PART V
Overview
Since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United States was so suspicious of Saddam Hussein that regime change in Iraq eventually became official US policy with the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and after years of unsuccessful negotiations with Saddam Hussein over Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program, the United States ended talks and, on March 20, launched Operation Iraqi Freedom.1 The Hussein regime fell on April 9, and the United States established a transitional government called the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
Failing to prepare adequately for the occupation, the US military and civilian authorities faced an increasingly chaotic situation as the Iraqi military collapse turned into an insurgency.2 Policies such as de-Ba’athification (which removed and banned members of Hussein’s Ba’ath Party from the public sector) and disbanding the Iraqi Army, combined with heavy-handed military operations in the Sunni Triangle, stoked Sunni Arab fears of marginalization and repression by dominant Shi’a parties.3 Senior Iraqi leaders often manipulated unwitting American forces to advance personal and sectarian agendas.4 Sunni-Shi’a violence spiraled with the February 2006 bombing of the Shi’a mosque in Samarra.5 Senior US officials focused on drawing down the US presence and handing over security responsibilities to the fledgling and sectarian Iraqi security forces.6 They rebuffed recommendations by junior American officials to reach out to Sunni leaders.7
This intervention was to replace an existing regime with one more amicable to US interests. Failure to adequately consider war termination resulted in a strategy that fixated on the use of military force, wished away post-Saddam risks, and underappreciated the requirements for a favorable and durable outcome. The critical factors model outlined in chapter 2 suggests that success hinged upon, first, the establishment of a government that earned legitimacy across the political, ethnic, and sectarian spectra, and second, preventing armed resistance from becoming a sustainable insurgency. Decisive victory could have been possible had those two conditions been achieved. However, by 2006 the United States was backing a predatory sectarian Iraqi government that was fighting against a sustainable Sunni Arab insurgency, and Iran-supported Sadrist militias battled coalition forces while participating in the burgeoning civil war.
What Went Wrong?
The existing scholarship is broadly in agreement about why the Iraq War spiraled quickly from an overwhelming military success into a grinding civil war. The Bush administration failed to deploy enough troops to secure the country after the fall of the regime.8 Compounding this error was the Department of Defense’s failure to plan for the so-called Phase IV: post-war reconstruction.9 The administration then stubbornly refused to deploy more troops as the situation grew worse. The US military, meanwhile, had deliberately unlearned counterinsurgency after Vietnam and employed counterproductive tactics that exacerbated rather than diminished the insurgency.10 Within this broader explanation, some view Coalition Provisional Authority chief L. Paul Bremer’s decisions on de-Ba’athification and the disbanding of the Iraqi Army to have made a lousy situation unrecoverable.11 A RAND study notes, however, that de-Ba’athification affected far fewer Iraqis than did de-Nazification for Germans after World War II, and that the Iraqi Army had already disbanded itself.12 These decisions, moreover, were briefed to the Bush administration and approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Ambassador James Dobbins, perhaps the most prominent American scholar and practitioner on post-war reconstruction, largely exonerates the CPA from responsibility for the descent into civil war. After all, he notes, the CPA’s progress ranks quite high in comparison to more than 20 other post-conflict missions.13 The CPA succeeded in areas in which it had the lead. It was not, however, responsible for security.14 Dobbins lays principal blame with the Department of Defense for mismanagement. “Experience in these and many other cases,” Dobbins argues, “has dictated a prioritization of post-war tasks: beginning with security, then restoring basic public services, stabilizing the economy, and finally reforming the political system.”15 Secondarily, he criticizes the White House for giving the post-conflict mission to Defense and failing to supervise the planning and execution adequately. “By doing so, the President took himself and his staff out of the daily decision loop.”16 Had Defense done the appropriate planning, anticipated the scale of effort, and allocated enough forces for security after Saddam’s fall, these arguments suggest, they might have prevented an insurgency or quickly defeated it.
The argument assumes that better planning, additional resources, and more efficient execution would have prevented disaster. The war termination framework developed in chapter 1 and the critical factors in chapter 2 provide ways to build upon the existing scholarship. The Bush administration assumed decisive military victory but failed to develop a strategy to gain the most favorable and durable outcome possible at the least cost in blood, treasure, and time. A consequence of this assumption was the failure to evaluate the risks of inadequate government legitimacy and a sustainable insurgency. As Part VI will show, having better plans and more American “boots on the ground” was not sufficient for success. The Bush administration’s decisions and US actions in-country amplified rather than reduced the risks in at least three interrelated ways. First, US officials in Washington, D.C., and Baghdad lacked the strategic empathy to understand and manage the intense and often violent scrimmage for political power. Instead, senior American civilian and military officials super-empowered favored Iraqi elites, who used such backing for narrow personal and political advantage.
