Iraq War: New Assessments from Anthony Cordesman

"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.

I just posted at The Blue Voice about a new paper by Anthony Cordesman, The Middle East Crisis: Six “Long Wars” and Counting 08/04/06.  I won't repeat my excerpts and comments on that one here.
But he has two other new papers out: Winning the Battle of Baghdad: The Challenges US Forces and the Iraqi Government Must Meet 08/07/06 and American Strategic and Tactical Failures in Iraq: An Update 08/08/06.  All three are from the Center for Security and International Studies (CSIS) .

In the first, he writes:

So far, nearly every time the US has claimed that local attitudes have shifted outside Baghdad, it has gotten it wrong. The insurgents have always had more enduring support, influence, control, and reinfiltration capability than the US estimated. This may be less true in Baghdad than the "Sunni West," but there is only one way to know: The hard way.

Cordesman is not normally given to a lot of emphatic statements.  But he puts the following all in italics:

It is almost impossible to see how US and US-led forces can score lasting victory by virtually any definition unless the tactical advances and local improvements they make in security are supported by believable progress in reconciliation, credible government services and presence, and better employment and economic hope.

And he points to the limited resources in comparison to the problems faced:

Both the insurgents and militias  - particularly Sadr - can act out all over the country. They can also exploit virtually every area with a reduced US troop presence. For all of the talk about defeating Al Qa'ida and Sunnis turning towards the government, the fact seems to be there is no threat area where the US or Iraqi government can safely reduce its presence. There also are no indications that the Sunni insurgency as a whole is weaker today. It is simply more sectarian, more oriented towards internal conflict, and less directed at the US and MNF forces.

In the "American Strategic and Tactical Failures in Iraq", he writes:

If there is a continuing failure in US strategy, it is a narrow US focus on winning the long war [aka, the "global war on terror"] through the moral and political superiority of democracy and Western values, rather than accepting the understanding that other nations and other cultures will evolve at their own pace and in their own ways.  The US operates in a world with many failed and dangerous regimes, but in many cases it must deal with the immediate threat of terrorism before it can hope for political reform. Its primary ideological challenge is religion in nations where religion is more important than politics, and which at best see the US as an outsider, and sometimes as a “crusader,” invader, or imperial power. Only Islam, and regional governments and clergy, can defeat Islamic extremism in many such cases.

Democracy is a political system, not an end-goal. Many societies have a higher priority for economic reform, dealing with demographic issues, and providing basic security for their ordinary citizens. More representative governments are needed, but productive democratic change requires social and economic stability, effective political parties, human rights and the rule of law.  The US should have learned more from its experience in Iraq.  The idea of a deeply divided and politically primitive Iraq would become an instant shining example that would transform the Middle East always bordered on the theater of the absurd.  The US still, however, tends to act as if elections alone could resolve hard fought political battles over nation building, trigger economic reform, and bring a modern social order.  This simply cannot happen.  Atbest, Iraq will transform slowly and uncertainly over time.  (my emphasis)

After discussing some of the larger issues in the most recent Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) - yes, I know it sounds like a snoozer, but of such material disasters like the Iraq War are made - he writes:

The seriousness of these problems was not apparent as long as the US could fight short, selected, conventional wars on its own terms like the Gulf War.  It could back away from asymmetric conflicts in areas with little strategic value like Lebanon, Somalia, and Haiti.  It also could limit the level of its stability, peacemaking, and nation building operations in crises like the Balkans and humanitarian interventions and rely on other powers in cases like Cambodia and East Timor.  The mismatch between US strategy and forces also was not apparent during the initial conventional phases of the Afghan and Iraq wars. They became far more serious, however, the moment the US needed to fight a long, sustained, manpower-intensive conflict where it could not exploit its technological advantages in conventional warfare.

The Iraq War and Afghan Wars may have been optional at the start, but once the US became deeply involved in them, they because wars that the US had to fight, rather than wars that it wanted or had planned to fight.  When this happened, the limits to US strategy and force planning became all too clear.  It also quickly became clear that the US lacked suitable ability to fight counterinsurgency warfare, had a force posture that lacked sufficient capability to sustain long deployments, and had put too much emphasis on technology over personnel and sustainability.  (my emphasis in bold)

Both of these two papers I've quoted here are updates of earlier papers; the one of the "Battle of Baghdad" has been more extensively revised.

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