by Colonel Gary Anderson
Download Full Article: A Retrospective on Combat in Iraq
When bombs began to fall on Baghdad on March 19th, 2003, I was doing some commentary with NPR anchor Neal Conan who was broadcasting a description of the kick-off of the war. One observation that I made to him that night was that, once the first shots in a war are fired, the plans of the side that initiates the fighting are subject to a series of permutations that the planners could not have predicted. I went on to further observe that, the longer a war lasts, it becomes subject to more and more permutations. As we near the August 31, 2010 deadline for the end of combat operations in Iraq, this long war has seen more than its fair share of ironic twists.
No-one in his right mind sets out to start a long and bloody war. Most planners have visions of short and glorious affairs. In every major conflict of the Twentieth Century, the war plan of the nation that initiated the conflict called for a short campaign. In fully sixty percent of those cases the war lasted longer than a year; and in eighty percent of those the initiating nation lost the war. Of those nations that lost long wars that they started, one hundred percent experienced regime change.
Download Full Article: A Retrospective on Combat in Iraq
Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps officer. He teaches a course in Alternative Analysis and is a Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
About the Author(s)
Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps Colonel who has been a civilian advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs.