New at Reason

Ronald Bailey visits the universe next door and considers how a better-planned Iraq war might have gone.

Comments

anonymous coward | August 18, 2005, 6:26pm | #

On the upside, at least when we invade Syria or Iran, we'll know exactly what we should do differently. Right? Yeah! On to Damascus!

Yogi | August 18, 2005, 6:27pm | #

Excellent article. I've heard a lot of people complain about what wasn't done in Iraq as far as planning, but no one until now has told me what could have been done and wasn't.

fishfry | August 18, 2005, 6:39pm | #

I really think this article totaly misses the point.

The arguement that it's ok to preemptively invade and occupy a country that does not threaten us as long as we do a good job of it is nonsense.

Would you have still dropped the "shock and awe" bombs on civilian neighborhoods? Under what principle of moral or international law?

RandyAyn | August 18, 2005, 6:39pm | #

The contrast is rather dramatic.

Of the two main categories of "firing offenses" for Bush: lying vs. incompetence, it seems clear which is easier to prove.

isildur | August 18, 2005, 6:48pm | #

But RA, when he's gone, we'll also lose Jon Stewart's 'cackling GWB' impression, which never fails to make me chuckle.

Eric the .5b | August 18, 2005, 6:53pm | #

I like the article, but I think it would have been much more impressive if written without the benefit of two years of hindsight.

Eric the .5b | August 18, 2005, 7:00pm | #

...Though I'm still a trace amused at an article here purporting to offer the "right way" for the US to run around a-nation-buildiing.

Adam | August 18, 2005, 7:11pm | #

...Though I'm still a trace amused at an article here purporting to offer the "right way" for the US to run around a-nation-buildiing.

Think of it as "hostile-regime-a-destroying."

And, Eric, are you really surprised?

Patrick D | August 18, 2005, 7:40pm | #

I liked the article because it implies a set of assumptions that are simply not valid. The main one is that the war was planned under the direction of competent civilian leadership that understood the objective and defined the mission accordingly, unclouded by politics.

What do you think, Ron? Was the war planned and resourced to find and secure small caches of WMD and hidden, mobile weapons labs?

Or, was the war planned and resourced to overthrow Saddam Hussein and punch a hole in the Powell Doctrine?

Every time I hear one of the Pentagon civilians complain about the ease with which terrorists infiltrate into Iraq from Syria and Iran I want to ask them how the hell they expected to prevent them from entering AND THEN LEAVING with the WMD we thought was there in the original plan.

friendofliberty | August 18, 2005, 7:41pm | #

What about the WMD's? Should your plans include planting WMD's to justify the US invasion of Iraq.

Why do you think this war was about democracy in Iraq? That is very naive.

Shannon Love | August 18, 2005, 8:38pm | #

I don't think Baileys idea of imposing a federal constitution from the get-go would have worked in Iraq. It succeeded in Japan largely due to the cultural peculiarities of the Japanese. Given Islamic sensibilities about the imposition of non-Muslim rule, I think that such an attempt would have been a disaster.

In retrospect, I think that holding local elections very soon after an area passed into Coalition control would been a big bonus. Quick and dirty elections would have given local authorities more legitimacy and they in turn could have elected upper level leaders up to the national level rapidly creating political framework.

alkali | August 18, 2005, 8:51pm | #

I like the article, but I think it would have been much more impressive if written without the benefit of two years of hindsight.

It is truly only in retrospect that we can see that it might have been a good idea to have a plan.

Gene Berkman | August 18, 2005, 9:21pm | #

I think it is pretty indicative of things that we invaded Iraq because of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and yet had no plans to secure the various weapons dumps that were located throughout Iraq.

This is beyond a problem of bad planning. It shows that the "planners" did not even take their own rationale seriously. If the Bush Leaguers really thought Iraq was a menace with large stocks of WMD, how could they talk about a "cakewalk" and even make their plans based on a quick victory assumption?

Shannon Love | August 18, 2005, 9:31pm | #

Gene Berkman,

" It shows that the "planners" did not even take their own rationale seriously."

Actually, if you read the Dufflier Report you will see that the WMD teams operated separately from other units and did not expect to find WMDs in any established ammo dumbs. It was believed that the production technology was hidden away and that only a small number of specialized military units had operational weapons.

I hate to break it to you but we were never going to find Saddam in an underground base stoking a feline in front of giant sphere labeled WMD.

Ronald Bailey | August 18, 2005, 11:31pm | #

Eric:

I know the current column is a lot of 20/20 hindsight, but I did make some of these same arguments back on May 19, 2003--that's more than 2 years ago.

See my column "Freedom vs. Democracy" at URL: http://www.reason.com/links/links051903.shtml

Kahn | August 19, 2005, 1:03am | #

The arguement that it's ok to preemptively invade and occupy a country that does not threaten us as long as we do a good job of it is nonsense.

Maybe so. But if Bailey's alternate universe was real, at least it wouldn't have added massive insult on top of massive injury.

I want to ask them how the hell they expected to prevent them from entering AND THEN LEAVING with the WMD we thought was there in the original plan.

