April 7, 2005
SMART GUY, THAT PRINCE OF DARKNESS:
Four Broad Lessons from Iraq (Richard Perle, April 7, 2005, House Committee on Armed Forces)
First, it is essential that we are clear about, and carefully align, our political and military objectives. [...]In Iraq we succeeded in driving Saddam Hussein from office in three weeks. And while we were received in Iraq as liberators in the days following the collapse of Saddam's army and regime, we did not enjoy the benefit of a close collaboration with the indigenous opposition to his brutal, sadistic dictatorship.
This brings me to my second lesson: In aligning our political and military strategy, we should make sure we have the support of a significant segment of the local population. Even more, we should work with those whose interests parallel our own, taking them into our confidence and planning to operate in close collaboration with them. We did this in Afghanistan. But we did not do it in Iraq, despite the fact that we had a year to organize and prepare for hostilities that brought a hundred and thirty thousand Americans to a place they didn't know or understand. Even during the three weeks of fighting leading to the fall of the regime, we would have benefited from knowledge we did not have: the location of weapons caches, the importance and implications of looting, the nature and extent of the retreat--and potential reorganization--of elements of Saddam's regime, and the like.
More significantly, we were slow to recognize how central the Iraqis were to the post war stabilization of the situation on the ground. I believe we would have been wise to go into Iraq with several thousand Iraqis at our side. After all, the Congress, with the support of most and possibly all the members of this committee, approved the Iraq Liberation Act which authorized political, material and moral support for the Iraqi National Congress and other Iraqi opponents of Saddam's regime.
With thousands of Iraqis at our side, we might well have dealt more effectively with the turmoil and looting that followed the collapse of the regime and we might have jump started the transition to an emerging Iraqi democracy. But there was little support within the executive branch for implementing the Iraq Liberation Act, for taking the Iraqi opposition into our confidence, or for training Iraqis to fight alongside us. Central Command opposed serious, intelligent plans that could have provided thousands of Iraqi troops to help us evaluate the situation on the ground, interpret information about who was trustworthy, where hostile forces and weapons were hidden, otherwise to supply much needed intelligence. The State Department and the CIA actively opposed working with the Iraqi opposition with the result that very little of the material support voted by Congress before the war was actually spent. By the time those favoring a much closer collaboration between U.S. and Iraqi opposition forces got agreement to begin training some Iraqis, for example, we were on the verge of war. Sadly, as we went to war only a handful of Iraqis had graduated from a much delayed training program that had vastly more potential than we were able to realize.
The third lesson is, by now, generally accepted: our intelligence is sometimes, dangerously inadequate. [...]
Finally, Mr. Chairman, a fourth lesson: we must do everything possible to avoid becoming an occupying power. The occupation of Iraq did much to vitiate the good will we earned--and deserved--as brave Americans risked, and in all too many cases sacrificed, their lives to liberate Iraq. We should have turned Iraq over to the Iraqis on the day Baghdad fell--or as soon thereafter as possible. I believe it could have been done in a few weeks, not the many months, stretching to years, that led inexorably to the insurgency that has caused so much death and destruction. A quick hand over would have given Iraqis an immediate stake in the establishment of order and a civil society.
It took far to long for the Administration to realize the Shi'a shared our objectives. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 7, 2005 4:16 PM
"I believe we would have been wise to go into Iraq with several thousand Iraqis at our side"
Well, duh. But was that possible. Where were these trained troops, who would be willing to risk their lives in combat, supposed to come from exactly?
Posted by: h-man at April 7, 2005 4:55 PMOnce again the rank and file at State and CIA demonstrated conclusively that they are far more interested in feathering their own nests, whether by taking cushy jobs on the Saudi payroll or by smuggling drugs or Nazis into the US, than in the common defense of the nation. All Americans would be infinitely better off if we closed CIA in its entirety, bulldozed its HQ at Langley, and plowed it with salt followed by firing everyone at State down to custodial staff and replacing them with Americans randomly selected by SSN. The last six decades of American history have been a panoply of ineptitude and criminality on the part of both organizations demonstrating their utter worthlessness. If any large financial institution were run like CIA or State, there would be indictments and a lot of executives would be facing significant jail time. We need a foreign service, and it would be nice if we had one. There is no need for a Central Intelligence Agency in the modern world other than perhaps in a James Bond movie. It does nothing DIA cannot. And it insults the literate to say that what goes on at Langley has anything remotely to do with 'intelligence.'
Posted by: bart at April 7, 2005 5:01 PMPrince of obviousness, perhaps. (All those post-hoc geniuses.)
Though it's far from clear to me that, given the seeming objectives and assumptions of the Bush administration, that such goals could even have been contemplated let alone implemented.
The administration got the big thing right. They may have made some mistakes in the smaller things---and such errors, though they did accumulate, were also magnified beyond all proportion by those whose interest it was to malign the administration. (Not to mention, the learning along the way.)
But I am not convinced, though we would all like things to be as "perfect" (and as short: 25 minutes with time for ads) as possible, that there could have been any alternative.
Expect for not going in at all---the alternative most preferred by most of the bright lights stacked up against the war.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at April 8, 2005 3:08 AMFurther to Barry's thought. The whole thing (the Iraq Campaign of the GWoT) is turning out to be brilliantly conceived and executed. The worst thing about it was the way the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism in the MSM tried to subvert it with their Instant Analysis and Queroulous Commentary.
In the history books it will look fast. In fact it is fast. Only the Democrats tried to make it look slow.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at April 8, 2005 3:24 PM