WWII, where the Nazi and Imperial Japanese regimes were genuinely popular, Saddam appears to have been exactly as unpopular as we'd thought he must be. This means that we should have handed over sovereignty to Iraqis far quicker than we did, because they (like the Afghans) were eager to make a break with the past and because they viewed themselves as having been oppressed by Saddam could justifiably see us as oppressors too when we replaced his rule with ours. The import of this lesson is obvious: if we do effect regime change in a Syria or an Iran we should move speedily to restore legitimate popular government.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 21, 2004 9:51 AMIn an most places, especially in despotisms, military officers are political appointees. When Carter was elected, a Filipino officer I was talking to said to me, "Too bad. What kind of work are you going to do now?"
No. De-Baathification necessitated demobilization. The problem, if you want to call it a problem, is that we didn't pound the stake in far enough to kill the vampire. Remember that there was no "insurgency" problem in Dresden. All in all, the whole thing has gone rather well--about as well as could have been expected under any circumstances. We must keep in mind that "Iraq" was not even a geographical expression. It was just a sort of Eastern Yugoslavia, cobbled together by outsiders to keep a lid on things and to balance power for their own purposes.
Posted by: Lou Gots at October 21, 2004 10:18 AMPeople keep repeating that we should have kept the Iraqi army intact, as if it is some known and uncontested truth. Actually we did not (and probably could not) do so for some very good reasons, which Walter Slocombe, the CPA military chief, explained here.
If they think the decision was wrong, they should first explain why the reasons given for it were incorrect...
One fact in Slocombe's piece: US Army has 500 generals. Iraqi Army (same size) had 12,000 generals... and 15,000 colonels.
Posted by: John Weidner at October 21, 2004 11:19 AMThe easiest ex post facto fallacy to make is comparing the consequences of a course taken against the benefits of the course foregone.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at October 21, 2004 12:11 PMJeff:
thanks for putting in one simple sentence a thought that has occurred to many of us many times in the last 18 months ..
I would also ask : 'by what historical standard would we consider the Iraq war a "disaster"? ..
if it is one, then what word would the Germans use to describe WWII?'
John:
Every military officer I know says an armed force is useless without officers (discipline, etc.). Given that the Iraqi officer corps was Baathist, I always felt that leaving the Iraqi army intact was an invitation to the rise of a general-dictator of Baathist (Sunni) persuasion after we turned over sovereignty. Yet I still await the critics of disbanding the army to address this point.
Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at October 21, 2004 1:42 PMIf'd we had enough infantry, it wouldn't have been an issue.
If there wasn't an insurgency in Dresden, one reason could have been that there were an awful lot of foreign troops on the street.
It seems pretty clear now that there was a brief period after the conquest in which the Iraqis were uncertain what to do.
If there'd been intimidating force, there doubts would have been resolved on the side of quiescence.
Whether a peaceful self-government could have been evolved out of that is a question.
I don't think so, but as experiments go, it would have been cheaper than the pointless exercise we're sponsoring now
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 21, 2004 2:26 PMSelf government did evolve out of it.
Posted by: oj at October 21, 2004 2:41 PMHarry, a major reason there was no insurgency in Dresden is that we pounded the place flat, which was Lou's point. (And which, perhaps not coincidentally, seems to be the current popular Iraqi opinion as to how we should handle Fallujah.) If the winners are relatively heedless of collateral damage, the losers are damn sure they've lost, and tend to accept the new reality. When the losing side isn't entirely convinced they lost, or thinks they lost through trickery, there are more likely to negative consequences later (e.g. Germany after WWI).
For better or for worse, we are trying to win this war in a "sensitive," be-careful-of-the-civilians way. (Kerry's statement about how he'd fight a "more sensitive" war is ridiculous partly because anyone with a lick of sense and a slight knowledge of history can tell we are already bending over backwards to fight this war very, very carefully.)
Posted by: PapayaSF at October 21, 2004 3:58 PMIf the 4th Div. had been allowed entry from Turkey, as originally planned, Fallujah wouldn't be an issue today nor would the decision to disband the military. Shooting the looters right off the bat might also have helped.
Those saying this has been a disaster publically are just playing politics.
Bless our military. This has not been easy on them. If we've learned anything, active force enlargement is necessary and is currently in process. But as in every conflict, that lesson will eventually be forgotten.
Posted by: Genecis at October 21, 2004 6:03 PM