Communication ought to be a straightforward affair, but it often isn’t – even when matters of great national import are at stake. On the 1st of July, 1863, Confederate Lieutenant General Richard Ewell, commanding the II Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia approached the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania from the north. Having smashed the Union XI Corps, and elements of the I Corps from their blocking positions and driven them to a hasty defense atop Cemetery Hill south of town, he paused to rest his forces and consolidate his gains.
ANV commander General Robert E. Lee immediately saw the tactical advantages of the ground occupied by the demoralized Union defenders and sent an order to Early earnestly desiring him to assault the forces assembled there “if practicable,” but to avoid a general engagement until the rest of the marching Confederate divisions could be brought up. The II Corps had been commanded by the fiery Stonewall Jackson until his death by friendly fire at Chancellorsville the month previously. Many historians have argued that had Jackson lived, Cemetery Hill would have been carried on the afternoon of 1 July 1863. In the event, Ewell found Lee’s ambiguous request impracticable.
The northern troops fortified their defensive redoubts, US General George Meade rushed his Army of the Potomac to their succor and two hot and fiery days later Lee withdrew the wreckage of his army from the field, leaving the flower of Virginian youth baking in the summer sun between Cemetery Hill and Seminary Ridge. US history had turned on the musket ball fired from a private soldier’s rifle and over-genteel language from a supporting commander.
Nothing ever seems to change:
A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to
This all occured four years ago. Beating up your opponent or defending your position on something that occured four years ago is just silly, and as you said, has nothing to do with where to go from here.
I suspect that you’re dead on on the reasons for this leak… salvaging credibility, and jostling for historical advantage. Fortunately, it’s a little early for the history of the GWOT to be written.
Jim C
There’s Jubal Early and Richard Ewell but I have not hear of Richard Early.
Bremer must be getting ready to job hunt.
Speaks to the importance of getting the language right
Thanks, I’ll fix it.
I have never been able to understand this point of reason; disbanding Saddham’s army was a very bad thing?
What is so interesting about this line of reasoning is if it was such a bad thing than why is it so hard to train up a new Army and Police force? You would think the same guys would come back and use their skills and guns to defend their country in the new Iraqi army…
No one has ever replied to this querry.
I do not understand why disbanding an Army that fought against us and ultimately the people of Iraq was such a disaster… Maybe we should have set up check points and disarmed every weapon carrying male flowing back into their communities… Yeah right, just after the U.S. military made the rain fall.
I would be more than willing to hire every former Iraqi Army person to link arms at the border and stop the infiltration of foreign fighters and equipment into their country. Would that count?
The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents
In addition, I read a score of articles during the hot engagement in Iraq of conscripted men being forced to stay in their positions by officers in their rear that would shoot them if they turned away from the battle. These conscripted soldiers are now outlaws with guns?
With all the talk recently on this blog about detailed military contingency plans for any conflicts with many countries, I find it ironic if not humorous to now be led to believe that only a weak, ambiguous message from Bremmer led to the dismantling of the Iraqi army.
In fact, post-invasion planning for any country includes provisions for handling the country’s military, its law enforcement, and its infrastructure. This is pretty basic planning stuff. Therefore, a weak communiqu?ɬ
With all the talk recently on this blog about detailed military contingency plans for any conflicts with many countries, I find it ironic if not humorous to now be led to believe that only a weak, ambiguous message from Bremmer led to the dismantling of the Iraqi army.
In fact, post-invasion planning for any country includes provisions for handling the country’s military, its law enforcement, and its infrastructure. This is pretty basic planning stuff. Therefore, a weak communiqué would hardly tip any balance.
While Bremmer and the CPA were an unmitigated disaster, they were not alone in their faults. Many other less-than-innocent officials have shamelessly tried to distance themselves too. Essentially, either the planning was severely flawed, incomplete, or as I believe, it was mostly ignored by many at the highest levels who should have known better.
Furthermore, regardless of the efficacy of Iraq’s former military, when military jobs are summarily eliminated and disgruntled, armed men sent home to be idle without pay or purpose in a lawless community with ancient animosities, their weapons and massive ammo dumps are left and ignored, even the casual observer will tell you that is a recipe for disaster. And it was. And it continues.
