No we are not. We are fighting elements of his army (those elements loyal to him) and terrorists from outside of Iraq.
If that was there plan all along, how do you suppose we could have prevented it? Be realistic, for just a moment, please.
We could have nuked them… that would have taken care of their army, right?
The fact is, IMO, short of obliterating the Iraqi army, it was not possible to prevent it from dissolving away. The Iraqi army was not “allowed” to melt away… that could not be prevented, again, unless we had killed them all.
Would that have satisfied you? Should we have killed every one of them, used indiscriminate bombing, even when they were situated in the cities and otherwise near civilians? You would not have complained then about civilian deaths, right?
Bush and Co. f***ed up big time … I think many of us can agree with that. They did not provide enough troops (and equipment) in the initial invasion, and grossly miscalculated the reactions of the Iraqi people and the onset of the insurgency. This will serve as a valueable lesson to the US military, and hopefully in the future they will not make the same mistakes twice.
I have the highest regard for Colin Powell and the “Powell Doctrine.” However, the “Powell Doctrine” is not suited for all war situations. There were certainly other considerations in this conflict. First of all, wanting to minimize civilian casualties, and secondly, we HAD to stay, otherwise the chaos following the collapse of the Sadaam regime would have been worse. The “Powell Doctrine” would be better suited to, say, a war with North Korea, where we could go in with overwhelming force, cut off their armed forces, kill them, and then get out, leaving the clean up for the South Koreans. In Iraq, there was no “South Korea” (i.e. an organized group with the capability to reestablish order, stability, and governance). The “Powell Doctrine” could also be applied well to a conflict with China. There is absolutely no way we could occupy China, maintain peace, and rebuild the country. While there is no “South Korea” there to fulfill that role, I believe there are moderate elements within the Chinese leadership that could help to install a much better regime, of course with lots of help from the UN, Japan, Taiwan (maybe), and the EU.
Any military action requires flexibility, and no one “doctrine” or strategy will work in every case. Would it have been appropriate to use the Powell Doctrine in Panama? Probably not, since we were only aiming to take out one corrupt dictator and a small number of his cronies. It was obviously not applicable to Iraq.
Nice post, LBTW. I agree with you on basically all your points, particularly: (a) that more troops would have been advisable (in my decidedly non-expert opinion), and (b) that the Powell Doctrine is a sensible set of considerations to take into account, but should not be viewed as a one-size-fits-all solution to every conflict.
The Powell doctrine. The Powell doctrine. The Powell doctrine. Is Powell the only military leader capable of thinking and formulating a policy?
What about the overwhelming force and troops that the Russians used in Chechnya and Afghanistan? How’s Powell’s doctrine of overwhelming force working out there? Indonesia tried the same thing with East Timor and guess what? The troops eventually pulled out. Overwhelming force for the sake of overwhelming force is necessary only when talking about defeating an army. We had more than enough troops to defeat Saddam’s army. End of story. More troops on the ground will not, however, defeat an insurgency as we learned again and again and again from Vietnmam to the British in Malaysia to the Philippines to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Lebanon to the French in Algeria. Wake up. Political reform is the only way ahead and that is what we are doing. That is what must be done ALL over the Middle East.
[quote=“fred smith”]The Powell doctrine. The Powell doctrine. The Powell doctrine. Is Powell the only military leader capable of thinking and formulating a policy?
What about the overwhelming force and troops that the Russians used in Chechnya and Afghanistan? How’s Powell’s doctrine of overwhelming force working out there? Indonesia tried the same thing with East Timor and guess what? The troops eventually pulled out. Overwhelming force for the sake of overwhelming force is necessary only when talking about defeating an army. We had more than enough troops to defeat Saddam’s army. End of story. More troops on the ground will not, however, defeat an insurgency as we learned again and again and again from Vietnmam to the British in Malaysia to the Philippines to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Lebanon to the French in Algeria. Wake up. Political reform is the only way ahead and that is what we are doing. That is what must be done ALL over the Middle East.[/quote]
I agree with fred just about 100% here.
I would only change “and that is what we are doing” to “and that is what we should be doing more of.” And I would change “ALL over the Middle East” to “ALL over the world.”
Overall, quite well done, fred.
The part about Chechnya simply could not have been better put. Panelak after panelak after panelak after panelak in ruins. State sponsored terror. There’s overwhelming force, for you.
No we are not. We are fighting elements of his army (those elements loyal to him) and terrorists from outside of Iraq.
