Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Iraq War: Documenting the wreckage

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

Here are several articles on the Iraq War, arranged in no special order.

What's Wrong in Iraq? or, Ruminations of a Pachyderm by John Waghelstein Military Review Jan-Feb 2006 (may load a bit slowly):

Most armies, when they lose a war, go back to the drawing board (for example, the Germans).  In contrast, regardless of the outcome of a war in which we have been involved, we have been institutionally preoccupied with “big war” and have shown habitual disdain for studying “little war” requirements such as restraint in campaigning, patience over the protracted nature of the contest, and the need to minimize rather than maximize the use of firepower in pursuit of limited goals. ...

In my 30 years of exposure to counterinsurgency, I have consistently encountered military leaders who believed that the proper warrior should study mainly for the next conventional war; they viewed all other kinds of military engagements as mere side events.  I believe this view persists even though the U.S. Army has fought the majority of its wars against irregulars, guerrillas, partisans, insurrectos, Native Americans, and other unconventional foes. Nor is this historical obliviousness new.  Beginning with General George Washington, who had a notorious disdain for irregular forces and partisan operations, the institutional Army has in the main tended to regard small wars as distractions from the main task of preparing to fight great conventional engagements.

True to this trend, when the Army came out of Vietnam - despite 12 years of continuous involvement (longerthan its involvement in World Wars I and II and the Korean conflict combined) - it nevertheless decided that studying all that recent unpleasantness was somehow not worth the effort, as if ignoring the experience of Vietnam would somehow inoculate it from having to get involved in such messy and complicated conflicts again. As a result, those of us who were called on to fight America’s small wars after Vietnam largely had to play it by ear, learning and relearning  lessons in a haphazard way without the benefit of either updated COIN doctrine or formal education from the Army’s school system. ...

But the entrenched view that countering insurgencies was a “silly distraction from what real armies did” persisted in the face of changing world circumstances.  Subsequent events further reinforced this predisposition, and Operation Desert Storm, of course, validated what has come to be known as “the American Way of War.” Professional journals, particularly of the airpower and Air-Land Battle variety, sang paeans to “the way of the future” and declared that “this is the way wars are supposed to be fought." ...

Meanwhile, current realities and even our relatively recent past should be sending up red star clusters about our education system. These wars are killing Soldiers and Marines, not to mention bushels of civilians, at a seemingly methodical pace, resulting in the same kind of visible erosion of public faith and political will we observed in Vietnam.  We have every reason to believe we will lose in Iraq unless we do everything we possibly can — and quickly — by applying lessons learned about winning small wars.  (my emphasis)

What Bush Isn't Addressing on Iraq by James Fallows Huffington Post 11/14/05:

On available evidence, the President himself has not grasped the essential criticism of moving against Iraq when he did: that a war in Iraq undercut the broader and longer term war against Islamic terrorism.

How Bush Created a Theocracy in Iraq by Juan Cole, Truthdig.org 12/02/05

The Bush administration naively believed that Iraq was a blank slate on which it could inscribe its vision for a remake of the Arab world.  Iraq,however, was a witches’ brew of dynamic socialand religious movements, a veritable pressure cooker. When George W. Bush invaded, he blew off the lid. ...

The weakness of the U.S. in Iraq encouraged the proliferation of party paramilitaries. The Dawa Party began having men patrol in some cities.  SCIRI expanded its Badr Corps militia, originally trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. These militias avoided conflict with the U.S. because their parties had a marriage of convenience with the Bush administration, and because they agreed not to carry heavy weaponry. It is alleged that the Supreme Council continues to receive substantial help from Iran, and that the clerics in Tehran still pay the salaries of some of the Badr Corps fighters. The likelihood is that the Iranians give at least a little money and support to a wide range of Shiite politicians in Iraq, including some secularists, so that whoever comes out on top is beholden to them. The mullahs in Iraq probably support the Supreme Council more warmly than any other political party, however. ...

The real winners of the January 2005 elections were the Shiite religious parties. This was bad news for Bush. In partnership with the Kurdish Alliance, they formed a government that brought Ibrahim Jaafari of Dawa to power as prime minister and gave Dawa and SCIRI several important posts in the executive. Sunni Arabs from the rival branch of Islam were largely excluded from the new government, insofar as they had either boycotted the election or had been unable to vote for security reasons. The new Jaafari government quickly established warm relations with Iran, receiving a pledge of $1 billion in aid, the use of Iranian port facilities and help with refining Iraqi petroleum.

