Agreed, but you are asssuming that the current outcome in Iraq was not intended by the PNACers - the "stir the beehive" theory. Not as good an outcome as a semi-dictatorial US-friendly regime and 7 large permanant US bases, but (given that the best possible outcome was never very likely) not unacceptable from their point of view.

sPh

Whoa. Wait a minute. Are you committing the standard Republican sin of confusing NATO action with American action?

The Balkans were a NATO-led intervention in the NATO sphere of influence. Working with the other members of NATO, the US acted in a modest and limited way to stop a genocide.

How is this similar to Iraq?

I guess the question this raises in my mind is this: how should we, in future, recognize a situation in which a U.S. invasion is warranted -- that is to say: justified and likely to succeed? I agree with DanK's comment on Todd's thread, that the weird and anomalous nature of the Bush administration doesn't give us anything to use as a guideline for future decisions. Maybe part of it is assigning enough resources to prosecute the war, but that ignores the situation of the war itself. Maybe part of it involves limited goals (such as stopping the genocide in the Balkans).

I would argue that the US has, under Bush especially but not uniquely in the post WWII period (see Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, Vietnam), backed itself into such a corner that any future US military adventure will be viewed by suspicion by the rest of the world. And that fact alone will make any such future military adventure more likely to fail. The single best thing we could do, paradoxically, to make our next military adventure succeed, is to refrain from embarking on it. Make it clear to the world that sometimes the US does not act the international bully.

Maybe the neocons were just stirring the beehive, as you suggest. Here is an analogy which fits that thought and comes, ironically enough, from the Texas oilfields.

A scam artist buys an oil lease cheap because there is little chance of finding oil. He then sells one tenth of the procceds to naïve investers for a million dollars to raise drilling capital. He can do this because his sales pitch is full of lies, false promises, exaggerations,and half truths. He then spends a hundred thousand drilling a dry hole, after which he says sorry folks and pockets nine hundred thousand.

The other possibility is that the drilling actually hits oil. In that case the scammer gets ninety percent of the profits. Either way, the liar comes out ahead. Either way, the investers are cheated. Either way, the game goes on.

a situation in which a U.S. invasion is warranted

"Invasion"? Or "intervention"? For the former:

1. To liberate a country which has been occupied in a war of aggression. (France, 1944; Kuwait, 1991.)
2. To halt genocide in progress. (We've never really done this; Germany 1945 was a coincidence. Maybe, you could make a case for Kosovo - but we didn't invade it, we merely threatened to.)
3. To defend victim states against aggressor states by invading the aggressor state. (Italy, 1943.)
4. To pre-empt an immediate and certain threat of attack. (Hasn't happened yet.)
5. To unseat a government that has attacked us, or which shelters forces that have attacked us. (Afghanistan.)

Those are the only excuses I can think of for "invasions". For "interventions" in conflicts that somebody else has started, the possibilities are a lot broader. But really, none of this is terribly revolutionary stuff. What Bush did in Iraq is so radical that simply saying "No more of that shit!" goes a long way towards drawing all the necessary conclusions.

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

Two words:

Powell Doctrine.

The Iraq occupation violated all the rules. There was no clear objective. There was no clear exit condition or exit strategy. And overwhelming force was not brought to bear.

What the Powell doctrine does is limit the scope of offensive action to either police actions like Grenada that US can really do unilaterally or to larger operations, like the first Gulf War, where international coalitions are necessary to provide the necessary military resources to reach the level of overwhelming force. Such coalitions cannot be formed around fantastical threats or operations that benefit only the United States.

The plain fact of the matter is that there was no reason to go to war. There were justifications and rationalizations, but no reason whatsoever.

We are looking for reasoning and reasons that just are not there and never were there. Why we have so much trouble understanding this, is because it defies human comprehension and logic. We want to believe that there is some purpose and meaning in this human misery and suffering, that somehow, if they had done something differently, tried harder, had better policy and a better plan, that this suffering would in the end, be for some greater good, that the misery of the few would result in the happiness and liberty of the many. We simply cannot comprehend that these people inflicted this suffering because they could.