If that was there plan all along, how do you suppose we could have prevented it? Be realistic, for just a moment, please.
We could have nuked them… that would have taken care of their army, right?
The fact is, IMO, short of obliterating the Iraqi army, it was not possible to prevent it from dissolving away. The Iraqi army was not “allowed” to melt away… that could not be prevented, again, unless we had killed them all.
Would that have satisfied you? Should we have killed every one of them, used indiscriminate bombing, even when they were situated in the cities and otherwise near civilians? You would not have complained then about civilian deaths, right?[/quote]
No, what would have satisfied me is not going into Iraq at all, actually.
And I guess, Tigerman, I resent all of the bullshit propaganda that the Bush admin has put out there for US consumption throughout this entire fiasco.
We’ll be welcomed as liberators - my ass
We don’t need that many troops to win - my big fat ass
Major Combat Operations over - my big fat hairy ass
The insurgency is in its last throes - get real already, bullshit
On and on and on and on ad nauseum . . . .
Well, I’m glad we went in and got rid of Saddam and are trying to give Iraq a chance.
I wouldn’t characterize it as propaganda. Wishful thinking, perhaps.
I thought we would be welcomed… but, being not completely right doesn’t mean that we should just chuck the mission. Hey, lots of strategies and plans and hopes do not go as planned/hoped in war.
We didn’t.
They are. The Iraqi army was defeated. What is going on now primarily is peace keeping and a few actions against insurgents/terrorists.
Wishful thinking, perhaps… but I agree that Bush should lay off such declarations until it is a fact.
[quote]This will serve as a valueable lesson to the US military, and hopefully in the future they will not make the same mistakes twice.
[/quote]
The lessons were learnt in Vietnam hence the Powell Doctrine. The fact that the Bush administration ignored the lessons of Vietnam seems stageringly stupid, especially when Rumsfeld was a player from those times and an advoate of pulling out of Vietnam.
Arrogance on the part of Rumsfeld, Bush’s own limited understanding of anything outside of Texas, Colin Powell’s gutless performance in sticking it to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz’s ideological plans for Americas strategic interests regarding oil, Cheney’s fanaticism, and Rice’s sycophant seduction by power made for a lethal cocktail in a time when rational minds were required. They are supossed to be making the world safer its laughable in the extreme.
The Powell Doctrine teaches the necessity of using overwhelming force to defeat an enemy army and then not using the military to perform peacekeeping actions.
Well, Bush and Rummy were correct in judging that a smaller force would be sufficient to defeat the Iraqi Army. Thus, the Powell Doctrine is meaningless in the context of the current situation, at least on that count.
Secondly, taking our military out of Iraq after victory over the Iraqi Army would have been disasterous. The country would have imploded. If you think the current situation is bad… I think that it would have been much worse without the US troops there doing peace keeping.
Now, I think its fair to criticize the effectiveness of the peace keeping effort and tactics… , so long as a proper perspective is maintained…
However, I really do not understand this infatuation with the Powell Doctrine in connection with the current situation in Iraq.
I agree that Rumsfeld was right in judging he could take Iraq with minimal troops. In actual fact many strategic targets were taken with just Special Forces.
However, whilst the strategy allowed for defeating the army it didn’t allow for taking over the country which was always the intention of the invasion. Take over, oversee a new constitution and elections. These are the military objectives too, presumably, or otherwise Bush isn’t Commander in Chief and Rumsfeld not Secretary of Defense. The Powell Doctrine says that these military objectives have to be clearly defined and be accompanied by an exit date for the military. If the US had followed this doctrine it would have arrived at two conclusions. Either attack with the forces necessary to meet all the objectives or reconsider the strategy on the basis that no exit date was assignable.
I guess you could argue that the nation building aspect is not a military task, but if your intention is to go in and kill all the opposing forces like a street corner bully (Powell’s words not mine) then you probably should be considering peacekeeping in your military planning especially if you are supposedly opening up a front on which to fight terrorism.
Bingo. Including finding and controlling all major caches of WMD, conventional or not. Also securing the borders in order to seal in native insurgents and to kill foreign insurgents before anybody can kill coalition forces. Especially coalition forces that are already resource-poor.
Of course, if your real, true, unstated-because-it-couldn’t-be-sold yet penultimate goal all along is to establish a model for democratic reform in the Middle East, then why would you allow an insurgency cum civil war to take seed and flourish? What serious Middle East geopolitical geomancer would do that?
