Below The Beltway

Leaving aside arguments over whether it was a good idea to go to war in Iraq to begin with, there can be little serious argument that the Iraq War has not gone well. The heady days after the downfall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 were quickly replaced by frustration as what can only be described as a guerrilla war broke out in Iraq. That war continues to this day.

The Washington Post today is beginning to run a series of excerpts from a new book by reporter Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq. Today’s excerpt focuses on the beginnings of the guerilla war and the lessons the American military failed to learn from Vietnam:

There is some evidence that Saddam Hussein’s government knew it couldn’t win a conventional war, and some captured documents indicate that it may have intended some sort of rear-guard campaign of subversion against occupation. The stockpiling of weapons, distribution of arms caches, the revolutionary roots of the Baathist Party, and the movement of money and people to Syria either before or during the war all indicate some planning for an insurgency.

But there is also strong evidence, based on a review of thousands of military documents and hundreds of interviews with military personnel, that the U.S. approach to pacifying Iraq in the months after the collapse of Hussein helped spur the insurgency and made it bigger and stronger than it might have been.

The very setup of the U.S. presence in Iraq undercut the mission. The chain of command was hazy, with no one individual in charge of the overall American effort in Iraq, a structure that led to frequent clashes between military and civilian officials.

The article is long and well worth reading. Among other things, Ricks cites the fact that the military forces sent to occupy Iraq in 2003 were not appropriate for fighting a guerrilla war and did not recognize the level of resentment that some Iraqis would have to an American occupation:

The U.S. mission in Iraq was overwhelmingly made up of regular combat units, rather than smaller, lower-profile Special Forces units. And in 2003, most conventional commanders did what they knew how to do: send out large numbers of troops and vehicles on conventional combat missions.

Few U.S. soldiers seemed to understand the centrality of Iraqi pride and the humiliation Iraqi men felt to be overseen by this Western army. Foot patrols in Baghdad were greeted during this time with solemn waves from old men and cheers from children, but with baleful stares from many young Iraqi men.

And even when some in the military tried to point out to commanders and superiors that the tactics that were being used were counterproductive, there was an astounding refusal to even listen:

In improvising a response to the insurgency, the U.S. forces worked hard and had some successes. Yet they frequently were led poorly by commanders unprepared for their mission by an institution that took away from the Vietnam War only the lesson that it shouldn’t get involved in messy counterinsurgencies. The advice of those who had studied the American experience there was ignored.

That summer, retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, an expert in small wars, was sent to Baghdad by the Pentagon to advise on how to better put down the emerging insurgency. He met with Bremer in early July. “Mr. Ambassador, here are some programs that worked in Vietnam,” Anderson said.

It was the wrong word to put in front of Bremer. “Vietnam?” Bremer exploded, according to Anderson. “Vietnam! I don’t want to talk about Vietnam. This is not Vietnam. This is Iraq!”

This was one of the early indications that U.S. officials would obstinately refuse to learn from the past as they sought to run Iraq.

Where have we heard that one before ?

More thoughts at Outside The Beltway