The Invasion of Iraq: A Balance Sheet

EricsLC:

It is likely that I am just mistaken, but I do seem to see the word "terrorism" mentioned in either:

a. The letter from members of the Project for the New American Century http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm nor

b. The Iraq Liberation Act http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-105publ338/html/PLAW-105publ338.htm

If our actions re: OIF are to be viewed from the position of terrorism and/or counter-terrorism, instead of through some other prism (for example: action to halt the destabilization of the ME due to Iraqi WMD and/or democracy promotion), why then would references to/justification via the words "terrorism" or "counter-terrorism" not be present in these important documents?

Eric,

You make several strong and valid arguments on why Bush decided to invade Iraq. Interestingly enough I had a good friend argue that if any other President made the decision to invade Iraq it wouldn't have been seen as controversial, but with the Bush legacy (his father) a bit of a conspiracy theory developed about alternative motives. I also think you address an important topic about Clinton's policies regarding Iraq. The sanctions that Albright pushed were a bit a humanitarian issue in themselves and helped gut Iraq's infrastructure. In my view, admittedly in hindsight, that seems like cowardly course of action that had a more negative impact on the Iraqi people than Saddam.

Where our opinion appears to diverge is post invasion decisions, which as you correctly pointed out skewed the context of pre-invasion decisions. Admittedly it has skewed mine, but like many who participate in SWJ who participated in OIF we have strong emotional connections that have resulted in varied opinions. I think the Bush Administration was almost criminally haphazard with their post invasion decisions. Some will think that opinion was formed in hindsight, but that isn't true. We addressed many of the concerns during the initial planning and it was seen as needless worry. When Wolfawitz tells Congress there is no ethnic tension in Iraq because he saw Sunnis and Shi'a married in Baghdad, that in my opinion captures the nature of the assumptions planning was based on.

I'm generally a fan of the Powell Doctrine (if not taken to the extreme). There is nothing wrong with having clear and achievable military objectives, but developing them in complicated operations takes considerable intellectual effort (it is hard to get to simple), and it didn't happen, so we floundered. Where I disagree with the doctrine is that all military operations can be achieved with quickly with overwhelming force.

All this is a different issue than the pre-invasion decision making you're focused on, and I think in that realm you made a strong case. Appreciate your well thought out arguments on this.

Bill,

As I said up front, my approach to understanding OIF is based mainly on the contemporary "Bush's shoes" context of the question, 'Why Iraq', rather than the hindsight question of 'Was it worth it'. I believe answering the 2nd question requires knowing the answer to the 1st question, and most people don't really know the answer to the 1st question.

As such, my discussion points emphasize the "political rhetoric" of conditions, laws, policies, and precedents at the decision point rather than a post-mortem technocratic accounting.

"Who knows?"

We knew the standing US relationship with Iraq was toxic, indefinite, deteriorating, and stalemated.

We knew the official US determination - established under Clinton - that the noncompliant Saddam was a "clear and present danger to the stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people everywhere."

We knew the direct and second-order harms caused by the US status quo with Iraq.

We knew the laws and policies - established during the Clinton administration - that set the resolution for the Iraq problem.

We knew 9/11 had opened an unconventional front that Saddam could utilize with or without al Qaeda - al Qaeda did not own a monopoly on terrorism.

By the close of the Clinton administration, we knew our only way out of the toxic mess with Iraq, other than regime change (internally or externally generated), was Saddam complying with the Gulf War ceasefire and UNSC resolutions.

Either/Or.

Both Clinton and Bush gave Saddam a "last chance" to comply. He declined. That left the US with one option for solving the toxic status quo with Iraq.

At the decision point of OIF, did you believe that Saddam would come around on his own accord on both the weapons and humanitarian fronts if we unilaterally ended the pre-OIF mission? Or, the US's Iraq problem would solve itself if we continued maintaining the pre-OIF status quo?

Before and after 9/11, did you believe the pre-OIF status quo with Iraq was stable, stabilizing, and sustainable?

When you place yourself in Bush's shoes at the decision point of OIF, keep in mind the humanitarian standards, too. They were not an after-thought to WMD. In fact, the most costly, invasive, provocative, and (arguably) controversial part of our pre-OIF status quo with Iraq - the no-fly zones with counter-fire - were enforcing humanitarian resolutions, not weapons-related resolutions.

So, even if Saddam had completely and unconditionally met his burden of proof on the weapons-related resolutions, the humanitarian issues still needed to be resolved in order to lift the pre-OIF mission and call off OIF.

There is no evidence, even after the fact, to argue that Saddam was in position to comply with the humanitarian resolutions.

I agree that the faulty intelligence "undermined our credibility globally". Again, however, context matters, and the context has been distorted in the public discussion.

The trigger for OIF was not based on an "assumption" by Bush officials. The trigger for OIF was based on the controlling *presumption* of Iraq's guilt on WMD. Plus, Saddam's violation of the concurrently mandated humanitarian standards is not disputed.

