As I alluded to in my last post, ISIS will take Iraq and they will take it soon. When they do, it will represent a massive strategic and policy failure. For almost 30 years, our policy toward Iraq has been inconsistent at best. Over the course of the last two administrations, our policy has been an utter failure. Obama's precipitous withdrawal from the middle east is only one of the reasons we have now lost. Likewise, the Bush administration shares an enormous portion of the blame for having muddled strategic goals, poor execution and a generally messy set of policies to handle our inevitable exit. So, here is how we lost.
Shifting Strategic Purposes
W, who I voted for twice incidentally, stood atop an aircraft carrier and declared that major combat operations in Iraq were over. Behind him was a banner that read "mission accomplished." At the time he made that speech, he was correct. The mission had been accomplished. The original strategic goal was to secure weapons of mass destruction and affect "regime change." In the first 100 days of the war, Iraqi soldiers laid down their weapons, fled into the desert, and we watched as Saddam Hussein fled Baghdad. It was touted as the greatest and swiftest military advance in history. It was not, but I will leave that for a later discussion. In the months that followed, we determined that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Hussein had been, foolishly, pretending that there were in order to keep his own people (and Iran) in check.
Had W stopped there, declared victory on that aircraft carrier and withdrawn our forces, we would be in basically the same position we are in today - maybe better. The Shia would have taken over the government, they would have excluded the Sunnis, and there may have been a civil war. Al Qaeda may have gotten involved, but maybe not. In any event, our two stated strategic goals - WMD and regime change - had been accomplished. It was time to withdraw.
We did not withdraw, however. Instead, we allowed "mission creep" to redefine the mission. Having believed that we won the war with such ease, we assumed we could build the nation with similar ease. After all, why withdraw an enormous military presence that cost us so much to place there? Why not try to "establish a Muslim democracy"? Why not "maintain a base for counter-terrorist operations in the middle east"?
And this is where I will always part ways with the hawks. I will confess, I generally approve of America using military power where the objectives are clear, and only where the party in power agrees that once those objectives are met, we are done. Mission creep is insidious and always leads to disaster. Had W's strategic objective been from the beginning "to establish a beachhead in the middle east from which to launch counter-terrorist operations," I would have approved. I would expect the military to devise a set of secondary and tertiary strategic objectives to accomplish that goal. What I cannot abide, is a President and military setting a primary strategic goal and then deviating from it. That is just lazy thinking.
The moment the strategic mission in Iraq changed, we lost.
Failure to use Decisive Force
The so called "Powell Doctrine," named after General Colin Powell, dictates that massive, overwhelming military force be used in order to swiftly accomplish tactical and strategic goals. I'm all for it. We won World War II in 4 years. We affected an end to World War I in two. Yet, we could not defeat Al Qaeda and other Sunnis in Iraq after a decade of fighting. Any way you look at it, that is a massive failure, both militarily and politically.
After suffering numerous military setbacks in 2005 and 2006, America decided on the strategy of the "Surge" in 2007. This was a large deployment of American forces meant to quell "uprisings" in northern Iraq, the same place that ISIS controls now. The Surge was a direct result of the military's failure to predict one of the most common and obvious dangers associated with invading a country - guerrilla warfare.
As our tanks rolled across Iraq, they met very little resistance. Our commanders assumed that this was because of the "shock and awe" of our airpower and the inherent superiority of our forces. In fact, the Sunni-Iraq military had decided that the objective, defeating the U.S., was impossible. So, what they did was lay down their arms and blend into the population, biding their time, waiting to reorganize in smaller groups and strike. Yes, like the Viet-Cong. No, we did not learn from that.
The last command that any general gives when he is fighting for his own land and defeat is inevitable is to retreat to the hills and continue the fight if at all possible. Those orders are followed to varying degrees, depending on the perceived worthiness of the cause. In our own country, for example, at the end of the civil war, Lee surrendered, but not all of his subordinates did. Many Confederates still believed their cause was just and, in any event, they were too proud to surrender. They retreated to the hills or blended back in to the population and became the Klan, the Knights and any other number of other terrorist groups that continued to fight the civil war for another 65 years.
The Sunnis did the same thing. Iraqi soldiers laid down their arms and retreated to the hills to continue the fight another day. We did nothing to stop them. We were content with the thought that we were "kicking their ass," and that they were "scared," or fled due to their own cowardice. Well, they don't look scared now, and they didn't look so scared in 2005 when they were blowing up our soldiers. We failed to anticipate this guerrilla war. It's actually hard to say that out loud, but we didn't, and it led to this result.
While it is true that you should leave your enemy an avenue of retreat, you should do so only if it suits your overall strategic plan. Allowing these men to retreat was a mistake. We should have cut off their retreat, interned them as POWs, processed them and, maybe, released them. That is how you fight a war. That is how we fought World War I and World War II.
Guess what, war is ugly and expensive. Massive numbers of POWs means you are winning the war. It also means they can't retreat into the hills to fight you a decade later. Our failure to use decisive force, cut off their retreat, and annihilate their will to fight cost us the war.
Failure of Will
Once the mission changed and once it was clear to most Americans that we had made some kind of mistake, either in policy or strategy, we lost our will. Losing will in a long, drawn out war is not uncommon, nor is it a reflection of us as Americans. The fact is, we have an uncanny ability to predict the importance, to us, of continuing military action. We also have a tendency to broadcast our will to the other side.
We had an entire election about the war in Iraq. We broadcast our intentions to our enemies when we elected Obama. He won, in large part, because he opposed the war in Iraq. Romney was promising an uncertain result and perpetual war without a strategic goal. I never once heard him mention an actual goal other than to win, or quell the uprising, which was vague at best. Regardless, we announced our intention to withdraw as a nation, and the enemy was listening.
And what were we fighting for? We had accomplished our original goals. Did we really want to lose our soldiers to build a nation for people who generally hate us? Really? The American people answered with a resounding no and elected someone basically unqualified for the presidency to avoid another term of perpetual war.
Precipitous Withdrawal
Obama, of course, withdrew in about the worst way possible. His failure was his inability to appreciate that, even if we shouldn't have been there, we are there now and we have a strong interest in the outcome. Instead, his team of amateurs decided that we would just leave.
It took less than 18 months for ISIS to regain control of the north. It will take less than 6 months for them to control the remainder of Iraq. The manner of withdrawal was terribly short sighted. It was a retreat without any thought to the consequences. The Bush administration made serious strategic and policy errors, but the Obama administration created the trifecta with what amounts to a surrender.
I have no doubt that we will be fighting Al Qaeda now for another 20 years. They will attack us again, and we will suffer again. We will wage war again in the middle east and, we will make mistakes again. But both parties, both administrations are to blame. The rationale behind the Surge was to stamp out "Al Qaeda In Iraq," now known as ISIS. Bush failed, even with the surge, to wipe out the enemy. Obama's rationale behind surrendering is unclear, but the consequences are not. Al Qaeda has won the war because they had the will and the strategic vision to accomplish that goal. Ironically, the entire purpose of the latter half of the war, to "stamp out Al Qaeda" and other terrorist groups in Iraq, has now become the most humiliating part of the whole ordeal. Hussein's forces and Al Qaeda have now joined together to take over the country. As a result, the war will now only be seen as a total, complete and unmitigated failure to achieve any long term strategic goal.
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