I also find it ironic to rehash a communication and a Civil War battle of an earlier century, only to want to sweep under the rug and forget a communication and major mistake of four years ago. Regardless who is to blame, serious mistakes were made and men died. I for one will not forget that, even as we move on forward. We cannot ever learn from our mistakes and make future corrections if we so quickly ignore mistakes.
In the 1980’s and ’90’s, during its various plannings and forays into nation-building, the United States learned the importance of Disarm, Demobilize, and Retrain (DDR). The program was to disarm, but instead of sending the conquered troops home, it was to continue to control and monitor them by feeding, paying, and billeting the old army. Then put them into a long-term program of transition to be reintegrated into society. In Iraq, we apparently forgot or ignored that fundamental and successful DDR policy, and it shows in our blood. So let us not forget the mistakes made so we can do far better in our next conflict and invasion.
I guess I continue to believe that, despite the number of new recruits to the “that was a bad idea” chorus over the years, it was nothing like a no-brainer at the time it was being made. The same I believe to be true about the decision to conduct what was supposed to be a security clean up, but what ended up being an occupation, with only 140k troops (plus coalition allies). The fact of the matter is that our army was not – is not – large enough to support the kind of force presence that Gen Shinseki predicted would be necessary. We’d have to have pretty much all of them over there “for the duration.”
That might have worked in a shorter time, with less cost. But then again it might not have done, and we’d have been critically vulnerable elsewhere.
History only moves down one path, so it’s hard to know what outcome might have resulted if we had preserved the IA’s integrity, or even if that would have been possible. So much of this second-guessing is mere fault finding and distancing. It’s not particularly surprising, given human nature.
But neither is it ennobling.
“But then again it might not have done, and we?
“But then again it might not have done, and we’d have been critically vulnerable elsewhere.”
Korean Peninsula
Balkans
Central Europe
Latin America
Africa
Instability in any one of these places only encourages would-be bad actors there
You go to war with the existing obligations you’ve already got to juggle, not the obligations you wish you could ignore on a whim.
CPT J , your last post gets to why this argument is actually very important. The architects of these mistakes should not be allowed to get a pass for making them. Rumsfeld. Bremer, Wolfwitz. and the rest made some pretty bad decisions. They get their book deals, and their money and the nation has to live with the results of their mistakes-its not right.
Keeping the Iraqi Army on a decent pay roll, putting them to work on OUR projects and keep the iraqi people in the box could not have worked out any worse than letting them all go.
As for the other obligations, with the exception of Korea however, we would have been no more or less vunerable in the other locations if we had used the troop numbers the original OPLAN called for.
Lex,
I am not into “enobling” anyone. What I want to know is how many troops will it take to stop the carnage, how many Iraqi troops will it take to protect their borders, to stop the flow of foreign fighters into their country, how many will allow the political process to go on without the sectarian violence, will allow the fair share of wealth to seep to the Sunni provences without the corruption laced with violence?
I surely would like to know these things. That is why I am so endebeted to Bill Ardolino et al as they seem to be the reporters that are willing to tell the truth.
I swear to God,if Bill told me to hang it up, I would…
Skip, I do see your point. Especially about the CYA book deals. I don’t know whether keeping the Iraq Army in place was the right move or not. Either way, we’d still have had to rebuild their NCO corp, and we’d still have had to deal with corrupt Baathist leadership elements trying to make a comeback. At least we are making progress with an army that fights and acts more like a nation–certainly more than the police.
But I think what Lex was trying to emphasize is that once committed, strategically we could not afford to draw away forces that were already providing stability elsewhere –without risking escalating consequences. The reality of their actual value in place relative to supporting Iraq might be minimal. But a local/regional troublemaker acting on the temptation of a perceived power vacuum is a predictable and avoidable risk. The U.S. has to think globally, but the non-AQ bad guys still act locally. We can’t ignore opportunism there while we fight the main theater in Iraq and Afganistan.