Iraq was on probation after the Gulf War, which meant the CIA was not responsible for proving the state of Iraqi WMD. Iraq's guilt on WMD was established. For the legal purpose of enforcing the ceasefire and UNSC resolutions, Iraq's guilt was presumed. Iraq was responsible to prove it was cured of WMD weapons, related technology and systems, development, and intent. Only Iraq - not the CIA - could cure Iraq's presumption of guilt.

In fact, the CIA Duelfer Report shows Saddam was holding back and Iraq was in violation. We only know (or believe we know) after the fact what Saddam was holding back.

"Assumption" isn't compelling from the legal standpoint on Iraq. As long as Iraq's presumption of guilt was controlling, US officials were *obligated* to interpret intelligence on Iraq in the unfavorable light cast by the presumption of guilt. That was true for Clinton officials as well as their successors.

In any case, we didn't go to war based on the intelligence. The trigger for OIF was Iraq's failure to comply, ie, meet its burden of proof on a mandated standard of compliance.

I explain this further in <a href="http://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2012/05/regime-change-in-iraq-from-c… Change in Iraq From Clinton to Bush</a>, which I wrote for my National Security Law class, and its companion piece <a href="http://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2012/05/problem-of-definition-in-ira… problem of definition in the Iraq controversy: Was the issue Saddam's regime or Iraq's demonstrable WMD?</a>, which explains the divergences in the public controversy.

They're easy reads, but here's the executive summary: Legally, Bush relied on Clinton's laws, policies, and precedents on Iraq, ie, the legal case, to resolve the Iraq problem. Publicly, Bush should have stuck closer to Clinton's public case because Clinton's public case against Iraq hewed close to the legal case against Iraq. That's the difference between a Harvard MBA and a Yale JD, I guess.

As you point out, the decision-point justification for OIF is a separate issue from analysis of the post-war in OIF (ie, occupation and peace operations after Saddam). However, the two issues are often conflated in the public discourse, which is where my decision-point contextual approach to the issue comes in.

On the issue of the post-war in Iraq ...

My understanding of de-Baathification is it did not apply a lifetime bar on soldiers and bureaucrats from government service. Rather re-hiring required a vetting process.

Bremer's plan made sense and the international community was initially willing to pour non-military assets into rebuilding Iraq. But the base requirement for everything else to build on was security and stability, and the enemy blew that up.

What if the military hadn't fallen behind the insurgency? What would be different in Iraq today if the COIN "Surge" has been employed in the 'golden hour' of the immediate post-war, rather than at the end of 2006, and precluded the damage to the peace process wrought by the insurgency?

So yes, I wish our military performance in post-war Iraq had been perfect from the outset, too. But I tend to be sympathetic because I realize the insufficient preparation by the Army for the post-war was caused by a deep-seated institutional flaw - the Vietnam War-traumatized, Powell Doctrine mindset. Our problem in the immediate post-war wasn't primarily insufficient troop numbers; it was insufficient method. Bush could control the numbers, but no Commander in Chief was going to overcome the Powell Doctrine mindset of the military before the fact.

I talk about my pre-9/11 brush with the Army's post-war doctrinal flaws in <a href="http://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2010/04/documentary-combat-support-h… post</a>. Pre-mission planning and training wouldn't have solved the Powell Doctrine problem. The only realistic way the US was going to learn how to occupy Iraq properly was to occupy Iraq first, and then be driven to the correct method by necessity, assuming we didn't cut and run before we learned.

I'm also sympathetic because the standard applied by OIF critics to OIF is ahistorical. Getting it dramatically wrong at the start of a war, absorbing catastrophes, and then learning how to do it right along the way, is a consistent theme in US military history. It just happens that in OIF, our learning curve was steeper in the post-war than it was in the war.

For the Army, the road to right has always been paved with a lot of wrong, and a lot of our blood. The key has always been whether the US would stay the course long enough to turn wrong into right. The post-war in Iraq is far from our worst post-war. The Korean War happened 5 years into the post-war of WW2. Truman sent Task Force Smith into Korea on a suicide mission. Eisenhower used public discontent over the Korean War to break the Democratic stranglehold on the White House. Ike campaigned on the promise he'd get us out of Korea ASAP.

The US got a hell of a lot wrong - catastrophically wrong - in our post-war in Korea, but our military stayed long enough to get it right because Eisenhower, despite his campaign promise, established a long-term military presence in Korea to secure our gains that continues today.

If we had been able to control the security from the outset of the post-war, I think events in Iraq would have turned out very differently, even without the COIN "Surge". Still, our learning curve in Iraq, while costly, is consistent with US military history, and the post-war in Iraq looked like it had turned the corner at the point we left. It may still work out, but I just don't know at this point whether we stayed in Iraq long enough to secure our gains and foster a reliable (domestic) peace in Iraq, like we did with South Korea.

major.rod,

Thanks. Context for OIF is missing from the FP roundtable discussion and the effect of that lack of context is playing out in the comments.