There is no reason, no deep meaning, no purpose, just a need to strike out and beat up on others, to avenge our own humiliation and frustration - and to the everlasting shame of the American people we allowed it happen. We're all complicit in this.

Depends on How You Interpret Success

As far as Halliburton, Blackwater and others are concerned the war is an astonishing success. So what if a few hundred thousand people die? Gotta break eggs to make an omelet! Can't let that slow down your profit margins you bunch of whiners. [/satire] Now I feel slimy.

Yeah, these recycled crooks from previous corrupt administrations are all loony and should have been in prison instead of the White House but that's what you get with presidential pardons and such, the law unenforced comes back to bite you.

Josh is right with his use of the phrase "original sin." The invasion of Iraq had a clear, but unstated endgame: the development of a permanent, colonial-style U.S. military and economic presence in the heart of the Persian Gulf with the window dressing of a nominal, native puppet government. One might call the original sin the yearning for the re-institution of 19th century colonialism in the 21st century, with Halliburton and Bechtel being the Dutch East India Tea Company. The political intrigue in Siam (Thailand) illustrated in "The King and I" comes quickly to mind. In this context, the stated reasons for the invasion become the obvious fig leaf necessary to disguise the actual goals and motives. The present quagmire is the object evidence that such a 19th century colonialist vision was anachronistic and deluded from the start.

The people who brought us the war are not nuts. The Iraq War is and always was about making money and not much else. The f**king little weasel, retired General Barry McCaffrey, was on television yesterday and while he wasn't so sure about sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq, he knew the US should be spending $5-10 billion annually on reconstruction. Gee, Barry, would you mind telling us where you have your money?

Remember reading about Richard Perle walking out of Defense Policy Board meetings to call Goldman Sachs?

I bet there are more generals who spend their time lining their pockets than there are generals worrying about winning the war. I've been looking at one tiny piece of DoD business, body armor, and it stinks. Anyone wonder what the hell we are going to do with more than $2 billion of body armor?

This war has been a disgusting display of greed and corruption. I am waiting for that "emperor has no clothes" moment when this country finally wakes up to the fact that our military is in the business of business.

... but it is crucial that those who were wrong realize this was a bad idea before it occured so that we have fewer people willing to accept government BS in the future. There are some who are avoiding admitting to themselves that this was a bad idea. Instead they claim the idea was not bad - it was the execution that was bad. Of course, all of this avoids the real issue. This was done, at least in part, to feed contracts to the military-industrial complex.

Tom

Speaking as someone who marched against the war...in November, before it even started, yes I think you have a point. The reaction was much different than the Afghanistan attack. Hardly anyone lifted a finger opposing that one.

Smoking the same hashish they give out.

I love Brooksfoes's I.F. Stone quote at 12:15: "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

One of the things I always puzzle over is whether war hawks, including the media, actually believe the crap that they feed to us. Stone was one of my heroes in the Vietnam era. I think he's right in this drug analogy. It makes sense to me that promoters of war become intoxicated in a sense by their own rationalizations and the excitement of war. We talk about "hysteria" during wartime. I think they at least half believe their justifications for war. They are "drunk with power". Their thinking is grossly impaired, as hash will do, by their emotions, especially fear, and greed. They would be offended to hear that they are actually motivated by the war profits that accrue to themselves and members of their class or by lust for power. So I'm thinking that many hawks actually believe at least some of their claims. Their cognitive impairment is in turn fertile ground for exploitation by the true psychopaths who don't believe in anything but their own short-term gain.

The war was intentional.

Poor implementation is not the only problem. Nor is "crazy" a full explanation. There is an even more disturbing interpretation. The crazy world view may just be glommed on to the real motivation for the war. As comments above have said, the war is profitable and even the current result is not necessarily a failure from the perspective of people who profit from it financially or those who simply crave power.

Oil is involved of course. I notice that we're not going to war to save the people of Darfur, which is not known to have oil reserves. And oil is money. Oil is power, which is money.