Skippy-san: you say “Rumsfeld. Bremer, Wolfwitz. and the rest made some pretty bad decisions. ”
Please recall that McNamara made more than his share, as did Aspin, Perry and Cohen. And lets not forget Clark Clifford and Harold Brown. All stellar perfomers in their own rights. All SecDefs under Democrat Presidents.
CWO-4
Its not a party thing-its an accountabilty thing. The military has it, Senior Civilian service does not. So Johnson had his share of sycophants too. What does it prove except that Presidents are not infallible in making foreign policy decisions and the cost of their mistakes is very high. Neirther party qualifies for sainthood. A pox on both their houses.
However, in one respect you bring up an interesting historical parallel between Bush and Johnson. They were both Presidents who set out to accomplish a lot, but in the end accomplished little for the United States itself because they became sidetracked by a war.
And if you think about they both used the domino theory as their primary justification for continuation………………….
re: “They were both Presidents who set out to accomplish a lot, but in the end accomplished little for the United States itself because they became sidetracked by a war.”
Skippy-san’ing to the end? Maybe we ought to leave the history writing to the historians. They’ll be less attached to the partisan emotions of the moment.
And perhaps less personally invested.
I dunno Lex, every History Professer I ever had was more partisan than any card carrying political hack from Party HQ. After all, history IS written in most cases by the victors…
Of course, you could make the old argument of “those that can do, those that can’t teach…”. Sort of explains why I didn’t like my professors much…
One should not have to silence an idea he fervently believes in.
Or to quote my Canadian namesake: “Unfortunately, the legacy of Karl Rove and George Bush involves most of the rest of the world, so it is in everyone’s interest that they not be allowed to write the first draft of that history. ”
Besides, we are all personally invested. I just want a better return on my investment-than I have been getting for the last few years.
funny you should mention the emotional investment, especially regarding a bunch of Virginians getting their butts whupped.
(snark for illustative purposes only, absolutely no denigration of the sacrifices of the Army of Northern Virginia to be construed…)
So you want a pound of flesh do ya? OK, let’s start with all the peacenik mutherforkers we had to drag through the cold war, who were never held to account for the costs of their perfidy. Can we ignore William Jefferson Blythe’s dereliction of duty? Jimmy Carter planted the seeds of this war, but Blythe watered them. How about our “lose at all cost” demoncrat congress?
This is just another rubber-turkey story. The problems inherent in dealing with an intact Iraqi Army, if such a thing existed, would have been far greater than how to employ them as a forced labor body. We’d have the burr of bathism under our saddle forever, had we done that.
Finally, SS, we are NOT “all personally invested”. Relatively few of us are personally invested. Casting a wide net, I’d say less than ten percent.
Reminds me of a story: There was a man once who believed fervently in the sacred sap of the tree of life. Refused to be silent about it. Even in the institution.
MajMike, as a Virginian it was only the most recent historical example that came to mind
A couple of points here….
First, 20/20 hindsight is a pretty cheap commodity. I personally thought mounting a campaign in Iraq was a good follow-up to the Afghanistan campaign. Iraq was the logical next base for Al Quaeda forces, as it was already engaged in a low-level conflict with the United States. In principle, winning in Iraq would deprive Al Quaeda of a base, end the committment of our forces to pin down Saddam Hussein, and give us the central position in the Middle East….we would be able to strike east into Iran, west into Syria, or south into Saudi Arabia as required.
Second, a full dismissal of the Iraqi Army was a mistake. In particular, the officer corps should have been held. Officers hold substantial social position in many societies, and are natural leaders of opposition movements. Keep them neutralized, and you have put a spoke into the wheels of any opposition.
It’s rather like the opening moves of the Great Unpleasantness Between the States. There were a lot of Southern-born officers – one COL R. Lee among them – who were not willing to draw sword against their home states, but who WERE willing to take a posting to the West where they could sit the war out. General Scott refused all such requests…and thereby provided the Confederacy with an officer cadre that gave the Federals fits.
the officer corps WAS being held.
or better i should say, “a good number of the officer corps of the regular Iraqi military” WERE being held. at Camp Bucca. got the grid right here.
and these were the ones who followed Coalition orders and surrendered. demonstrably not so stupid at all. did i mention they were somewhat grateful and obedient? and many of whom spoke passable english?
had them right there. could have used them for something. i know they were wondering about future employment.
