SWJ Small Wars Survey 2012

[AmericanPride]

If the US is going to install a new government in a conquered country, Americans expect at least an effort to make that government recognizably democratic. Past involvement with dictatorships has left a lot of bad feeling and resentment, our people know that, and they don't want to see it repeated. Certainly in Iraq the "easiest" way to provide immediate governance would have been to leave the army intact, find a reasonably amenable dictator, and let him have at it. Not so long ago we'd have done exactly that. Can't do it today because it's not politically acceptable on the home front.

The question is whether it would have been domestically acceptable to install a non-democratic government in a conquered territory. The simple answer is "no".

"Democracy" means many different things and comes in numerous shapes and sizes. After 9/11, Americans would have been content with anything so long as Al-Qaeda was destroyed. And quite frankly, Americans have a short memory, little patience, and aren't particularly concerned with nuanced details (like Iraqi civilian casualty numbers) so I think you are over-estimating the liberal compassion of the American people. Either way, the military did not anticipate the obvious necessity of transferring power from one government to another, and what security measures would be necessary to facilitate it.

I think even a quick look at their recent histories and built-in ethnic/sectarian issues will explain why setting out to provide stable governance in either was a silly task to take on.

No, go ahead and explain it.

Certainly mistakes were made, but the task of "restoring order" was also quite predictably much more difficult than civilian leaders, many of whom seemed convinced that Iraqis would be dancing in the streets, welcoming us into Baghdad, and jumping on board our program, wanted to believe.

At least the civilian leadership gave it some thought. The military did not even consider it. Little effort was made in anticipating and preempting the fallout of demolishing Hussein's government. The military was obsessed with chasing the ghosts of the defeated Hussein regime instead of identifying the emerging threats and destroying them when they were most vulnerable. The military allowed for the conditions of insurgency to develop and persist until such point the momentum of resistance required the next seven years to turn around. In the same time frame, the political leadership established the Coalition Provisional Authority and worked to expeditiously transfer sovereignty to a legitimate Iraqi government. The political leadership is not liable for the inability of the military leadership to exercise forethought in the execution of their duties.

The question is whether an outside power can impose stable government, and the simple answer is "no". The act of imposing governance and the presence of an occupying power in environments like this effectively guarantees instability and resistance. Efforts to "build a nation" instead of recognizing that nations and governments have to grow through a gradual organic process assure resistance and failure. We couldn't install stable governments, neither could anyone else. It was an idiotic task that should never have been taken on.

Stability is a function of political violence. The window for establishing stability was very short immediately following the collapse of the Hussein government. By all accounts, the CPA moved fairly quickly in organizing an Iraqi government. But the military did not anticipate the emergence of an insurgency and therefore failed in its task to create the necessary security conditions. The political leadership is not responsible for the resistance's transition from uniformed professionals of the former Iraqi army into a formidable, organized insurgency. That is the fault of the military for failing to anticipate changing conditions and attacking the new threat before it materialized. You say hindsight is 20/20. History provides a considerable amount of hindsight to use. So why didn't the military, knowing that "efforts to "build a nation" instead of recognizing that nations and governments have to grow through a gradual organic process assure resistance," anticipate the emergence of said resistance and do anything to deter or prevent it? Or, are they just clueless automatons blindly following orders from on high?

The question is why did the mission failed because that's the question I've been asking and answering.