Nope...
and how would you have conducted the war .... did you have a crystal ball that showed that after the dictator was removed the Shia's and Sunnis' would go back to killing each other over their Version on Islam......
not to mention AL-Q and that whole mess ....
...something better; history books and and regional experts. Bush, however, seems to have been consulting a Ouija board or Magic 8 ball.
His father told him not to do this. Powell told him not to do this. Heads of foreign governments told him not to do this. Numerous US regional experts told him not to do this. The reason; Shi'as and Sunni's do NOT get along.
Iran; Shi'a. Saudi; Sunni. Between them? Iraq. Add to that Kurds in the North along with Turkey and it's Kurd problem. Add to that Ba'athists and Syria, run by Ba'athists. The Brits set up Iraq after WWI from the remains of the Ottoman empire and set up Iraq as a buffer state between all of these contending interests. It was a mess and they ran like hell. Ever hear of the Hatfield and McCoys? Mutliply that by 3 or so. Saddam kept order through force.
Now, having said that, I was all for deposing Saddam and imposing order. You liberate people, you become a permanent thorn in the side of fundamentalist Muslims, you change the culture over time. We get free oil. We didn't impose. We tried to finesse a problem that requires a hammer, a BFH.
So, things that went wrong that I pretend I would have done different;
1. Turkey, with elections looming, chose at the last minute to not let 4th ID come down into Iraq from the North. They were the cap to Baghdad as the 3rd and the 7th Marines came up from the SW and SE. They were supposed to catch all the rats (and their baggage, be what it may) fleeing to Syria.
W went ahead anyway. Bad move. Bad timing. We could have waited.
2. Before Bremmer arrived, the US leaders on the ground figured the best thing to do was set up an interim government right away and let the Iraqi people decide what to do with the Ba'athists. After all, the people knew who the worst offenders were. Bremmer over rules this within days and instituted a de-Ba'athification program. Within 72 hours the first insurgent attack occurred. Bremmer gave them no where to go, no hope of pleading their case, of getting on board and being a part of the new government. His policy said to them "run or fight or stand and die".
STUPID. They, like the Nazi's post WWII, knew how everything worked. They could have been put to work, the rank and file, to help maintain order and establish a government.
3. Bremmer disbanded the Iraqi army en masse. 300,000 young men with military training now were without income and with NOTHING to do.
STUPID. US generals on the ground expected to be able to use this man power to help maintain order across the country. After the de-Ba-athification policy and this idiocy, US generals, nearly en masse, resigned from this growing cluster####. Enter Sanchez who had no leadership experience past the division level.
4. Bremmer, to his credit, and Sanchez, to his credit, wanted Al Sadr out of the picture because he was causing trouble. The WH said no. They said no and to this day Sadr is a force for chaos.
Now, lest I come off as some sort of arm chair general, each and everyone of these issues was discussed in fair detail on TV and in print at the time. Some people said we ought to postpone until 4th ID could be repositioned. W said 'Go!'.
Ex-military commentators were incredulous over the de-Ba'athification program and were really exercised over disbanding the army. They said things like "Well, the Ba'aths could at least help keep things running. Not the head bad guys, but the rank and file." They said things like "300,000 idle young men with no jobs is a disaster waiting to happen."
All of them said point blank the first time Sadr made the evening news that he had to go. One guy even said that he expected a sniper would have gotten him by that evening. They said you simply can't have security and order when you allow all these little runts to start to build their own power centers. He was even left alone after he and his goons off-ed other local religious leaders.
So, not one of these are my ideas. Not one is after the fact hand wringing. They were all discussed in fair public detail for anyone who needed the obvious explained to them. Every single one was a conscious decision on the part of the WH.
On top of all that is mistake #5; Afghanistan, the job left undone.
Without a doubt, mistakes are made in war. Plans go out the window on first contact. The enemy has a say in how a battle goes. The problem is that each and every one of these decisions were made from a position of absolute dominance; we could do as we saw fit, in our own time and our own context. The enemy was powerless to influence not only our decisions, but our actions.
One or two major mistakes should be expected and can be dealt with. Three makes it rough. Four and five simply spelled the quagmire we now have.
