An OIF Fiasco? Let me count the ways.

Wow it’s been WAY too long. The second half of my Summer was pretty rough, but I’m back now and hopefully my second year of law school will provide a little more time to blog. It certainly can’t get any worse.

Lots to talk about as we gear up for Gen. Patraeus’s report in September. First as promised, however, is my review of Fiasco.

Let me begin by stating that, much to my shock, this book is not a Bush/Rumsfeld diatribe. Ricks mounts a mature and honest assessment of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and has more than enough criticism to hand out without falling into the convenient trap of blaming W and Rummy for every OIF mistake, which in my opinion is overly convenient and unfair. In fact, contrary to the NY Times book review, criticism of the CIC and SECDEF is extremely limited. While Ricks does write that Bush and Rumsfeld are ultimately responsible for OIF failures, and blasts them for putting a rosy face on the rise of Iraqi violence, he chooses to focus his analysis on strategic and operational decision makers, or the individuals who actually controlled political and military policy and strategy on the ground in Iraq.

Ricks’ most bitter criticism is reserved for Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Commander of Coalition Ground Forces in Iraq from June 2003-June 2004. The revelations concerning Bremer are simply dumbfounding. According to Ricks, major policy decisions such as de-Baathification and disbanding the Iraqi Army were made by Bremer completely on his own, contrary to direction from Washington and against the advice of just about every general in the U.S. military. These revelations, which Bremer fails to successfully defend in his memoirs, indicate the remarkable danger of placing unschooled arrogance in positions of power. De-Baathification and scraping the Iraqi Army were two of the worst decisions made by the United States probably since Vietnam’s Rolling Thunder, and if there are any decisions that are responsible for destroying our efforts, it’s these. De-Baathification destroyed reconstruction. It dismissed almost every Iraqi who knew how to run Iraq’s maze of infrastructure and effectively prevented the CPA from tapping a ready-made channel of advice on how to reconstruct essential civil services.

Likewise, according to several interviews with key reconstruction personnel including Gen. Jay Garner USA (Ret.), head of reconstruction prior to Bremer, the Iraqi army was originally slated to play a large role in providing security during reconstruction and according to Garner, this plan was discussed and approved by Rumsfeld prior to Garner’s departure. Knowing that a large security force would bee needed due to Rumsfeld’s reduction of US force levels for the invasion, such approval makes perfect sense. Again however, seemingly without the approval of the White House and against stringent military, intelligence, and civilian advice, Bremer issued his CPA Order Number 2, which dissolved the Iraqi army, police, and internal and presidential security forces and in a single swoop of the pen, Bremer put almost 700,000 men, many of whom were highly trained in the application of violence, out of work. Not only would this decision seriously weaken the already tenuous security situation but it also drove hundreds of thousands of men underground who now had no way to support their family, were already highly politicized and now, are highly pissed at the US for firing them. BOOM: there’s your insurgency.

While Bremer’s opening bungles certainly charted a course for disaster, the US military, according to Ricks, only made matters worse. Chief culprits: Gen. Sanchez, the 4th Infantry Division, and destructive COIN operations.

As Ricks reminds us, classic COIN doctrine focuses on enemy motivation, or in the popular vernacular "hearts and minds." Take away an enemy’s will to fight by convincing him that your not the enemy, that he has a stake in society, and that it’s better to go to work than plant an IED then you’ve neutralized an insurgent. Attaining these goals requires soldiers to sacrifice force for restraint and place a great measure of emphasis on maintaining an enemy’s dignity.

Unfortunately, Sanchez either ignored these principals or failed to effectively train his subordinates in them. Under Sanchez, the U.S. Army mounted a reckless policy designed to neutralize enemy force strength and gather intelligence, but in actuality fueled the insurgent ranks by rounding up thousands of Iraqis with the slightest hint of insurgency connections and throwing them in jail. Not only would these procedures destroy the military’s detainee system and lead to Abu Ghraib, but it also humiliated the thousands of innocents who were rounded up with the guilty. This policy of humiliation and eventual abuse was exacerbated by the heavy-handed tactics of the 4th Infantry Division who rounded up thousands of Iraqis and dumped them on the steps of Abu Ghraib, almost 90% of which, had absolutely zero intelligence value.

The overall feeling that this book left me with was deep and bitter disappointment. Simply put, as an avid supporter of invasion this book infuriated me. I couldn’t care less for the WMD intel debacle. Change was, and still is, desperately needed in the Middle East and Iraq was a logical place to begin. Saddam’s atrocities, the weakened state of the Iraqi military, and the absence of theocratic history made Iraq the perfect candidate for planting the seeds of political and economic change that could have ushered in regional change, and we fucked it up. Shoddy planning for reconstruction, asinine policy leadership, arrogance, and an ineffective military that only made our problems worse by instituting ineffective COIN policies and tactics that led to widespread abuse of the people we were trying to help, destroyed Iraqi confidence in our efforts, which, according to Ricks, remained extraordinarily high throughout the months following the capture of Baghdad. You lose the people and you lose the war. Had Patraeus, whose COIN and reconstruction policies leading the 101st Airborne were quite effective, been more senior in 2003, perhaps things could have been different. Now we’ve lost over 3700 of our bravest, and while "the surge" is showing limited signs of progress, the Iraqi Parliament is deadlocked, Iran is gaining strength and influence, effective and meaningful Republican congressional support is eroding and Americans are fed up with fight. Patraeus doesn’t stand a chance.

Game Over.

Fiasco?

Ricks, you’re GODDAMN RIGHT!