Why the Media Gets the War Wrong by Michael Schwartz TomDispatch.com 03/28/06

The elimination of all protections for local commerce [in Iraq under the occupation] quickly threw the market wide open to large multinational marketing companies. This resulted in an immediate surge of sales to the Iraqi middle class of previously unobtainable goods like air conditioners, cell phones, and all manner of electronic devices. Though few remember this today, many American journalists reported the influx of such goods as an early sign of coming prosperity -- and of how successful an economy could begin to be once freedfrom the oppressive binds of state control and state ownership.

Economic aspects of peacekeeping in Iraq: what went wrong? by Bassam Yousif  The Economics of Peace and Security Journal Vol. 1, No. 2 (2006)

Coalition policies launched perhaps the most abrupt and sweeping liberalization of markets attempted anywhere, the goal being to improve the efficiency in the allocation of resources and to thus expand output and incomes. In the labor market, roughly half a million state employees (about 8 percent of the labor force) were fired, mostly as a result of the dissolution of the Iraqi army but also through “de-Ba’athification.”  Workers retained in the public sector nonetheless received large salary increases, six-fold on average.  The CPA also carried out reforms in currency, foreign trade, taxation, and capital markets: a new currency was introduced, import tariffs were slashed, corporate tax rates were reduced, and, to encourage outside investment, foreign companies were allowed to acquire Iraqi assets (except in the oil sector) and to repatriate profits.  The CPA also planned to privatize state-owned enterprises, a plan blocked by the 1949 Geneva Convention that prevents occupying powers from disposing of assets they do not own. Unable to privatize, the CPA froze the bank accounts and subsidies of public firms, thereby denying them working capital. Finally, despite United Nations advice to the contrary, the CPA ended agricultural subsidies. ...

In the context of Iraq’s weak ability to absorb investments, CPA measures were put into action. Some of the reforms, especially the currency reforms and debt relief, were praiseworthy. But the central aim of the measures – to induce capital and labor to flow to high-return activities – remains illusive. The promotion of employment and capital formation has run aground. ...

Reconstruction activities have absorbed an insufficient amount of the idle labor because, in general, they have utilized capital-intensive techniques. Construction activities are typically characterized by substantial opportunities to substitute labor for capital.  But plentiful Iraqi labor has been under-utilized in reconstruction, as U.S. firms (mainly in charge of reconstruction) do not face Iraqi relative factor prices. The cost of hiring Iraqis is relatively high because they are considered to be a security risk.  Consequently, it makes little sense for U.S. contractors to hire local labor. ...

Along with joblessness and insecurity, there has been a decline in the goods-producing sectors of the economy and evidence of deterioration in human development outcomes. Investment difficulties have delayed the restoration of basic services. The January 2006 level of electricity generation was 15 percent lower than the pre-invasion level. In Baghdad, electricity output from January to April 2005 was two-fifths of its pre-occupation level.  Energy-intensive manufacturing activities are consequently at a standstill, while competition from international food producers has resulted in a decline in domestic agricultural output.  The lack of electricity also resulted in diminished access to safe water and to a rise in water-borne disease and child malnutrition which, according to Iraqi government and United Nations studies, almost doubled between March 2003 and November 2004 – this despite the removal of economic sanctions. Mortality rates increased during the invasion period of March/April 2003 and, as of late 2004, had not receded. Deaths have occurred as a result of violence, frequently from coalition military action and also from crime. ...

A reorientation of reconstruction expenditure away from large, capital-intensive infrastructure projects, whose benefits have a long maturation period, to smaller projects, whose positive effects are more immediate, and from central government to local authorities is also advised. Some expenditure on such large projects, such as electricity generation, is of course essential.45 Where possible, however, preference should be shown to smaller projects, such as minor repair of buildings, roads, and sewage systems. Not only are these activities typically labor-intensive, they are also often associated with a high social rate of return. ...

It is often casually assumed that private ownership yields socially more efficient outcomes than public ownership. Yet even a modest review of the evidence suggests that privatization does not always promote efficiency and is sometimes harmful.

This paper is a reminder that we should be careful about getting too caught up in the "mistakes" and "misjudgments", although there were plenty of them in the Iraq War:  Revisions in Need of Revising:  What Went Wrong in the Iraq War by David Hendrickson and Robert Tucker (US Army Strategic Studies Institute) Dec 2005.  They remind us that the mission itself of taking over Iraq and remaking it in the neoconservatives' mold of what a Middle Eastern country should be was likely impossible.  They write:

Plans for “Phase 4” operations, which were given little attention before the war, failed to anticipate the most serious problems facing U.S. forces after the fall of Baghdad—persistent anarchy and the emergence of a raging insurgency. This was a mistake, as critics point out, but it is very doubtful that U.S. forces could have gotten a handle on the problem even had these contingencies received the planning they deserved.