The comment thread started by 23rdInf69n70 is a case in point:
<blockquote>Pardon my naivete, but why is it ridiculous to ask if we shouldn't have left Saddam Hussein in power? We know that he had no nuclear weapons and no significant chemical weapons. We knew - even in 2002 - that his large army was just that - large, not capable of effective combat against our forces. Why was it necessary to impose regime change on Iraq, and not Iran, North Korea or Syria?</blockquote>

Right away, he goes off track with "We know ...". No - we did not know. At best, some people may have suspected and conjectured, but a mandated bar was set for "knowing" Iraq had rehabilitated. Iraq could and should have met the bar in 1991, let alone 2002-03. Saddam's deceptions raised the bar. Short of meeting the bar, Saddam's guilt was presumed.

The realistic alternative to OIF - ie, the pre-OIF bombing/sanctions/'containment' mission - was based on the presumption of Iraq's guilt.

As far as his second question, our relationship with Saddam was special and our entanglement with Iraq was different than our relations with the other 'axis of evil' candidates.

The best source for the US case against Saddam, including regime change, is Clinton rather than Bush. Not much can be added to Clinton's speech announcing Op Desert Fox in Dec 1998. Clinton's endorsements of OIF (before Clinton tried to pretend he was always against OIF), which Clinton based on his own presidential experience with Saddam, are good, too.

major.rod,

My 10th anniversary <a href="http://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2013/03/10-year-anniversary-of-start…;, and the linked content within it, is my attempt to restore context to the discussion. In the Abu Ghraib section of my post, I provide an example of the difference that context makes:<blockquote>As President Obama quickly learned as Commander in Chief, the "choice between our safety and our ideals" that he had <a href="http://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2009/03/gripe-expedience-sake.html">…; in order to slander President Bush was more difficult when Obama assumed Bush's responsibility in the life-or-death competition against zealous, unethical enemies.</blockquote>
The context has been marginalized or disregarded altogether in most discussions of the Iraq mission. Yet understanding the context of OIF is the key to properly evaluating it, just as context is necessary when evaluating any of our wars. I'm impressed by the creative efforts of OIF critics to compensate for the comparitively low casualty figures of OIF - relative to the high human cost of the "good" US wars - by emphasizing ancillary, 2nd order, and post-war costs.

Most of the OIF cost that's criticized occurred during the post-war stage. Yet opposing our post-war role overlooks that reconstruction and occupation is the normal American post-war mode when we win a war. We still have troops in Asia and Europe from wars where most of the survivors have since died of old age.

It just happens that in Iraq, the enemy intelligently followed the Lebanon USMC barracks / Vietnam War playbook and ruthlessly attacked weaknesses in our post-Vietnam politics and mindset. It's to the benefit of future American generations that we precluded an updated Iraq insurgency playbook for use against our children.

Secretary Kerry's just-finished visit to Iraq and his toothless entreaties to al-Maliki strikes me that the Obama administration is only now - belatedly - appreciating the influential status and regionally strategic position we surrendered unnecessarily in Iraq.

I agree with you that gameplanning if-Saddam should have a larger role in the evaluation of OIF. OIF critics talk about it like Bush threw a dart at a map of the Middle East rather than inherited an intractable Iraq problem from Clinton.

When Saddam is raised in the debate - usually by IR realists nostalgic for the 80s - dead-and-gone Saddam is transformed retroactively into a rational actor, controllable useful puppet, benevolent patriarch, Iran antidote, or whatever else that helps argue that Bush = disaster and Saddam = peace in our time.

In the late 90s, when I served in the Army, our common belief was that the Army returning to Iraq was a question of when, not if. Not because we were eager to kick Saddam's ass "down by the river", but because we recognized the post-Gulf War disarmament had failed and the US was diplomatically and militarily entangled in a no-win situation with Saddam.

Contrary to the revisionist delusions of IR realists, freeing a noncompliant Saddam was not an option. Meanwhile, the status quo of bombing, sanctions, and 'containment' - the same status quo that compelled Secretary Albright to be quoted saying 500K dead Iraqi kids was "worth it" - was unsustainable. Our situation with Iraq was going to crash land one way or another.

President Bush's choice was try to control our inevitable crash landing with Iraq or - as Clinton had kicked the can to Bush after Operation Desert Fox - Bush could try to delay for 4 or 8 years and kick the can to the next president. Now, I believe Bush meant to kick the can on Iraq when he was first elected, but 9/11 changed the calculus on Iraq.

My point being: Any what-if alternative-to-OIF scenario must include a noncompliant Saddam in power *and* factor the reactions that Saddam would have compelled from us due to the US's deep and toxic entanglement with Iraq.

It's amazing to think now that, after the Gulf War ceasefire, we allowed the American relationship with the Middle East to be determined by Saddam. It's even more amazing that OIF critics claim we should have passively allowed Saddam to control how we crash-landed with him, too.

Yeah, context needs to be restored to the OIF discussion.