It’s hard to believe we have Iraq’s interests at heart when we claim to those outside the US we’re there to build Democracy yet wink to Americans that “at least the ‘terrorists’ are fighting over there.”
Christ, give the Iraqis electricity or fry 'em, but if we’re doing both then I think that’s better known as “the electric chair.”
It’s either rank stupidity or hilarious cynicism, by my calculation. Both conclusions belong at Bush’s feet, in one proportion or another, and neither is what I’d call in the best interests of the US.
A couple of other factors that I think are worth refreshing:
If one of the objectives was supposedly to secure the “WMD” sites (including those already identified and sealed by UN inspectors and those that were suspected), then why were inadequate troops for even this simple task allocated to the invasion? Keeping in mind that large amounts of explosives identified and sealed by UN inspectors disappeared in the course of the invasion, keeping in mind the radioactive-contaminated barrels being used by locals after the invasion to tote milk around, etc., there were adequate reasons for swamping Iraq with troops in the early days just to ensure America’s security needs were met with regards to the supposed main rationale for the war.
Most of the views espoused by posters that a large force of U.S. troops would have definitely been necessary no matter what ignore the decisions to get rid of the existing police and army structures. The power vacuum was one largely of our own making. With only a few true Baathists in charge of large conscript armies of non-Baathists, it’s was a major mistake that we released all these guys into the world as unpaid/unemployed/idle potential troublemakers. Likewise, we decided to get rid of all the police officers, down to the traffic cops. In a piece in the Atlantic from last year, there was a very good account of the results on one’s ability to get anywhere in Baghdad once all the guys directing traffic were fired by the U.S. authorities. Every time you read about a bomb killing off 30 guys standing on line trying to get admitted as police trainees, you’re seeing the result of Bushian decision making.
So, we went into the war with inadequate troops to even meet basic enunciated goals of the war (such as securing WMD sites) or even to ensure the peace. We then hobbled ourselves further by creating a power vaccuum – getting rid of all the non-Baathist local folks who could have secured the streets and prevented looting or even just kept the streets moving.
Some further notes on the Weinberger foundations of the Powell Doctrine:
[quote]Is a vital US interest at stake?
Will we commit sufficient resources to win?
Are the objectives clearly defined?
Will we sustain the commitment?
Is there reasonable expectation that the public and Congress will support the operation?
Have we exhausted our other options?[/quote]
Was public/Congress support for the Iraq war undermined by the shifting rationales offered up for the war? In the minds of many Americans, the major reason for embarking on the road was the belief that WMDs might otherwise get into the hands of terrorists. With 50% of Americans now thinking that they were deliberately misled about WMDs by the Bush administration, it appears that the Iraq war is becoming a textbook case for why presidents should be straight with citizens about wars … or a textbook case for why the power to declare war ought to go back to the U.S. Congress.
Wait wait wait. We were welcomed by 85 percent of the population: the Shias and Kurds. We have not been welcomed by around one-third of the Sunnis. That means that 5 percent of the population is actively opposed against us including the Sadr group among the Shias. So 95 percent should suffer because of lack of unanimity?
Second, there has been no shifting in the rationale for this war. Saddam was a threat and needed to be removed has always been the main mantra. Many Hindu like manifestations of this spirit can be seen in the wmds threat, the humanitarian crisis, the UN corruption, etc. etc. but it is all part of the same evil spirit. That spirit is now going going and nearly gone.
We will win. The lesson of Vietnam as we have found to our great dismay with recently released Vietnamese documents and in interviews with Vietnamese generals is that we had won the war but lost the political will to see it to its conclusion. Sad to see defeat snatched from the jaws of victory AND what is Vietnam doing today? Becoming capitalist or exporting the communist revolution to others? So in a way, we have won in the end. Vietnam is going capitalist and is becoming an ally of the US.
[quote]Mr Rumsfeld also admitted on Sunday that it could take as long as 12 years to defeat the gunmen and bombers. But he said the Iraqi security forces would finish the job because US and other troops would have left.
“We’re not going to win against the insurgency; the Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency,” he said. “That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years.”
[/quote]
There it is in plain speak. The US cannot defeat the terrorists (aka insurgents depending on the spin). All of a sudden fighting terrorists is a domestic issue that can only be delt with effectively by the state.
Where did those stats come from? And please do not include those who “welcomed” U.S. troops with RPGs. Gallup has done some of the most extensive polling of Iraq, and even then the picture is very far from welcoming. The CPA’s own poll in 2004 didn’t turn out quite as you depict as well.