As a human being, this is hard to accept, but the fact is that some powerful people want war. They like it! Some rich people get richer from war. War potentially increases the power of the aggressors, and power in turn translates into more riches.

Kerry said it right during his campaign: you go to war because you have to, not because you want to.

And powerful people like more power for its own sake. It is also political power. To the astonishment of much of the world Bush was re-elected, and much of the basis for the re-election was the idea that you don't change commanders in the middle of a war. On a more personal level, it is clear that Bush loves being a "war President" and the exalted Commander in Chief.

There is also an element of primitive tribal pride involved. After 9/11 people sported "Proud to be American" bumper stickers. I wondered why they had to assert that they were proud to be American; was someone questioning their pride? I think the answer is that 9/11 was experienced as a humiliation, and people had to cope with that emotion, which translated into a primitive need to go kill some Arabs. It was also very frightening and led to a need to demonstrate our power and reassure ourselves that we are not really so vulnerable. The psychopaths in power in our government immediately saw a great opportunity to go to war, and they seized the opportunity - for their own reasons: money, power, ego.

Want to know how crazy they are?

They refused--still refuse--to accept the possibility of failure. Like Hitler refusing winter uniforms to his soldiers in Russia, they are pathologically unable to imagine that they could fail.

They were delusional. Still are.

Their imagined grandeur leads them to believe they will the world when, of course, the world will do as it will.

I think that pretty much sums up the "Lessons Learned" from Iraq II.

I don't see how. Can you describe the scenario?

Update:

This is a sincere question, Daniel. I don't want to impute scenarios to you. And I really don't see one that would have worked. Can you give us an outline?

Plan? What plan? I've been following this war from the get-go, and I've seen no evidence of a plan. So if you have any evidence whatsoever that there was, or is, a plan, please share it.

The commonality is that both were utopians as were the French Revolutionaries and the Nazis. Utopians come to believe that any means justifies their end. When an existing social order is in the way, that tends to have bad results.

The original plan as outlined to Rumsfeld in December 2001 called for 350,000 troops. Rumsfeld rejected it not because it the troops did not exist but because he wanted a fast war with very little concern for a post Saddem Iraq.

The 4th Infantry Division, was the unit that was to go through Turkey. When the Turks prevented the U.S. from going through their country the 4th Infantry spent much of the war on ships going around the Mediterranean.

General Wallace, and many of ther other commanders on the ground knew they had to deal with the Fedayeen before taking Baghdad. General Franks demeaned their fighting ability and demanded that the focus be on the taking of the Capital.

General McKiernan, the man in charge of the war, wanted to secure the borders, the weapons caches and limit the Iraqi violence. To that end he met with an Iraqi general and diplomat who was prepared to reconstitute the Iraqi army. It was all set when Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army.

The entire war was based on the theory that Iraqis would thrown down their weapons and side with the incoming Americans. All the rules of engagement were predicated on this belief. The CIA really was incompetent. Bridges were left standing, schools, mosques and hospitals all of which were used to hold weapons were left standing. The U.S. could have used its airforce in ways that were not used. However the goal was to leave a democratic Iraq intact.

It would have made a lot more sense to have finished Afghanistan and have allowed the weapons inspectors to have completed their job in Iraq. Then Saddem humiliated and the U.S. freed in Afghanistan could have removed Saddem. However, why don't you think it would have been possible?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

However, why don't you think it would have been possible?

For the same reason that order was brought to Japan and Germany after WWII. The U.S. still has troops in both countries and in South Korea.

The British and the French dismantled the Ottoman Empire and establish virtually all of the countries of the Middle East. The United States is far more powerful than post WWI Britain.

The Greeks under Alexander, the Romans, the Byzantine Empire, the Seljuk Turks, the Crusaders, the Mongols and Ottoman Turks all brought order to this region of the world. Why do you think the U.S. couldn't?

Daniel A. Greenbau

"20 years previous..." is not even close to correct.

Tom

Less? 

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada

Yes. Netanyahu was prime minister from 1996 to 1999. It was in that time frame that he rejected a PNAC proposal that Wolfowitz had dreamed up a few years earlier (at least as far as I remember what I've read).