In many cases, they managed to dupe US officials into enriching their cronies and targeting their rivals. This problem damaged the foundations of legitimacy and gave Sunni Arabs a cause to fight. Second, US officials envisioned post-war security and reconstruction as an engineering task: break the problems down into components, arrange them into linear milestones over fixed timelines, and apply the necessary resources to achieve them. American officials did not appreciate how Iraqi elites could manipulate these milestones in ways damaging to government legitimacy. Third, civilian and military efforts worked in silos that were ably exploited by the adaptive Iraqi networks on both pro- and anti-government sides. As the United States focused on the efficient execution of its plans and congratulated itself on achieving bureaucratic milestones, the government was losing legitimacy and the insurgency was becoming sustainable. The Bush administration and its officials in Baghdad had plenty of detailed plans but no strategy adequate to address the dynamic complexity of the emerging conflict.
20
President George W. Bush outlined his core goals for Iraq during a February 26 speech at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. The United States, by force, if necessary, would defend the American people and allies by removing the dual threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and sponsorship of international terrorism.1 The invasion commenced after the Iraqi leader failed to comply with the US ultimatum. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld outlined eight supporting objectives:
• end the regime of Saddam Hussein by striking with force on a scope and scale that makes clear to Iraqis that he and his regime are finished.
• to identify, isolate, and eventually eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, production capabilities, and distribution networks.
• search for, capture, drive out terrorists who have found safe harbor in Iraq.
• collect such intelligence as we can find related to terrorist networks in Iraq and beyond.
• collect such intelligence as we can find related to the global network of illicit weapons of mass destruction activity.
• to end sanctions and to immediately deliver humanitarian relief, food, and medicine to the displaced and the many needy Iraqi citizens.
• secure Iraq’s oil fields and resources, which belong to the Iraqi people, and which they will need to develop their country after decades of neglect by the Iraqi regime.
• to help the Iraqi people create the conditions for a rapid transition to a representative self-government that is not a threat to its neighbors and is committed to ensuring the territorial integrity of that country.2
Colonel Kevin Benson, the senior campaign planner for the US Third Army (also known as Combined Forces Land Component Command [CFLCC]) and the architect of Operation Cobra II (the name of the military campaign), recalled the military objectives as follows: “Destabilize, isolate, and overthrow the Iraqi regime and provide support to a new, broad-based government; destroy Iraqi WMD capability and infrastructure; protect allies and supporters from Iraqi threats and attacks; destroy terrorist networks in Iraq; gather intelligence on global terrorism; detain terrorists and war criminals and free individuals unjustly detained under the Iraqi regime; and support international efforts to set conditions for long-term stability in Iraq and the region.”3
War planning had been ongoing well before the public articulation of goals. On November 27, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld directed General Tommy Franks, the commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), to begin operational planning for the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.4 Franks was no stranger to military planning for conflict in Iraq and was well versed in the governing contingency operation, code-named 1003-98.5 As a former Third Army commander, he would have been responsible for ground operations in the event of war in the Middle East. Franks gave his first brief to Rumsfeld on December 7, and three weeks later he delivered his concept to President Bush.6 The plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), then called OPLAN 1003V, envisioned four major phases: (I) establishing international support and preparing for deployment; (II) shaping the battlespace; (III) major combat operations; (IV) post-combat operations.7
The concept aimed for a decisive victory. Phase III identified two primary goals: “regime forces defeated or capitulated” and “regime leaders dead, apprehended, or marginalized.”8 Franks and Rumsfeld had a series of meetings with Bush to discuss Phase III.9 The five-pronged attack included a ground assault from bases in Kuwait and Turkey to defeat Saddam’s fielded forces and special operations forces to neutralize SCUD missiles in western Iraq. Air and missile strikes in and around Baghdad would disrupt command and control and attrite the Republican Guard formations, while psychological operations would erode Iraqi will.10 Franks continued refining his plan, reducing troop numbers, and comparing force generation models (Generated Start and Running Start).11 Benson notes that the goals and objectives never changed. The means, however, were under constant revision.12 In the final version, Phase III was to take only 90 days and use a fraction of the forces planned initially.
