Iraq war will haunt west - Emma Sky

[TheCurmudgeon]

I am not saying we didn't hose this up. No one could defend that position.

Sky admits the CPA simply could not meet these expectations and no amount of hard work from many experienced British and American volunteers could make up for the lack of planning before the invasion. It left the CPA – which was assembled in haste and from scratch – attempting to restore public services, disband the security forces and build new ones, as well as introduce a free market and democracy.

'No organisation would have been able to implement such an agenda, particularly without the consent of the population'.

But she came in with a specific expectation and agenda and discovered that things were not what they seemed.

I had arrived ready to apologise to every Iraqi for the war. Instead I had listened to a litany of suffering and pain under Saddam for which I was quite unprepared. The mass graves, the details of torture, the bureaucratisation of abuse. The pure banality of evil...

She makes a number of valid points that I can agree with, and I give her credit for going out and doing something rather than sitting at home and complaining about it, but I think she is looking at things through the lens of her own "private boarding school" upbringing. She assumes that we could talk this all out. As others have pointed out, even internally initiated nation building and transitions are messy things. If the Iraqi people had done this on their own does she really believe that the Sunnis would have been treated better?

Retribution is the new law of the land in Libya. Summary executions, arbitrary arrests, torture and indefinite detention have emerged while the judicial system remains in a state of paralysis.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,4794359.story

Guess I find it all a bit self righteous.

[Steve the Planner]

Curmudgeon:

The immortal and heartfelt words of Jack Nicholas in Mars Attacks: "Can't we all just----get along?"

As Dahyan says: Who is the WE?

Steve

[Dayuhan]

Guess I find it all a bit self righteous.

Post-mortem introspection often is, and I can forgive that.

The one thing myself and other keep coming to is: How to engage the actual people that are the focus of all of this.

What I keep coming to is the need to accept that engaging actual people becomes extraordinarily difficult when the engagement begins with you invading and conquering their country. It makes an already difficult process infinitely more difficult.

I don't doubt that poor planning for the aftermath of invasion was a major cause of the disarray and the generally unsatisfactory results. The danger in focusing on that, of course, ist that we might easily reach the conclusion that if we just plan a bit better, we could pull off regime change without a disorderly aftermath. I'm not convinced that we can do that, or that we should be trying.

[Steve the Planner]

Dahuyan:

Agree with the BIG insight: Planning better was not the problem, nor the route to the "if only we would have...." solution.

First, planning better should have materially changed the task/mission.

Second, as you say, the occupying power can not be the occupied, nor create the legitimacy to or of them. No matter how many cups of tea or soup eaten with knives.

The occupier has to find its legitimate role and stay within that. Huge pressure, huge influence is OK, but the outcomes of that can not become the local solution---just the occupier's quick hit.

Sustainable solutions have to emerge from and be rooted in them, not us.

Finding a different path AFTER you went down a road is very very tricky.

Like most on this site, we were not involved in the big decision---just what followed---and doing the best with what was in front of us.

Maybe, with Ken's wisdom, it has and always will be that way, but the question that Emma Sky leaves behind: What next? is still unanswered.

Personally, as ugly as it may look: Iraq is doing what I expected---finding its sea legs in a very tough circumstance---but with some good fortune (a short boom in oil prices).

Afghanistan, on the other hand: Boy, I hope some decent transition planning starts soon.

[Ken White]

Howsomeever, this ol' dumb Ken has always contended that it'd be the halfway point -- 2018 -- before any real degree of stability was shown and the the full 30 years to 2033 before Iraq was a functioning semi-rule of law State in accordance with world -- not Western; definitely not Western, not ever -- norms. That to be true only if there was no major disruption in the ME in the interim. I said that in 2003 and little I've seen or heard since has caused me to change my mind. Nor do I at this time see any major flaps in the ME, just a slew of minor ones...

They're nervous over there -- and they should be; they have to fix that. We cannot.

FWIW I disagree with Professor Sky. Iraq will not "haunt" us; the world will move on and lurch to another crisis. 'It' -- the lurching factor -- has indeed always been this way and always will. The Perfesser is a smart Lady but she's young and reading about doesn't give all the subtleties that living with a spasmodically improving world does. Nor does it show well the resilience of humans...

[Steve the Planner]

Ken:

Used to hear folks talking about the books they were gonna write about Iraq when it was over. Always wondered who they were going to sell these books to. Iraqis---the real target audience---would have no interest in them.

Dumb american ideas about their country.

The 30 year horizon. Lifetimes, generation spanning. Real life. Open-ended. Self-defining and re-defining. Who knows where its is headed, or how it will get there.

