The Invasion of Iraq: A Balance Sheet
The Invasion of Iraq: A Balance Sheet by Brian Michael Jenkins, Rand Corporation.
Historically, wars were fought primarily for material gain: livestock, treasure, tribute, or territory. More recently, however, the profit motive for war has declined as life has become more precious and conquest and plunder have become less acceptable, although conflicts waged for control of diamonds and other precious commodities continue in parts of the world. International law generally prohibits military action by one state against another except for reasons of self-defense. In modern warfare, “gains” must be measured in less-tangible forms, such as preserving national security, liberating threatened populations from tyranny, protecting human rights. Military action to achieve such ends is considered unavoidable and is rarely assessed as an investment…
“The Invasion of Iraq, A Balance Sheet”? Don’t waste you time. I would like my five minutes back. It’s a deceptive and purposely misleading title. Balance sheets have pros and cons. This is a lopsided treatment of the subject with a 20/20 hindsight perspective of how it was a war of choice, there was no threat etc. (man, it’s so much easier to make decisions when you have perfect information after the fact).
Then the author descends to measure the war adding criteria we’ve never used to cost a conflict to reinforce his one sided argument. Anyone ever wonder what WWII, Korea, Vietnam etc. cost if you added all the medical care veterans incurred?
Boilerplate talking points camouflaged with a title that implies both sides would be presented.
Here are my thoughts on the 10th anniversary of the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Feedback would be welcome and appreciated.
Excerpt:
The following — at the preface to the paperback edition of Niall Ferguson’s COLOSSUS: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE — is offered re: EricsLC and Major.Rod’s discussion, found much further below, regarding “realism:”
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
RON SUSKIND, quoting a “senior advisor” to President Bush. (From “Without a Doubt,” by Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004.)
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05EFD8113BF934A25753C1A9629C8B63
How much study has been given to the idea that most or even all the trouble and outsized costs we experienced in our post-war occupation in Iraq were merely compounding downstream effects originating from the one point of failure to establish security and stability after Saddam?
And, if the *one* variable, SASO, had been flipped – if we had been able to establish and guarantee security from the outset of the immediate post-war – everything else about our peace operations in Iraq would have been different?
By curing which early ‘viral vectors’ could we have headed off the whole epidemic?
My understanding of the Iraq insurgency is that it was rooted on the Sunni side by Saddam loyalists, renowned for their own viciousness, welcoming in al Qaeda. And on the Shia side, the insurgency was rooted in Iran-sponsored Sadrists.
The Kurds were on board with us.
I can’t think off the top of my head what could have been done to prevent the Saddam loyalists from mobilizing, but in hindsight, the Shia insurgency strikes me as having been preventable.
We didn’t account for Muqtada al-Sadr because he was a minor figure in the Shia community before the war, while the major Shia leaders were on board with us. The coalition believed, with reason, the Shia, like the Kurds, supported our intentions for post-war Iraq. And most Shia did. It seems that if we had been able to identify Muqtada as a threat and neutralize the Sadrist threat early on, we would have stabilized the Shia.
Then that would have left us with only the Sunni problem. The Sunni problem may have been manageable if, like the Sadrists, we have been able to identify and cure the ‘viral vectors’ early enough.
It’s barely remembered now that the international community was prepared to invest and pour peace-building assets into Iraq in the post-war, but only if we guaranteed security in Iraq.
In order to build a higher order social-political society, the universal needs of security and stability first, then law and order, services, and economy – the basics of governance – need to be in place. The insurgency basically beat us to 1st base on security and stability, and the rest of it couldn’t work without the foundation. I believe most Iraqis were on board with our promise to build a better Iraq after Saddam. But a minority willing and able to force their politics by extreme violence will have an outsized effect.
The inefficient “adhocracy” in the management of the Iraq reconstruction was in large part due to hostile politics within the US, politically driven unreasonable expectations of immediate returns on investment, and adverse conditions on the ground that sabotaged reconstruction efforts.
If the domestic political frame can be fixed, a reasonable long-term planning approach applied, and initial security and stability mastered, then combined with general improvements, the cost of peace operations should be further driven down.
Of those ‘ifs’, the most important is establishing and maintaining security and stability from the outset of the post-war.
I believe most or all the inefficiencies in post-war Iraq followed from the initial failure to establish and maintain security and stability. Flip that one switch, and I believe the rest would have fallen into place for us in Iraq, including many fewer casualties for all parties, reasonable expectations and cost management on a long-term planning frame, a conducive political frame, and enough international funding and peace-building assets to reasonably offset our costs.
EricsLC, et al.
Regarding OIF, Paul Wolfowitz’s influence is present both before and after — but not during — the Clinton years.
Thus, should we discuss the “balance sheet” re: the invasion of Iraq from the perspective of his (Wolfowitz’s) concepts (the ideas of supremecy and preventive war, I believe)?
Here is Andrew Bacevich’s take:
http://harpers.org/archive/2013/03/a-letter-to-paul-wolfowitz/
precipitated withdrawal from iraq,at a time where that country was facing a dramatical terrorist surge,enabled Al Qaeda to increase her harmful capacities and requires quick come-back,before terrorism definitely destabilise that coountry and turn it into a new sanctuary,threat definitely critical and requires rapid answer,before a new taliban Afghanistan,definitely,
precipitated withdrawal from iraq,at a time where that country was facing a dramatical terrorist surge,enabled Al Qaeda to increase her harmful capacities and requires quick come-back,before terrorism definitely destabilise that coountry and turn it into a new sanctuary,threat definitely critical and requires rapid answer,sooner better,definitely,definitely,