Tom

Brooksfoe, that is an interesting attempt to put limits on war. But, it doesn't go far enough, in my opinion. War must always be the last resort - going to war has to be an open admission of abject failure at diplomacy.

First, lets not separate the act of invasion from warfare in general. Invasion is a tactic of war, not a separate act of war. The invasions that occurred during WWII were tactics. The war was a declared war, declared by Congress, and declared against us by Germany. After that, the tactics used were selected to achieve success in the war.

1. We should not be making the decision "to liberate a country that has been occupied in a war of aggression." If we want to liberate a country, the UN must be the one to make the decision that doing so is justified, and Congress must declare a war against that occupier. Then, an invasion becomes a possibly acceptable tactic.

2. To halt genocide in progress is a role for the UN. If the evidence for genocide is strong enough to justify a military intervention by America it is certainly strong enough to gain UN approval for action. Again, a declaration of war by Congress is essential, and an invasion becomes a possibly acceptable tactic.

3. To defend victim states from aggressor states might be justification for Congress to declare war against the aggressor state, but UN approval of military action must be obtained first. What we see as aggressor states may well be colored by our preconceived ideas.

4. To preempt a immediate and certain attack - there is no such beast, because certainty is in the eye of the beholder. Add the word "threat" as you did, and this is totally wrong. The world is full of threats, and always will be.

5. To unseat a government that has attacked us is reason to take defensive actions immediately, but going further than defensive actions must require a Congressional declaration of war. No UN approval required. A government which shelters forces that have attacked us - no, a thousand times no! That is an area for diplomacy only.

Hoppy in Sacramento

There is something borderline crazy about presenting as your "analysis":

The dudes who brought us this war are just nuts.

If Todd had wanted to write a serious critique of the liberal hawk mindset he could have singled out this passage from Weinberg:

Paul Bremer's early decisions to disband the Iraqi army and security forces and proceed with radical de-Baath-ification alienated the Sunnis and fueled the insurgency.

That's obviously true. If the Sunni minority had been left in power there would be no Sunni insurgency. Removing them from power was bound to "alienate" them.

For liberal hawks, Iraq should have been invaded with a policy of maintaining the traditional Sunni dominated social order suppressing the majority (improved by removing psycopaths including Sadaam).

This would have meant siding with the minority against a Shia and Kurdish insurgency. That would have been viewed by liberal hawks as a "successful" intervention.

No doubt it would have been cheaper and quicker, since a less psycopathic and better supervised traditional Sunni regime could have suppressed the Shia and Kurdish majority in the same way they did after the Kuwait War without the US getting its hands dirty.

But what would have been the point?

Perhaps it could be described as a "humanitarian" intervention since the suppression of the majority would have been more supervised than the bloodpath that would have resulted from the eventual collapse of the regime under sanctions when Sadaam eventually died and his psychopathic offspring took over.

Perhaps it could be described as "strategic" since the sanctions were falling apart and unleashing Iraq with Sadaam still in charge would have posed a major threat of another Gulf War as soon as Sadaam could build up his forces again (including WMDs).

But at the very best the result of an invasion that did not suppress the Baath and its armed forces could only have been another "moderate Arab ally" ie a less psychopathic tyranny like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Those happen to be the backward, stagnant swamps that are breeding jihadis who would like to attack the US with WMDs.

That is what Weisberg and any other liberal hawk who denounces the "mistake" of suppressing the Baathists and their armed forces instead of using them was advocating - an invasion to establish another "moderate Arab ally", another tyrannical swamp breeding jihadis.

There's no way to spin it. If you aren't going to "alienate" the Sunni minority, then you cannot have a democracy, liberal or otherwise. You have to be imposing a minority regime, but one openly based on foreign intervention.

This naked "liberal hawk" imperialism is simply delusional in today's world. Hence the outrage from "realists" who understood that the liberal hawks were delusional. They understood that it simply isn't feasible for the US to establish regimes of its choosing in the Arab world by just making up an excuse and invading. Not even in the US backyard of Latin America, let alone right across the world.

