When Iraq Went Wrong
By TIM PRITCHARD
New York Times
London
OF the many tasks that faced the Iraq Study Group, which is to release its report tomorrow, perhaps the most vexing was pinpointing the exact moment when everything in Iraq started to go wrong. How did scenes of joyful Iraqis pulling down Saddam Hussein’s statue so quickly turn into images of car bombings, grieving mothers and burning helicopters?
Some of those who appeared before the panel argued that it had been a mistake to disband the Iraqi Army after the military victory. Others said there had not been enough troops on the ground to secure and stabilize Iraq. The problem with such analyses is their tendency to treat the invasion and the post-invasion period as separate entities.
That is, the invasion is generally portrayed as well planned and executed, while the post-invasion strategy is characterized as poorly thought out and undermanned. The idea is that hidden somewhere in the weeks and months following the arrival of American forces in Baghdad lies a magic moment when Iraq somehow began to descend into chaos.
In fact, the short fight to get to Baghdad and the long one in which coalition forces have been engaged ever since have much in common. All the information about the nature of the trouble to come was apparent from the very first days of the war. If lessons learned then had been incorporated into military and political thinking, it would have injected a much needed dose of realism at an early stage.
Those lessons were best synthesized in a little-known but bloody battle, fought in an obscure part of Iraq on Day 4 of the war. It was a battle that America nearly lost.
(The rest is here.)
New York Times
London
OF the many tasks that faced the Iraq Study Group, which is to release its report tomorrow, perhaps the most vexing was pinpointing the exact moment when everything in Iraq started to go wrong. How did scenes of joyful Iraqis pulling down Saddam Hussein’s statue so quickly turn into images of car bombings, grieving mothers and burning helicopters?
Some of those who appeared before the panel argued that it had been a mistake to disband the Iraqi Army after the military victory. Others said there had not been enough troops on the ground to secure and stabilize Iraq. The problem with such analyses is their tendency to treat the invasion and the post-invasion period as separate entities.
That is, the invasion is generally portrayed as well planned and executed, while the post-invasion strategy is characterized as poorly thought out and undermanned. The idea is that hidden somewhere in the weeks and months following the arrival of American forces in Baghdad lies a magic moment when Iraq somehow began to descend into chaos.
In fact, the short fight to get to Baghdad and the long one in which coalition forces have been engaged ever since have much in common. All the information about the nature of the trouble to come was apparent from the very first days of the war. If lessons learned then had been incorporated into military and political thinking, it would have injected a much needed dose of realism at an early stage.
Those lessons were best synthesized in a little-known but bloody battle, fought in an obscure part of Iraq on Day 4 of the war. It was a battle that America nearly lost.
(The rest is here.)
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