Iraq: "Recent History"

[GorTex6]

I think Bremer's biggest mistake was agreeing to stop the original clearing operation in Fallujah.

Fallujah was a mistake in-itself.

There could not have been a more perfect way to throw gasoline on the fire and alienate Sunnis than by forcing us to destroy one of their cities. There is evidence of Shias defending Fallujah; some with outside help from Iran and Syria(Syrian camps hosted by Hamas and Hezbollah-proxies of Iran)!

[Strickland]

Apologies for my terminology. I should rather say that there is no insurgency - because there are many insurgencies. And I don't mean to be definite about the positive or negative impact of disbanding the Iraqi army - I merely mean to say that I feel this action by itself is not what got us here. That is, that the cause of the insurgency (to revert to common usage) is far greater, more robust and more complex than a mere surplus of unemployed soldiers.

I should state up front that I have no personal experience of warfare or of the Middle East - so to the extent anyone's experience informs them of a view contrary to mine I would certainly appreciate the opportunity to learn from it.

I could not AGREE more with the assertion that there are MANY insurgencies in Iraq. This is entirely consistent with my personal experience, and all that I have read.

[Stu-6]

I don’t mean to compare the insurgency with violent teenagers; rather I am trying to suggest that an unemployed army creates a ready pool for insurgents to recruit from. Some of those soldiers would have joined the insurgency no mater what and some would not no mater what but some only would if they had nothing better to do. Sometimes every little bit helps.

[SWJED]

12 Jan. New York Times - A View From the Center of the Iraq Maelstrom.

... "My Year in Iraq," an amalgam of spin and sincerity, is partly an explanation (or rationalization) of actions Mr. Bremer took as America's man in Baghdad, partly an effort to issue some "I told you so's" to administration colleagues, and partly an attempt to spread (or reassign) responsibility (or blame) by tracing just who in the White House, Pentagon and State Department signed off on or ordered critical decisions made during his tenure.

Mr. Bremer deals with some issues like prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in an extremely cursory fashion, while explicating others, like the debate over the timetable for sovereignty, in considerable detail, and he cavalierly dismisses the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, which critics say was sidelined because of tensions with the Pentagon, as not offering a practical plan for postwar Iraq.

While the book is studded with familiar administration sound bites about the importance of deposing Mr. Hussein, it paints a troubling portrait of the administration's handling of the occupation. It is a portrait that in many respects ratifies what critics of the war and postwar have long been saying: that there were not enough American troops to provide security and contain a spreading insurgency; that, as Mr. Bremer told Vice President Dick Cheney in the fall of 2003, the United States did not have a practical "military strategy for victory" in the postwar; and that, as he told Condoleezza Rice in May 2004, the United States had become "the worst of all things - an ineffective occupier." ...

[Jones_RE]

I think it's interesting to see the emphasis Ambassador Bremer places on different events in his narrative. It seems intuitive to me that his particular focus was on domestic Iraqi politics - and thus he might be less informed concerning other matters. To the extent that he didn't see, and wasn't responsible for, the whole picture it's inappropriate to criticize the entire war effort based on his experiences.

However, I think this shows something revealing about the nature of counterinsurgency warfare as practiced by the United States - we do not mirror our enemies efforts. An insurgent force proceeds with social/political, economic and military agendas (to some extent or another). US counterinsurgency efforts divide those responsibilities among many agencies and individuals - with apparently little coordination. Hence, we can pour billions of dollars and thousands of men into destroying a city like Ramadi or Fallujah but suddenly falter when it comes to establishing a local government or turning the water back on - the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.

Of course, by this theory the various insurgent groups in Iraq (particularly Al Qaeda in Iraq) fail as well. They perform none of the humanitarian or political indoctrination functions that say, Hamas, undertakes. Hence, their level of support is more limited than it might be.

[SWJED]

13 Jan. Washington Post - U.S. Studied Bremer's '04 Bid for More Troops.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he seriously considered a 2004 memo from L. Paul Bremer, then the senior U.S. official in Iraq, calling for tens of thousands more U.S. troops to quell the insurgency. But he said military commanders and service chiefs disagreed with Bremer.

Bremer's memo, dated May 18, 2004, urged Rumsfeld to dispatch as many as two additional divisions -- or about 30,000 troops -- to Iraq, to meet myriad demands, including fighting insurgents, border control and securing convoy routes. The request, disclosed in Bremer's new book on his year-long tenure in Iraq, reflected what he said was his fear that the United States was becoming "the worst of all things -- an ineffective occupier."

Rumsfeld, speaking yesterday at a Pentagon news briefing, recalled that he showed the Bremer memo to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff then, Gen. Richard B. Myers, saying: "This is a reasonable proposal from a reasonable person; let's look at it."

But after evaluating the proposal, the Joint Chiefs of Staff concurred with U.S. commanders responsible for Iraq that troop levels were adequate, said Gen. Peter Pace, who succeeded Myers as chairman of the Joint Chiefs and appeared with Rumsfeld at yesterday's briefing...