Just doesn't fit in to our operational efforts.

Like dwelling on Huntington's CORDs critique (which has a lot of substance and reference), but gets in the way of "Don't Just Stand There, Do Something."

[slapout9]

It's well know in the upper circles of power that after the next election Ken will ask Iran to give up their Nuclear weapons program......they will comply!

[Dayuhan]

FWIW I disagree with Professor Sky. Iraq will not "haunt" us; the world will move on and lurch to another crisis. 'It' -- the lurching factor -- has indeed always been this way and always will. The Perfesser is a smart Lady but she's young and reading about doesn't give all the subtleties that living with a spasmodically improving world does. Nor does it show well the resilience of humans...

I think she's correct in the sense that the Iraq war and the memories of it (memories that may or may not be accurate, on all sides) will have an influence on our relations with the Middle East and the Muslim world for a long time to come, just as our Cold War legacy of installing and/or propping up dictators we perceived to be anti-Communist still complicates our relationships with much of the developing world. Whether or not we will recognize the influence or its antecedents is of course another question.

Used to hear folks talking about the books they were gonna write about Iraq when it was over. Always wondered who they were going to sell these books to.

Other Americans, of course.

That is exactly what the Air Force believes or at they used to. I have a copy of a letter to the editor of our local paper from just after the overthrow of Sadam where Colonel Warden tried to warn whoever would listen what would happen if we disbanded the Iraqi military and implemented some kind of de-bathistazation(spelling?) program. Pretty much fell on deaf ears.

Were those ears deaf, or were they also considering what could happen if we didn't disband the army or get rid of the Baath? It's easy to look back and say that was a mistake, but we don't know that the road not taken would have led anyplace better. How do you think the Shi'a and the Kurds might have reacted if we'd proposed to keep the army intact and the Baath in power? I'd guess they'd have been pissed, to put it mildly.

[slapout9]

Were those ears deaf, or were they also considering what could happen if we didn't disband the army or get rid of the Baath? It's easy to look back and say that was a mistake, but we don't know that the road not taken would have led anyplace better. How do you think the Shi'a and the Kurds might have reacted if we'd proposed to keep the army intact and the Baath in power? I'd guess they'd have been pissed, to put it mildly.

Except he said it would be a mistake BEFORE not after. I don't care what the Shi'a or Kurds think that isn't Americas problem.

[Dayuhan]

Except he said it would be a mistake BEFORE not after. I don't care what the Shi'a or Kurds think that isn't Americas problem.

I said going there would be a mistake, before not after.

What the Sunni thought became our problem when they started shooting at us and planting IEDs. What the Kurds and the Sunni thought would presumably have become an issue under similar circumstances. Of course we could have left the army intact, put some more or less congenial general in charge, and walked away to watch the ensuing civil war from a distance, but that would have raised a whole range of issues of its own, all of which would likely have become our problems sooner rather than later.

[TheCurmudgeon]

What I keep coming to is the need to accept that engaging actual people becomes extraordinarily difficult when the engagement begins with you invading and conquering their country. It makes an already difficult process infinitely more difficult.

As a general rule I would agree. In the case of Iraq I disagree. By using the term "their country" you assume the population has an interest in seeing the current regime continue. That they are vested in it. That they find it legitimate. I don't believe that was the case prior to the invasion in Iraq. I believe that the majority of the population wanted Saddam and his sons out of the picture. I believe that manifest itself in the relative good will we have in the three to four months after the invasion.

We hosed it up, but not because of the decision to invade. It was the decisions on how to handle it afterwords that screwed us. In my opinion to walk away from this believing that the right lesson to learn from Iraq is that it is better to just sit on the sidelines and do nothing would be misreading the autopsy.

[Bob's World]

Come on, just because the people don't have a say in their governance, it does not mean it is not "their country." That is a dangerous bit of rationalization.

"We had to destroy the country to safe the country" Right? This is an easy trap to fall into, and we are better served by admitting that we did than we are by rationalizing away our most important lessons that we should be learning from this.

There is a WIDE range of options between "sit on the sidelines and do nothing" and "Invade and occupy."

One such option was the UW concept put on the table early to simply go in and leverage the Kurdish separatist movement. No one wanted one more SF-centric quick success though. We (DOD) were looking for a big gunfight that everyone could play in; and the Whitehouse was looking for an option that took out Saddam once and for all - and that is what we got. Now, what did we learn from that?

All the lessons learned I am seeing being captured are about how to do the wrong thing better. It is time we start putting a bit more wattage into thinking about how we could have done better things.

[Steve the Planner]

Bob:

Right across the Board.

