Lessons from Iraq – Part 1

by Jack

A clear look back at the Iraq War. . .

After Saddam’s Army folded up a new fight began with what is known today as the “Insurgency:”   This was the name applied to anyone, Iraqi, Saudi, Yemeni, Iranian, etc., who took up arms against the USA and our allies inside Iraq.  But, when we drill down past this one-size-fits-all name, the “insurgency” involved many layers of disparate fighters with varied agendas.   However, in the most general terms, these so-called insurgents were mostly patriots, united by nationalism, and they were fighting to remove an occupying force…us.

The fundamentalist, be they Salafi, Sunni or Shiite were always going at each other.    The only thing that restrained them was an iron fisted dictatorship.  Saddam Hussein knew this and in his own brutal Middle Eastern way, it worked.  He kept the Bathist Party in power and a lid on sectarian violence, but at a cost of human rights.   Saddam was guilty of many crimes against humanity and in violation of the NATO treaty, but he knew how to keep his country from fratricide.   When we took over, we were not prepared to handle the peace because we didn’t understand the Iraqis.  Lesson:  It’s very hard to improvise while occupying, better to prepare and train well in advance.   Good intel is key to success.

The local sectarian fundamentalists under the new Iraqi government was not restrained, and they were well armed.  That was a major problem that cost many lives.  It also prevented any hope of lasting and meaningful reforms.  Fundamentalists are not big supporters of reconciliation, compromise and sectarian unity.   Fundamentalist, no matter who they represented, are people operating for their own self interest and when they are ready to die for what they believe they are beyond the reach of reason!  Lesson:  We can’t deal with fanatics.    We tried and we failed.

At best, what existed after the fall of Saddam Hussein and a decade of occupation was a weak, dysfunction centralized Shiite controlled government serving a population filled with anger, despair, distrust, jealousy and resentment, is it any wonder there was so much violence?

Lesson:  “The United States gets in big trouble when the “marketplace of ideas” breaks down and when the public and our leadership do not have an open debate about what to do.”  (ForeignPolicy.com)

During the Iraq occupation most of our federal representatives, both appointed and elected, that were charged with making the big decisions for Iraq didn’t have a clue what they were doing.   How else can you explain the appointment of a hog farmer as the American advisor on agriculture?  This is a comical example, but there were many others that had deadly results.   There are books written about the plethora of incredibly stupid things we did under the guise of nation building.

But, bad ideas didn’t stop with the Bush Administration; few in the Obama Administration had any better grip on the situation.   Actually Obama made it worse, far worse.  They had no vested interest in protecting the modest gains made under Bush and they demonstrated that by a precipitous withdrawal that broke a lot of promises to our Sunni tribal allies.   Obama’s only agenda was to get us out of Iraq as quick as possible.

He gave little or no thought about what we were leaving behind for the radicals, and of course now we have this ISIS mess and its a bigger threat than Saddam Hussein ever was.  One step forward and three back is not a good foreign policy.

History will label Obama and his minions as both stupid and short-sighted, but that’s slight consolation to the vets who gave their all to help Iraqi’s be free.    The Obama Administration didn’t care that Sunnis were now kicked to the curb by a Shiite government in Baghdad and this was a setup for disaster.   They were oblivious to the fact that this internal violence could still spread across the Middle East in the form of a massive sectarian war of Biblical proportions or in the form of an ISIS controlled country, neither of which is good for US security or global security…thats pretty stupid.

Aside from the coalition, there were always at least three forces at odds in Iraq.  Most of the Shiite militia activity was directed at Sunnis and they killed a lot of civilians!   Most of the Sunni insurgency was directed at the U.S. and everyone else and they too killed a lot of Shiite civilians.  Then there was Al-Qaida and they didn’t care who they killed.  And of course civilians were killed in the cross fire by everybody.  As in all wars, the civilians got the worst of it.  This is war.

Regarding A-Q, they were fighting for a new, idyllic, Muslim empire and we see that reflected today by the ISIS fighters who have replaced them.   And as we’ve sadly learned, they are worse than A-Q, they will kill anyone who doesn’t conform to their version of fundamentalist version of Islam, ala the 1500’s.  This is the nature of their Holy war.    Lesson:  “Counterinsurgency warfare is ugly and inevitably leads to war crimes, atrocities, or other forms of abuse.”

Unfortunately for our soldiers, the great lessons learned from the Viet Nam war were mostly ignored by our political leaders, and once again America had to learn  the hard way… with the blood of the frontline soldier.

Another lesson:  “The secularism and middle-class character of Iraqi society was overrated.” Before the war, advocates argued that democracy would be easy to install in Iraq because it had a highly literate population and a robust middle class, and because sectarianism was minimal.  We were wrong – our intel totally missed the mark on this one.

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