Whether their motives were "humanitarian" or "strategic", the liberal hawks were plainly deluded or delusional.

Buried among the ranting predictably unleashed from Todd's gallery I was fascinated to find this:

The bailing wire and sticking plaster "Iraq is a grave and growing danger" story was coming apart in March 2003. The inspectors were finding nothing. It was clear that Iraq was no threat. The US had 3 or 4 votes on the security council, including its own, for the invasion. The "ties" to al qaeda had been exposed as entirely false.

Taking the time to put together an occupying force of 450,000 and viable plans for reconstruction would have taken at least a year. An additional year would have meant that the inspectors would have proved their negative. Iraq would have been involved in no terrorist event and the fearmongering would have collapsed under the weight of facts on the ground.

The liberal hawks complicity comes in their joining the neocons in ignoring the evidence gathered from January to March of 2003, which was well on the way to proving that none of Cheney's pretexts were true, and that his stovepiped "intelligence" was wrong.

Without the complicity of the liberal hawks, there could well have been no war. But there could never have been a "successful" war.

Leaving aside the last paragraph, the rest strikes me as obviously true. It was also obvious to me at the time. The lies were so transparent that something like 10 million people were marching in protest worldwide just before the invasion and the US rushed in with inadequate preparation on a "now or never" basis.

Every liberal hawk who supported the war, like every "realist" who opposed it either knew the official rationale was a lie and that the US was rushing into the war with inadequate preparations because the lies were falling apart - or if they did not know it, they had to be deluded.

So liberal hawks who were not deluded are being totally hypocritical in denouncing the Government for rushing into the war they supported without adequate preparations.

Now pause a moment and internalize what's said in that quote. If you really accept it as a hard fact, then it follows that the entire "debate" leading up to the Iraq war in the US was delusional. Since the Government never attempted to present its real war aims and these were never debated its hardly surprising that people are still making up their own, with quite bizarre conspiracy theories, and when those theories don't make sense, all that's left is to say they were "just nuts".

Likewise the "debate" about incompetence and bungling following the invasion has been delusional. The "liberal hawks" offering that explanation for the problems were a party to rushing in unprepared, knowing that rushing in unprepared implies inevitable stuff ups. They knew at the time that delaying to prepare better was impossible and they supported "now" rather than "never".

But now you have a majority in Congress and have to take decisions about where to go from here. Saying "they" were "just nuts" doesn't cut it as a basis for decision making.

You still have to deal with the fact that the "moderate Arab allies" of the US are tyrannical swamps breeding jihadis. What is your long term policy for preventing more 9/11s if you agree with the "realists" that democracy is not the answer. Port security?

You still have to deal with the fact that Iraq now has an elected government representing its majority and that government is asking for US help to avoid ethnic cleansing and a regional war.

"Realists" are now finding themselves stuck with that. They would prefer if Sadaam had been left in power. But he isn't and the eggs cannot be unscrambled so they "realistically" now have to deal with the new regime just as they did with the old.

"Liberal hawks" are also stuck with it. Whatever combination of humanitarian and strategic arguments led them to support installing a replacement Sunni dominated regime before are far more pressing and convincing now when there is no such option available but there is an elected government representing the majority asking for help. There is obviously a potential humanitarian disaster from ethnic cleansing and civil war and a major strategic threat from that resulting in regional war.

So, isn't it about time you started dealing seriously with the actual situation rather than just comfortably agreeing with each other that the Bushies are "just nuts".

If you reject the unanimous view of the bipartisan Baker commission that prompt withdrawal would be a disaster you had better explain why.

If you have a better plan for dealing with the long term threat of jihadis breeding in the swamps than supporting the people of each country in the region choosing their own governments instead of living under stagnant tyrannies then you had better explain what that plan is.

Believing that democratic elections in any Arab country would result in liberal, pro-American parties winning was always "just nuts". Get over having been lied to about it and deal with the fact that you now have a democratically elected government dominated by strongly anti-American islamist parties which is asking for American troops to stay and help.

