In the past I have complained that the Bush administration did not seem to have a plan for the occupation of post-invasion Iraq. Today I stand corrected. According to a July 23 Washington Post article about the occupation, which includes comments by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, it turns out they did have a plan, it was just a very bad plan, with no provisions for contingencies. The CIA and State Department had warned DoD before the invasion that the things we are experiencing now – guerilla attacks on US forces, deterioration of infrastructure, the rise of Islamist extremists – were all likely possibilities. The State Department even had a team in place to address them. But thanks to political turf battles the State Department was not included in the planning process. Here’s a link to the article. Here are a few choice excerpts, with my comments:

Before the invasion, for example, U.S. intelligence agencies were persistent and unified in warning the Defense Department that Iraqis would resort to "armed opposition" after the war was over. The Army's chief of staff warned that a larger stability force would be needed. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his team disagreed, confident that Iraqi military and police units would help secure a welcoming nation.

I don’t care how confident you are, you should always have a backup plan in case your assumptions are wrong.

The State Department and other agencies spent many months and millions of dollars drafting strategies on issues ranging from a postwar legal code to oil policy. But after President Bush granted authority over reconstruction to the Pentagon, the Defense Department all but ignored State and its working groups. In addition to believing that Iraqi soldiers and police officers would help secure the country, they thought that Iraqis would embrace the American invaders and a future marked by representative government, civil liberties and a free-market economy, and that Iraqi bureaucrats, minus a top layer of Baath Party figures who would quit or be fired, would stay on the job.

And they say liberals are naively optimistic!

Career civil servants who had helped plan U.S. peacekeeping operations in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo said it was imperative to maintain a military force large enough to stamp out challenges to its authority right away. Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, then-Army chief of staff, thought several hundred thousand soldiers would be needed. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz rebutted him sharply and publicly. "It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army," Wolfowitz told the House Budget Committee on Feb. 27. "Hard to imagine."

Wolfowitz has obviously never played Risk™. You always move in reinforcements after you capture a country!

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, who was appointed to be the first civilian coordinator in the occupation, said in an interview that he asked Wolfowitz for an expert on Iraqi politics and governance. Wolfowitz turned not to the roster of career specialists in the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau, but to a political appointee in the bureau: Elizabeth Cheney, coordinator of a Middle East democracy project and daughter of the vice president

So rather than pick somebody with training and experience, Wolfowitz hired someone with family connections. I guess I'm not surprised; that's what the Republican Party did when they nominated George W. Bush instead of John McCain. It's one thing when the government implements policy I disagree with. That's just part of living in a republic. But I expect them to implement policy effectively, and so far Bush administration, particularly the Defense Department, has not done that. Their Iraq policy has been characterized by ideology instead of practicality and assumptions based on beliefs instead of hard facts. In the long-term this is going to cause severe damage to the national security and economic interests of the United States. But the short-term consequences are even worse: American servicemen are dying needlessly because their civilian bosses in Washington screwed up.
- posted by truthspeaker    Comments