Phase IV would probably require years, Franks argued. The objectives for Phase IV were “the establishment of a representative form of government, a country capable of defending its territorial borders and maintaining its internal security, without any weapons of mass destruction.”13 The plan envisaged that forces would continue to flow into Iraq until roughly 250,000 were supporting the occupation.14 Franks was adamant that security and “civic action” were inextricably linked—a nod to the importance of Phase IV.15 The plan assumed that the Iraqi military would remain relatively intact and be available to provide stability and support to reconstruction efforts.16 Iraqi leaders, meanwhile, presumably would work together with US and international officials to establish a new government. This model, he believed, had worked recently in Afghanistan and could succeed in Iraq.17
The United Kingdom’s prime minister, Tony Blair, tried to shape US decision-making. He aimed to convince Bush on the need for the inspectors to have sufficient time to do their jobs, investigating whether Saddam Hussein was fully compliant with UN Security Council Resolution 1441.18 The Chilcot Report details the points Blair made to Bush during their January 31 meeting.19 Blair wanted time to build public support in the United Kingdom and argued that they should assemble a broad international coalition for legitimacy if war became necessary. He was aware of Bush’s optimism about a decisive military victory. The report shows no evidence that Blair challenged this view or raised the question of war termination.20 French president Jacques Chirac told Blair that France opposed going to war in Iraq unless Saddam Hussein did something unacceptable. UK foreign minister Jack Straw advised Dominque de Villepin on January 29 that it was in neither country’s interest for the United States to act unilaterally. “That would mean the international community losing influence over U.S. actions.”21 The United Kingdom’s Joint Intelligence Council assessed that the Iraqi people would “acquiesce in Coalition military action to topple the regime, as long as civilian casualties are limited.”22 Blair did raise the importance of post-war planning, and Bush reportedly assured him that the plan was progressing well.23 The Chilcot Report suggests that the United Kingdom’s concerns about post-Saddam instability were not a deal-breaker. Instead, the United Kingdom aimed to get its portion of the reconstruction effort right.24
Phase III captured the attention of the Department of Defense and the US government. CENTCOM commander General Tommy Franks recalls, “While we at CENTCOM were executing the war plan, Washington should focus on policy-level issues. . . . I knew the President and Don Rumsfeld would back me up, so I felt free to pass the message along to the bureaucracy beneath them: You pay attention to the day after, and I’ll pay attention to the day of.”25 A RAND study that examined planning for post-Saddam Iraq argues that Franks’s mindset “reinforced an understandable tendency at CENTCOM to focus planning on major combat as an end in itself rather than as a part of a broader effort to create a stable, reasonably democratic Iraq. The result, arguably, was a military operation that made the latter, larger goal more difficult to achieve.”26
As part of the standard military planning process, Franks and his staff, as well his subordinate commands, would conduct war games and rehearsals to test the feasibility of the military campaign against a competitive and uncooperative enemy. They would expose flaws and identify likely contingencies. If necessary, the military adds “branches” (deviations from the base plan to address threats and opportunities) and “sequels” (follow-on efforts) to the operation. In November 2002, the Third Army conducted an exercise called Lucky Warrior that exposed some problems in the CENTCOM plan. Lieutenant General David McKiernan, the commander, was not impressed by the likelihood of a quick collapse and believed that his troops would need to fight to Baghdad. He was concerned about the small size of the invasion force and the efficacy of the so-called Running Start concept. He outlined his concerns to Franks and drew up an alternative called Cobra II.27
As the invasion grew closer, CENTCOM commenced a “Rock Drill” on December 7–8, 2002, to rehearse the campaign with the subordinate commands.28 The rehearsal would set conditions for Internal Look, which was to take place a few days later. Internal Look was a fully computerized war game designed to test the plan and the command and control systems against an adversary playing Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi military.29 It identified issues like the ones McKiernan flagged earlier and opened the opportunity for him to brief Rumsfeld on Cobra II. The secretary approved Cobra II at the end of December but would retain tight control over troop levels.30 The military commands continued rehearsing and refining the plans until the start of the war. Senators Joseph Biden and Chuck Hagel, who were on a fact-finding trip to the region, visited Internal Look. Biden noted his concerns about the lack of clarity on the post-war plan. “Phase IV worries America,” he reportedly told the participants.31