Options: Take out Saddam and his main deck of cards, and you are actually left with a mixed army including Kurds.

Kurds, however, were only one possible leverage point. Shia opposition? Internal Sunni dissent? Pressure through those that influence various parties in Iraq?

I, for one, believe that the attacks on Kurds and Shia were so virulent that absent us "Doing Something" Iran (and other neighbors) would have been drawn into that fight, and that a regional conflict was an important unrecognized consideration. The flip side of that is that these regional players were also leverage points.

I know, how stupid. Back Saddam to attack Iran, than spur Iran to attack Iraq.

Back to Dayuhan's point about what exactlyis our legacy in the ME. Divide and conquer? Play all sides against the middle? Whatever.

Lots of options, all of which evaporated once we went in.

[Dayuhan]

Back to Dayuhan's point about what exactlyis our legacy in the ME. Divide and conquer? Play all sides against the middle? Whatever.

"Our legacy in the ME" is a work in progress, and I wouldn't want to venture a guess on what it will eventually be. My point was that the specific legacy of the Iraq war and local perceptions of that war are likely to be irritants and stumbling blocks for some time.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Come on, just because the people don't have a say in their governance, it does not mean it is not "their country." That is a dangerous bit of rationalization.

You are misreading what I wrote. I was responding to Dayuhun's assertion that engaging the people becomes extraordinarily difficult when the engagement begins with you invading and conquering their country. I would argue that how difficult engaging the people is situation dependent. We had no problems working with the French after Normandy. Each case has to be looked at as a unique situation.

"We had to destroy the country to safe the country" Right? This is an easy trap to fall into, and we are better served by admitting that we did than we are by rationalizing away our most important lessons that we should be learning from this.

No, not saying that.

There is a WIDE range of options between "sit on the sidelines and do nothing" and "Invade and occupy."

This is EXACTLY what I am saying (although, apparently very ineptly). There is a continuum between the two extremes and each situation has to be examined to determine what, if anything can be done. Then once those options are fleshed out determine what, if anything should be done, based on our interests.

All the lessons learned I am seeing being captured are about how to do the wrong thing better. It is time we start putting a bit more wattage into thinking about how we could have done better things.

Agree, but we will never go there if our answer is "We should never do this again". That is the kind of cookie cutter solution I take issue with. That was the point of my comment.

I am not saying that "invade and occupy" was the right solution. But I will not concede that "invade and occupy" is the primary reason we are where we are in Iraq today. We did not need to apologize to every Iraqi for invading. We did need to have had a better plan for how we were going to occupy and how the transition was going to occur. It needed to take into account the various religious, ethnic, and economic variations and historical animosities. We could have split the country up into three separate nations rather than try to compound a mistake made when the lines were drawn by the British. We could have not engaged in DeBathification. Who knows if any of these would have worked better. But I do believe that we can learn from mistakes made after the invasion rather than see the invasion as the primary error and therefore dismiss everything that occured after as the natural cascade of events that occur as the result of that mistake.

[Steve the Planner]

Ciurmudgeon:

Thanks to Joel Wing (Musings on Iraq), I was just re-reading his re-pubs of the SIGIR stuff on the planning for war part of Iraq. Everyone had a different picture, some had facts (that got left on the floor), some had Expat "opinions."

Reality, as we should have known, is that the entire Infrastructure and Public Systems of Iraq could be knocked over with a feather. Weapons of mass destructions? C'mon, they could hardly make a public food delivery, across a functioning bridge to a store with lights and power.

There were just so many options open under these systems level scenarios without even going down the road of mining dissidents and internal opposition.

The Kurds swept down on March 19, 2003 virtually un-opposed---ie, there were many "parts" of Iraq that could have been "liberated" leaving others to die on the vine.

How do you get revenue to Baghdad/Saddam, if the oild flows from Diyala to Basra, where those two areas are not under Saddam's control. Either he defends the Capital from Sadr, or he defends the oil revenue at threat from further erosion.

Just one dumb little thread that should have been abundantly obvious.

So many different options to play out. Water under the damn....

[davidbfpo]

As the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq looms the UK press has had a series of articles, mainly historical and once more Emma Sky writes an article:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...s-intervention

Lesson one: interventions require legitimacy

Lesson two: interventions need to have limited, clear and realistic goals – and be well resourced

Lesson three: the collapse of the state leads to communal violence

Lesson four: an inclusive elite agreement is critical to gain widespread support for the new order

Lesson five: elections do not necessarily bestow legitimacy on the new order

Lesson six: interventions inevitably have unintended consequences

Almost tempted to use this as a check-list for Mali.