March 21, 2006
NALPAK DERF (via Pepys):
If Only …: The lessons of our Iraqi bungles. (Fred Kaplan, March 20, 2006, Slate)
A question worth mulling, on this third anniversary of the war that President Bush told us was over and won two years and 10 months ago, is this: Were the fiascos inevitable—built-in products of the nature of the war itself—or could they have been avoided, or at least might their impact have been minimized, if President Bush and his top advisers had made smarter decisions?This isn't the stuff of parlor games; it's a vital question. If the disasters were inescapable, then we shouldn't get involved ever again in this sort of war. If they were preventable, then maybe these broader issues of war and peace can't be settled by this particular conflict, but we can draw the lesson that we should elect less dogmatic leaders; and the officers and advisers who counseled against those decisions, who turned out to be right all along, can draw the lesson that they should speak out more boldly, perhaps even resign in protest, if they find themselves mired in such catastrophes again.
So, let us review the key strategic bungles of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the pivotal moments in this anguishing chronicle—not the decisions that seem mistaken only in hindsight (a too-easy enterprise), but those that some senior officials saw and warned about as mistaken at the time.
It'll surprise no one that Mr. Kaplan flags all the wrong things as mistakes, which is not to say we didn't make several. Here is a better list of things we should have done differently:
(1) We should have helped the Shi'ites overthrow Saddam in '91. Not only was rule by Saddam antithetical to every American ideal, but having encouraged the rising we bore moral responsibility for it. Because we instead helped him to put down the rebellion and then imposed and maintained sanctions for over ten years it was unrealistic to expect the Shi'ites to be particulalry enthusiastic about our return in '03. we earned their distrust, perhaps even enmity.
(2) We should have recognized Kurdistan as a sovereign state after peeling it off from Iraq in '91. Maintaining the fiction that it was still part of a greater Iraq served no one well. Helping the Kurds to create a viable democratic state would have served as important example of how benign our intentions in the Middle East really are.
(3) We should have had a transitional government up ande ready to accept a handover of sovereignty in Iraq before we began the regime change. This government would have needed Ayatollah Sistani's stamp of approval, but that wouldn't have been a problem, and would have had to be clearly designated as just a temporary authority until elections could be held.
(4) Whether there should have been less troops in the initial invasion or not--it seems likely there should have been--the ones that were sent should have been drawn down much quicker. Structuring the post-war period as an occupation treated the Shi'ite majority of the Iraqi people as the vanquished enemy rather than as Saddam's victims--like they were the Germans after WWII when they were much closer to being the Jews.
The revealing thing about this set of mistakes is that they all represent instances when we didn't act sufficiently in accord with our own liberationist theology, didn't trust the Iraqi people and their natural desire for democracy enough. The lessons they teach all have to do with our being more rigorous in applying the ideas that underlie the crusade for liberty as we move forward to take on other oppressive regimes in the future.
Dead on analysis, IMO.
One glaring error in Kaplan's logic is "If the disasters were inescapable, then we shouldn't get involved ever again in this sort of war."
Based upon what? A dangerous dictator deposed, and 25 million free people at the expense of 2375+ lives??!! If that was all it cost, where can we do it again?
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BTW, I still maintain that the reason we stayed "too long" and are still there is to draw in, and then kill, terrorists.
Posted by: Bruno at March 21, 2006 2:11 PMBruno:
If we did that to the Shi'ites then they ought to be blowing us up too--we'd deserve it.
Posted by: oj at March 21, 2006 2:17 PMThe administration deserves, with hindsight, some criticism for the "Mission Accomplished" hoopla, but the complete misunderstanding of what was actually going on reaches its apotheosis with Kaplan's (almost certainly knowing) misstatement that it was a declaration of victory.
The legal effect of a declaration that major combat operations are over is to transform a hostile invader into an occupying power. An occupying power is responsible for policing and succoring the population in a way that an invading power -- more or less busy killing the native population -- is not. The UN had been pressuring the US to declare major combat operations over and to assume the responsibilities of an occupying power. The US had been resisting, because of the ongoing unrest. The administration held out for as long as it could and obtained promises from "allies" and the UN that they would come into Iraq and share the administration of the country with us before declaring major combat operations to be completed.
The actual occupation was relatively short, beginning on May 1, 2003, with the declaration that major combat operations were over and ending on June 28, 2004, with the official handing over of sovereignty to the Iraqi people.
Posted by: David Cohen at March 21, 2006 2:27 PMOver a year late.
Posted by: oj at March 21, 2006 2:33 PMKaplan makes some decent points, but that's always easy in any war. I could rattle off just as many huge mistakes we made in Europe in World War II, but we still won. (Here's one: we didn't systematically bomb Germany's electrical generating system, thinking that it wasn't a good strategic target!) Wars are not won by the side that makes no mistakes, they're won by the side that makes the fewest important mistakes.
The "Mission Accomplished" hoopla always seemed like an unfair criticism to me. The banner was referencing the men and women on those ships, who did accomplish their mission. It didn't mean "The war on terror is won" or "All will be peachy in Iraq from now on."
Posted by: PapayaSF at March 21, 2006 3:34 PMBruno has it dead right - disasters are inescapable in wartime. It's part of the terrain when you fight other humans and when you depned on other humans to do their jobs. It doesn't mean that fighting is wrong.
Savo Island was a disaster, but it didn't make our victory over Japan any less complete.
I think Mr. Kaplan should first read some military history, and then - darn near inpossible I expect - humble himself. We aren't God Almighty and mistakes will be made, from war to street sweeping. Learn from it, accept that it will happen again (although you work to minimize it) and go on.
In other words GROW THE HECK UP, Mr. Kaplan!
Posted by: Mikey at March 21, 2006 3:39 PMAnybody who has ever accomplished anything knows there will be mistakes made along the way. If a project demands a thousand decisions and you make 95% of them correctly, you still made 50 wrong ones. All you can do is try to avoid mistakes on the big items.
Posted by: Rick T. at March 21, 2006 4:59 PMRick:
Your qualifier discounts the critics of the Administration to Left and far Right.
Posted by: oj at March 21, 2006 5:04 PMSeems to me Kaplan is right. I don't put his errors in the category of "How could we have known?" but into things that competent people should have considered even allowing for a fair amount of error. Yes, mistakes always happen in war, but these specific mistakes seemed fairly obvious even in advance.
If Clinton's intervention in the Balkans lead to the same consequences we have in Iraq, I don't think the "mistakes always happen in war" crowd would be so generous.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at March 21, 2006 7:07 PMChris: How is the Balkans not a quagmire? Anyway, I don't remember the right jumping all over Clinton for bombing the Chinese Embassy inadvertently.
Posted by: David Cohen at March 21, 2006 7:22 PMBiggest mistake: Not doing Syria in about June 2003 or so.
Posted by: b at March 21, 2006 7:36 PMChuris's point about Clinton being smart enough not to try occupying the Balkans is certainly valid.
Posted by: oj at March 21, 2006 7:39 PMOJ:
One of the reasons Bill Clinton did nothing with US ground forces was that he didn't have the moral authority to lead high-schoolers to the prom, much less the military into war.
As for Fred Kaplan, when he goes into the bathroom each day, he must think things aren't finished perfectly unless he wipes the toilet bowl himself after he has accomplished his biological mission. And cleaned the floor, the sink, the paper towel dispenser, the mirror......
Otherwise, if there's a hanging chad, it's obviously a catastrophe.
Posted by: jim hamlen at March 22, 2006 9:29 AM