Phase IV, however, received only a tiny fraction of Pentagon attention, compared to other phases. No analog of the deliberate planning and preparation process occurred for post-combat operations.32 “The majority of activities required for Phase IV were perceived by the Department of Defense to be the responsibility of civilian agencies and departments,” summarized a RAND report.33 Phase IV rehearsals and war games that required participation by other departments and agencies within the US government and perhaps some international and nongovernmental organizations could have highlighted potential problems. Nonetheless, RAND notes that “military planners believed such collaboration would not be necessary for stability, reconstruction, and transition activities to succeed.”34 Defense even neglected to assess the troop levels needed. It was “hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in a post-Saddam Iraq,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz explained, “than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army—hard to imagine.”35
The US government never articulated an explicit theory of success for the war, but it is possible to piece one together.36 They presumed that the military would defeat the Iraqi forces and depose Saddam Hussein. The vanquished Iraqi Army would remain intact and, with local police, would support the security and stability of Iraq backed-up by remaining international military forces. International civilian efforts would help Iraqi exiles and internal non-Ba’athist leaders establish a new democratic government that would become a partner in the war on terror. Reconstruction assistance would allow the Iraqi economy to recover. Iraq’s oil wealth would enable the country to become self-sustainable, and Iraqis would take over international aid efforts, permitting foreign civilians and the military to withdraw. The exit strategy, Franks emphasized to Bush, must be based on effective Iraqi governance, not a fixed timeline.37
The campaign plan relied on three implicit assumptions. First, the Iraqi military and police had to remain intact and be willing to provide security with limited assistance from international forces.38 Next, the Sunni Arabs had to accept a much lower share of power, acquiesce in the new government, and not fight back.39 Third, and most importantly, a political leadership based mostly around formerly exiled elites had to earn the legitimacy to rule Iraq.40 All three would have to be true for the US plan to succeed. All three turned out to be wrong, and the United States had no strategy to address them.
General Franks relied on the Afghanistan example to justify his belief that Phase IV would be relatively peaceful and focused on achieving political and economic milestones.41 Did Rumsfeld and Franks have reason to believe the Afghanistan experience was representative of other post-conflict situations, and if not, did Afghanistan and Iraq share unique characteristics amenable to low-footprint, short-duration approaches?
For the first question, the Pentagon and the Bush administration had the benefit of four recent examples: Somalia (1992–1994), Haiti (1994–1996), Bosnia (1995–present), and Kosovo (1999–present). Peacekeeping missions were a lightning rod with the new Bush administration. They believed that the US military was too valuable to be wasted on tasks that other armies could do perfectly well.42 Rumsfeld and other military senior leaders favored small footprint, short-duration post-conflict missions that could be handed off quickly to local or other international forces.43
A 2003 RAND study led by Ambassador James Dobbins examined force levels associated with other US nation-building efforts.44 This study emerged from a conference in May 2003, so it would not have been available to Rumsfeld, Franks, and their staffs during the invasion planning. The information, however, was readily accessible. Bosnia and Kosovo, both relatively successful peacekeeping missions, had force-to-population ratios of 18.6 and 20 soldiers per 1,000 people, respectively. In other successful examples, force ratios of roughly 20 per 1,000 were used by the British in Malaya and Northern Ireland.45 These were large-footprint, long-duration missions not favored by Rumsfeld. For an Iraqi population of roughly 26 million people, a 20 per 1,000 ratio would have amounted to 520,000 troops.
How did small-footprint, short-duration missions fare? Not well is the short answer. Somalia had 5 peacekeepers per 1,000 inhabitants and failed.46 Similarly, Haiti had 3.5 American troops per 1,000 inhabitants. The United States managed to restore the elected leadership but left before durable political institutions could form. The country has been politically unstable ever since.47
The force-to-population ratio in Afghanistan, perceived to be going successfully as of 2003, was 5 per 1,000 in Kabul (mostly non-US forces), but only 0.46 countrywide.48 Iraq was to have a 6.6 ratio overall, with 2.4 per 1,000 in Baghdad. Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz chastised US Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki for expressing his estimate that the United States and its partners needed 400,000 troops for stability operations in Iraq.49 In Shinseki’s defense, the examples with roughly 20 per 1,000 ratios were consistently successful. The low ratio examples, Somalia and Haiti, showed poor results. In short, plenty of empirical evidence suggested that small-footprint, short-duration post-conflict missions had far lower rates of success than large-footprint, long-duration ones. The troubles brewing in Afghanistan should have raised doubts that powerful Iraqi elites could set aside deep-seated rivalries and personal aspirations to work together harmoniously.