Saying no would be "just nuts".

My analysis of futility of this war would be a bit different.

Whether oil was the main reason, a main reason or a simple observation "we go there, so why not take control of oil as we are at it", the fact is the before the invasion our decision makers and their neo-con sidekicks talked about oil a lot.

There was an entire conference held in London in 2002 about the good ways of managing Iraqi oil. I recall reading about expert opinions that after investing mere 50 billion dollars, Iraqi production can be tripled, if not quadrupled --- reaching the level of Saudi Arabia. Pricing power of OPEC would be destroyed, oil would flow for 15 dollars per barrel once more (as it was in late 80s).

That gave Saudis, Iranians and Russians a powerful incentive to see us failing. What they could do about it? Russians could offer better grades of weapons to Iran than before. Iranians could foment Shia discontent through its numerous ties to the political elite of Iraqi Shia. their top clerics, militias etc. Saudis could tacitely and discretely support Sunni insurgency. Saudis and Iranians would clearly risk quite a bit if they pursue such policies to logical conclusion -- encourage insurgencies with agents, money and -- good rocket weapons. Our airplanes and helicopters would be shot down, our logistic chain would fray, and we would leash out against the supporters of insurgencies.

Thus we did not see much of external support for the insurgencies (there is a separate slow-moving Shia insurgency) --- we fucked up so much than any risky overt aid was unnecessary. Were we more succesful, insurgencies would be furnished with real aid. Mind you, Iranians and Saudis were facing bancruptcy, would our oil plans for Iraq succeded.

Conclusion: a competently run was would be in even more deep doo-doo than an incompetent one.

Another aspect is that domination in a country requires that a class of eager collaborators exists. Then you cobble together the military and security forces for the new government and pass the daily administration and 99% of the military operations to the locals. We had Chalabi etc., but they were unreliable individual rather than an eager class of people.

Pollack tells readers about his own surprise and momentary disbelief that he is actually endorsing the invasion-first policy he proposes, but says he cannot see another viable alternative. Democrats and others who oppose the course the Bush administration has taken would do well to sit down with this book's hard reasoning and wrestle with it. After reading it, it would be hard for any sensible person not to think to themselves, "There must be some other solution." But, like Pollack, you may be hard-pressed to find one.

Josh , Washington Monthly , Nov 2002

You're missing my point. I'm not saying that given a 400-500 thousand troop occupation force, competent leadership in Washington and 10 to 15 years of beneficient occupation would not have led to a stable state in Iraq. (I don't think that would have been a sure thing, but it might have worked.)

I am saying that Bush could not possibly have raised 400-500 thousand troops without a draft, that the Security Council had already rejected support for an invasion and that the US electorate would not have supported an occupation of the duration and expense that would have been necessary to establish a stable Iraqi state.

Moreover, even if Bush had found some way to raise the 400,000 troops he needed, by the time they were enlisted, equipped and trained, the inspectors would have completed their task, and demonstrated that Saddam represented no threat whatsoever to anybody.

American presidents, especially in the post WWII period, have operated on the old principle that "It is always easier to gain forgiveness than permission." Just get something started somewhere and "the troops" deployed. Then blackmail the Congress into funding the whole misadventure indefinitely for fear of having "troop-back-stabber!" invective hurled at them. The American people and their Congress will just "forgive" the president later after he, of course, "wins," which all presidents just assume that the monstrously bloated and mismanaged American military will always do. Except when it doesn't -- like IraqNam.

The Constitution contemplates Congressional "permission" to involve America in war on the assumption that Americans don't want to get involved in wars and so will rarely -- except in dire cases of actual and immediate threats to national survival -- give their "permission" for one. They cost too much money. They get too many people killed. They destroy too much property. No one can ever conrol them once they start. They almost always end up either accomplishing nothing or precisely the opposite of what the people who start them intend. As H. G. Wells said: "The first man to raise a fist is the one who has run out of ideas." The American people once knew all this. As President and Army General Dwight Eisenhower warned, however, the careful seeding of military-industrial jobs-programs (and their kick-back campaign contributions) all around the country has effectively nullified any Congressional appetite for not granting "permission" for war. End of Constitution as originally envisioned. Eisenhower saw Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism coming and they have indeed arrived with a vengeance. Now, however, there seems little that Americans even care to do about it -- so expect fascism to triumph and the American "empire" to go broke. These things have almost happened already.