The world may be forever left to wonder what the original motive really was. A management group-think fart?

Chad Brick | August 19, 2005, 3:27am | #

A simple point:

1: War is infinitely more complex than chess.

2: Try planning the 10th move of your next game of chess before you start.

In all honesty, there is only so much you can do before you are just wasting your time. All you can do is take the plunge.

Sean Healy | August 19, 2005, 5:38am | #

I like the part of the plan where the libertarian suggests the best outcome will be achieved by assembling a crack team of elites to make a central plan to impose a form of government and civil society from the top down. I just stopped reading after that, because I knew smart people would be on the job and everything would be OK.

kwais | August 19, 2005, 7:55am | #

Sean Healy, well said.

Also Shannon Love, good points. Are either of you two going to be at any of the Reason readers get to gether?

theCoach | August 19, 2005, 9:33am | #

How about allowing weapons inspections to run their course, or attacking only when and if Sadaam unambiguously impedes an aggressive investigation - something more like the plan that Congress was asked to vote on?

joe | August 19, 2005, 10:15am | #

"I like the article, but I think it would have been much more impressive if written without the benefit of two years of hindsight."

Eric, much of these recommendations were written without the benefit of hindsight, but the Future of Iraq Project in the State Department.

Unfortunately, State was as consciously and deliberately shut out of the operation as the UN, because we don't need those effete shrimp eaters. We'll just send in a buch of AEI interns to help Ahmed Chalabi, and everything will turn out all right.

Eric II | August 19, 2005, 11:13am | #

With the benefit of hindsight, I'm not buying it. Yes, the US would've been better off had it, among other things, prevented massive looting from occurring, had it not disbanded the Iraqi army and initially not been obsessed over "debaathification", and had it taken out Sadr immediately after his thugs killed Khoei in the days following the end of the ground campaign.

But even if these things had happened, I don't see how they would have prevented:

1) A major insurgency from forming among the Sunni Arab regions, owing to the fact that they've lorded over the area for as long as anyone can remember, that they could count on a steady stream of foreign jihadis for support, and that the whole country was basically one large munitions dump.

2) A majority of Shias from supporting leaders towing an Islamist line of one form or another, considering how clerics and religious parties were the main sources of opposition to Saddam over the years, and how poor and backwards the Shias are as a demographic.

3. The Kurds from demanding as much autonomy from the rest of Iraq as possible. And seriously, who can blame them?

Maybe the situation wouldn't be as ugly as it is right now with better planning, but the "root causes" of the ugliness were bound to present themselves once the green light was given.

narciso | August 19, 2005, 10:54pm | #

Yes, having the Baathist dominated security forces; Mukharabat, SSO and Army)put down
majority Shia and to a minor degree; Kurds
rioters; would have gone down real well,
specially considering the fine experience
they had in 1958, 1963, 1975,1991,1994, 1998.
We have some rough idea of how such a policy
would have worked out; The likes of Bell,
Lawrence and Leachman in 1920s Iraq; the
leading Arabist of the age; that ignored the Shias
demands; in favor of the wish list of the Al Kailani clan; which generated the precedent
of a military establishment that the younger
one of the clan; used to impose his own Vichy
statelet in Baghdad; with the help of Arab
volunteers proferred by Arafat's uncle; the
result; Bell committed suicide, Leachman was
shot in the back by a Dulaimi sheik, Lawrence,
well he was outbid both there and in Arabia;
allowing pique to cause the Saud's to depose
the Hashemites and rebrand the country in their
image. The lone long term survivor, then RAF Capt
(future Jordanian military proconsul John Glubb
Pasha) had to deal with the results of this policy
including the Ikhwan; proto Al Queda's infiltration into places like the Ramadi district;
recounted in his now out of print memoir of the era; the War in the Desert

in favor consider the fact; that many of these policies would have been directed by the likes of Eagleton and Bodine; whose previous tenure in country was in the time of the Anfal
Well we wouldn't have to wait a year to confront
sadr's boys; we would faced him at the outset,
and we could count on Al Jazeera, BBC, AFP to
provide the proper spin.
How would you weed out the true Baathists from
the more liberal elements in the security forces;
We konw one of the leading CIA candidates, was
the now late General Al Khawafaji; who was not
ahem; unassociated with the Anfal campaign. The
bulk of the Sunni's; give indications that they
still believe that their fellow Shias in the
majority are heretics; only a step removed from
the Hambali Wahhabist or the Salafi; the words
of Sheik Dhari of the Ambar Triangle; are confirmed

the same goes forthe Islamist elements; the case of Aras Habib and some elements of the Badr Brigade equally apply. Prepositioning equipment, what a great idea; wait that's why we had Bechtel and Halliburton :running the reconstruction effort:
Hell we could have added Schlumberger; any outfit
that would benefit from John Deutsch's advice can't be all bad; the federalist constitution
is not a bad idea; but the Gordian knot still has
to be cut; The entire history of Mesopotamia has
had the minority group ; much like the Serbs in Yugoslavia and the Boers in South Africaunder Ottoman and previously Saracen influence; dominate the majority tribes; including all the resources on
said property