The actual invasion force for Operation Iraqi Freedom totaled just over 200,000 troops, with roughly 140,000 on the ground in Iraq by April 2003.50 The RAND study about Phase IV planning notes a CENTCOM and Third Army belief that follow-on forces would continue to flow into Iraq, based on the 1003V projection of a 250,000-troop requirement.51 Whether Rumsfeld or Franks believed those numbers were necessary is doubtful. Franks canceled the deployment of the 1st Cavalry Division as US forces entered Baghdad.52
Perhaps Rumsfeld and Franks had other reasons to believe that Iraq would be fundamentally different than Somalia and Haiti. After all, like Afghanistan and unlike the other two examples, the United States was to defeat the Iraqi military, overthrow the regime, and work with a combination of exiles and internal opposition figures to form a new government. Should they have had any reason to doubt their prospects for success?
In June 1999, then CENTCOM commander Anthony Zinni conducted a classified exercise called Desert Crossing to examine potential courses of action if the Saddam Hussein regime collapsed and CENTCOM had to stabilize the country. The experts compared two approaches: “inside-out” envisioned Iraqis seizing power; “outside-in” imagined a US-imposed administration. The exercise determined that issues such as internal looting, sectarian strife, regional interference, and violent struggles for power were likely. “A change in regime does not guarantee stability,” noted the after action report.53 As war with Iraq became likely by 2002, Zinni attempted to meet with Franks and discuss the potential challenges of dealing with a failed state. The Pentagon reportedly blocked the trip. The Bush administration never studied Desert Crossing.54
During the lead-up to the Iraq War, the State Department developed the Future of Iraq Project, which would identify many of the post-invasion problems the United States encountered.55 The effort had no authority to write a post-war plan.56 It consisted of 17 working groups that amassed over 2,000 pages organized into 13 volumes.57 It got Iraqi exiles, various American officials, and representatives from international and nongovernment organizations to discuss the future of the country.58 Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith reportedly dismissed the project as a “bunch of concept papers.”59 The Pentagon ignored it and suspected that State was not on board with the war.60
Warnings about the potential for post-conflict violence surfaced from a wide variety of sources. Early in the planning, Rumsfeld identified a 29-point “Parade of Horribles” that were risks to success with the military operation.61 Most of these centered on weapons of mass destruction and international reactions. Only one identified the likelihood of ethnic or sectarian strife. None mentioned the legitimacy of an interim Iraqi government. Other agencies pointed out the risks of post-invasion instability. The National Intelligence Council issued a January 2003 report forewarning that “a post-Saddam authority would face a deeply divided society with a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so. . . . Score-settling,” it noted, “would occur throughout Iraq.”62 A persistent debate within the Bush administration centered on whether “internals” (Iraqis from Iraq) or “externals” (Iraqi expatriates) should lead the interim Iraqi government.63 The Office of the Secretary of Defense preferred externals because they could be pre-vetted, so the interim government could stand up more quickly and speed the transition and withdrawal. State and the Central Intelligence Agency, however, worried that externals would have no domestic legitimacy.64
Brent Scowcroft, a former national security advisor to Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George H. W. Bush, was so troubled by the notion of war with Iraq that he penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. “An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.” Moreover, he wrote, “if we are to achieve our strategic objectives in Iraq, a military campaign very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation.”65 Iraqi exiles also offered cautionary notes. “On many occasions, I told the Americans that from the very moment the regime fell, if an alternative government was not ready there would be a power vacuum, and there would be chaos and looting,” claimed Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). “Given our history, it is very obvious this would occur.”66
After Internal Look in December 2002, barely four months before the invasion, the Joint Staff directed the US Joint Forces Command to create Task Force IV to work on Phase IV planning. The task force began to assemble in January 2003. Defense disbanded the task force in March 2003 and supplanted it with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), led by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Jay Garner.67 National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 24 authorized ORHA scarcely two months before the invasion. NSPD-24 gave Defense the responsibility for post-war planning and directed the formation of an office to execute it. ORHA planning focused mainly on potential humanitarian crises—most of which never materialized. “The problem,” RAND’s Nora Bensahel summarizes, “was not that no one in the US government thought about the challenges of post-Saddam Iraq. Rather, it was the failure to coordinate and integrate these various thoughts into a coherent, actionable plan.”68