The original plan as outlined to Rumsfeld in December 2001 called for 350,000 troops.

I forgot to ask a question about this.

Given that under normal, even shortened troop rotations the US seems to have an upper limit of about 160,000 troops. This implies, to me, anyway, that the original plan did not assume an extended occupation.

I've also read that there was serious distress on the part of the forces in Iraq when they realized that winning the war was not the end of their mission, which is consistent with a post-vietnam attitude among the military that they fight wars, and don't do nation-building.

Seems to me that the 375,000 troop plan assumed withdrawal from Iraq as soon as the mission, removing Saddam, was accomplished.

Suggest you copy that over to a Discussion table submission or reader blog.

Zinni's plan for the invasion and occupation of Iraq called for 500,000 troops. Gen. Creighton Abrams when the volutary force was created made sure that the Reserves and the National Guard would be called up for any significant miltary action. He wanted to make sure that post Vietnam every community would be involved in a war. It is my understanding that the U.S. has over 1 million people on active military duty.

I agree with you about Bush. I do not believe he could successfully invade Canada. It is still not clear to me if Bush just went along with the Cheney and Rumsfeld love for war fought by the Airforce and Navy with as few soldiers on the ground, or if he adopted this view too.

The Zinni Plan, of which the plan presented to Rumsfeld was a variant, presumed a need to stay to keep order. Rumsfeld and the neo-Cons, unlike the uniformed military, thought "shock and awe" would cause the Iraqis to capitulate and democracy would spring up as if by magic.

Why Rumsfeld grabbed the post Saddem Iraq portfolio from State when he had no interest in it is another wonder. However, the U.S. military expected either foreign forces including Iraqi exiles to assist after Saddem's fall or they were going to use the Iraqi military. It was Bremer with Rumsfeld approval that killed that plan. There is something odd when the uniform military is more concerned with bring democracy, order and stability than the civilians who decided to go to war.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

For my part, I fail to see a meaningful distinction between saying certain things were not done that might have made the occupation more successful and saying that the people who were making the decisions didn't have those things as part of their worldview. Whatever the reason, the things that might have made the whole enterprise more successful were not done. This says nothing about whether a different set of managers, employing different tactics, might have achieved better results.

For many people, the argument seems to be that an invasion and occupation of Iraq, with the purpose of turning it into a country ruled by law and not a threat to its neighbors or its citizens, was doomed from the start. That is, it could never have worked under any conceivable circumstances. But in order to argue that, you need to make the case why Iraq is different from other places where American intervention has succeeded. So far, I haven't read anything too compelling on that topic.

I think that would be a hard case to make. American occupation, after all, turned the country with the most evil government in human history into a model democracy. It turned a semi-feudal racist dictatorship into a pacifist economic superpower. Surely that was harder than what was required in Iraq.

I find the explanation that the neocons are just nuts unconvincing. I would argue that the key considerations in understanding what went wrong in Iraq are first, the cost of the intervention; second, GOP politics and third, Bush's leadership. Bush knew that the American people would not support a huge sacrifice in terms of higher taxes, a draft or other normal wartime policies. At the same time the "lean warfare" doctrine being championed by Rumsfeld made a light invasion force all the more logical in his mind. Combine that with Bush's notorious incuriosity, laziness, arrogance and general lack of self-confidence and you get a management fiasco. Bush didn't ask the right questions, let himself be swayed by folks like Rumsfeld who appeared the most confident, was being influenced by Rove's political calculations and most of all saw any course correction as an admission of failure.

It's almost the textbook definition of incompetence.

While you are correct in the overall military size, the situation, had Shinseki's recommendations been followed, would have been more complex. Troops are not interchangeable as to specialty.