A war plan keyed to the problem of postwar disorder would have inevitably confronted a substantial gap in time between the disintegration of the state and the arrival of forces of sufficient size to establish order.  A different plan in all probability could have prevented the worst consequences of the looting, such as the destruction of irreplaceable cultural sites and important government ministries, but the larger consequence of widespread anarchy probably was unavoidable.

It was clearly a mistake to misperceive the size and motives of the insurgency, but it is not so clear that there was a solution to the problem once its scale had been fully appreciated.  Most armed opposition was created by the invasion itself and would likely have arisen even had U.S. forces employed milder tactics or employed a different political strategy.

It is very doubtful that the reconstitution of the Iraqi army could have stemmed the immense disorder of occupied Iraq. At best, there are unanswered questions regarding who might have officered the force, the functions it would have performed, and its political orientation and reliability.  Though U.S. forces did not give the training of Iraqi forces the attention it deserved in the first year of occupation, the limited results were due, also, to the artificial character of the national forces the United States sought to build.

Criticisms of the political course followed by the United States—the creation and administration of the Coalition Provisional Authority, persecution of the Baathists, distrust of the Shia (through cancellation of local elections) - all have merit. At the same time, the more fundamental truth is that the United States had thrust itself into the middle of a bitterly divided society, and there was no apparent way to split the difference between groups whose aims were irreconcilable.  (my emphasis)

An Army Under Stress: A Tale of Two Green Lines by Sandra Erwin National Defense Magazine April 2006:

To its credit, the Army has, in a relatively short four years, begun to come to grips with the ugliness and the indignities of fighting in cities - after many of its top leaders acknowledged that their forces had not been trained or equipped for counterinsurgency guerilla warfare before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. ...

But serious questions remain about how long this can last.  Or whether the unpopularity of the war eventually will make it politically too costly for the administration and Congress to continue to pour the enormous sums of money required not just to keep the troops there but also to pay for the expanded array of financial incentives now needed to retain and recruit soldiers and Marines.

The nation has to fear that the Army eventually will break, says former Defense Secretary William J. Perry.  “We believe that the Bush administration has broken faith with the American soldier and Marine - by failing to plan adequately for post-conflict operations in Iraq, by failing to send enough forces to accomplish that mission at an acceptable level of risk, and by failing to adequately equip and protect the young Americans they sent into harm’s way,” Perry writes in a study he co-authored with other former government officials and military experts.

These failures have created a real risk of ‘breaking the force,’” Perry concludes. ...

The fiery animosity that pervades this debate brings to mind those pre-9/11 spats between the administration and Congress about the Army being “overcommitted” in peacekeeping missions around the world.  For the Army, it brings truth to the notion that reality is a question of perspective. [?!?]  Things actually could get worse, as evidenced by the chaos in Iraq, the prospect of a standoff with Iran and the repeated warnings by administration officials that we are in a “long war” with no end in sight.

Even if U.S. troops leave Iraq next year, the Army hardly will be out of the woods.  The “long war” - a euphemism for manpower-intensive guerilla warfare - will demand that the Army continue to support grueling rotations.

Next year, the Army expects to unveil a new troop-scheduling system known as the “Army force generation model.”  The idea is to develop predictable rotation schedules so that active-duty units only will deploy one year out of three, and Reserve and Guard only one year out of six.  That sounds like welcome relief to soldiers who already have been to Iraq three times in four years.  But it may not be enough, despite the Army’s highly optimistic forecasts.  (my emphasis)

Rice with Indefensible Brief; Cheney in Last Throes by Ray McGovern, Truthout.org 12/09/05:

Vice President Dick Cheney, whose unbridled chutzpah has led him to take public and well as private credit for being the intellectual author of US policy on torture, has become such a glaring liability that his tenure may be short-lived. There is a growing possibility that the vice president will resign at the turn of the year "for reasons of health," and that his partner-in-crime - in what Colin Powell's former chief of staff at the State Department, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, has labeled the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" - will choose to retire to his home in Taos early next year.

Never in the sixty years since World War II has an American secretary of state been received with such hostility by our erstwhile friends in Europe. In one sense, it can be seen as poetic justice that Rice, who as national security adviser to the president never heard a Cheney suggestion she didn't like, is taking the heat, while the vice president hides behind her skirts. Poetic justice for Cheney himself, though, may be just around the corner.

It is no secret that Cheney bears primary responsibility for making our country a pariah among nations by punching a gaping hole in the (until now) absolute ban on torture under international and US law. Under international treaties, including treaties ratified by the US Senate and thus the supreme law of the land, civilized societies have long since prohibited practices widely recognized as torture. No matter. At the instigation of the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal, the inherent human right to physical integrity and personal dignity has become an early casualty of the US "war on terror."

"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05

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