Indeed, it has been a conscious US policy that those combat support and combat service support (as distinguished from combat) units required to support are principally in the US Army Reserve, requiring Congressional authorization for a callup.

The type of troops needed for an occupation, once the major fighting is over, are Civil Affairs, Military Police, and often Psychological Operations. When I last looked, the US Army has four reserve and one active Civil Affairs brigades, with some Iraq-specific capability in the Marines. I don't know the MP headcount offhand, but I would guess six or more brigades. Remember, MPs have other missions such as internal policing, running prisons, etc.

To give some standard of reference, the US Army Constabulary for the German occupation had a strength of 38,000, all highly trained for what realistically was a safer environment.

I'm not sure that even if the numbers had been authorized, there could have been enough trained personnel in time. Contractor augmentation, with all its liabilities, might have been needed to have any chance.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Nevertheless, 59 million Americans seemingly disagreed with you.

[Deleted duplicate post]

It's also worth noting Germany had actual, if flawed, experience with democracy. Weimar and what replaced it was an important lesson.

While I would hesitate to suggest Japan had anything recognizable as Western democracy, even when the militarists controlled the Cabinet, there was still a level of consensus building, in the elites, that did not exist under Saddam.

Italy had its own unique breed of organization.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

That's cause God speaks to them, too. He told them to vote for Bush then have six more kids.

Not meant in any way to disparage the writers above (seriously) ...

I just feel a huge twinge of irony of "us" in the U.S. soberly discussing how best to bring democracy, the rule of law and an advanced, modern, socially, environmentally and humanistic living climate to people in the Middle East when, during the past 6 years and longer, our own nation has plunged headlong down the opposite path on every point of the compass. We have a beam in our own eye (for example, New Orleans) whilst simultaneously claiming vision clear enough to remove the tiny splinter in our brothers'.

"Realists" are now finding themselves stuck with that. They would prefer if Sadaam had been left in power. "Realists" are now finding themselves stuck with that. They would prefer if Sadaam had been left in power.

The realist view was to use diplomatic and other pressures to get Saddam out of power. In the short run, they wanted to modify the sanctions so that they did less harm to the general populace and had more impact on Saddam himself.

Given the amount of money that has been spent on this misbegotten war, committing a fraction of that resource into brokering a deal that would have led to Saddam going off to Libya in exile, bribing everyone involved to settle on a deal, and to set up a massive jobs program to fix the infrastructure that had been damaged by the sanctions. Completing the inspections would have humiliated Saddam by proving that he really wasn't in charge of his country, and that he had no military capability any longer.

Such an approach might even have led to the Iraqis agreeing to an American military presence, if only as a check against Iran.

Doesn't matter, though. There is no way that the administration would have done anything other than start this misbegotten war.

Purplele State: Your point about the strange psychology of Iraqis is interesting. I would agree that the combination of feeling humiliated and entitled could explain some of the problems.

However it isn't Iraqis that are showing signs of defeatism. They have been suffering far worse casualties from their islamo-fascist enemies than US or other forces assisting them but with far more resolution.

It could be more productive to focus on the strange psychology of opinion leaders in the US. This seems to also be a mixture of bitterness at humiliation and entitlement.

Humiliation from the entire foreign policy establishment feeling ignored, lied to and treated with the contempt ordinarily reserved for the general public by pretending that the war was about WMDs and disarming Sadaam.

Entitlement as though it is normal to mobilize public opinion against government foreign policy despite having no clear policy alternative to offer.

PS Apologies to those for whom I still owe replies in another thread. Will get back to you, but this was quicker to respond to in limited time.

Replying to my own post becasue I seem to have trouble getting it to post correctly:-)

The part above is just my quote from Brad's post that I was trying to respond to.

My response:

Then you must not have paid much attention because numerous posts on this site and others over the years have pointed out how Iraq is nothing like Japan/Germany or the Balkans.

I'll turn it around. Can you point to a single intervention similar to the Iraq war that has worked? Off the top of my head I just see disasters, Cuba, The Phillipines, Haiti, Vietnam...