My error of terminology. The Iraqi officer corps should have been retained in service…under American senior command.
I’m certain we could have found something for them to do. If nothing else, we could have deployed them to help in Afghanistan.
Casca,
The seeds of this war were planted long before Jimmy Carter. They were planted in 1956 when the United States refused to support Great Britain in maintaing a colonial presence in the Middle East . The fertilizer, so to speak, came in the 1960’s when the withdrawal from East of Suez came and a whole host of nations became independent 70 years too early.
Like I said before there is plenty of historical blame to go around here-but that has little use in getting to the heart of the current predicament.
1) Terrorism as a threat to the United States is not going away no matter what happens in Iraq. Even if Al Quaeda in Iraq is gone tomorrow, there are still plenty of other good places it can and will regenerate. The plot in Germany proves that.
2) We are in for a long occupation it seems. If we are then it would be a lot better if the President of the United states would make the choice to resource his armed forces for that long occupation rather than to continue to get by on the margins. That one choice alone-which is not able to be blamed soley on Clinton anymore-has and will continue to have lasting effects on the efforts of the US in the out years.
3) Islam and economics are the key to reducing terrorism to a manageable level (I do not believe it will be able to be totally eliminated). Since the 600+ million Muslims cannot be killed off, the only other alternative is to reduce the religion to being irrelevant-and that comes through economics. When people have things to lose they tend not blow themselves up. Without a real attempt to level the playing field and address the gap between haves and have nots the West will never get ahead of the problem.
And the war will go on and on and on and on without end.
And deep down, Americans don’t want that-peaceniks or otherwise.
Skip, on your item number 2 are you so very sure? Clinton cut the post-Desert Storm army head count from 18 divisions to 10 while taking an acquisition holiday. Is it your contention that Bush could have raised and equipped 8 new divisions – 80,000 more soldiers – of volunteers over the last three years? When the army has, for the most part, just met recruiting quotas for the 10 divisions in being?
I know he was your bubba and everything. It just seems sort of far fetched.
To me.
After 9-11? Y0u bet he could have sold it. As for being able to recruit to that number, we recruited to larger numbers during the 80’s as did the Navy and the Air Force. Congress was practically falling all over itself to give the military more money. Personnel increase could have been in there.
At a minimum, Rumsfeld could have let end strength in the other services stay where it was and the President always had the authority to mobilize the Army reserve for at least 2 years- or more with Congress consent. That would have bought time to get the numbers up.
Plus I would remind you that the actual impetus for starting to cut in Army division strength came from GWB’s dad in his FY92 budget-the so called Base Force.
The Clinton cuts could have been stopped at any time by the Republican Congress begining in 1994 and they were also quietly aquiesced to by the JCS at the time. Probably because we were more concerned about being first to the finish line to prove who could let the most women get the most good deals rather than focusing on actual readiness.
Don’t forget what GWB’s SECDEF had on the table for the QDR in 2001. Clnton had nothing to do with that. Fate was the only thing that saved all the Armed Forces from a much deeper cut.
Knowing after 9/11 that we’d need another 80k soldiers would have taken a rather unprecedented degree of prescience, don’t you think? After all, Afghanistan fell to 10,000 Rangers and SOF in a month and a half. The scope of the resistance in Iraq wasn’t clear until the summer of 2004. By then the “fiasco” scenario had been embedded in the public conscience by a relentless media drumbeat, augmented by partisan concerns that what was good for Bush was somehow bad for the country. The post-9/11 surge of public patriotism had largely fizzled. By the fall of 2004 the stories were already been written about the army’s pressure to make quota.
As for the drawdown, you know perfectly well that President takes the NIE and forms the NSS using it in his first 150 days. He formulates the PRESBUD, and Congress only tinkers around the edges, adding and subtracting from favored programs.
Examining the Reagan build-out in the 80’s without reference to the post-Vietnam draw down and the economic malaise of the Carter years seems altogether too convenient to your cause, Skip. That draw down, and the Reagan years were anomalies driven by the geopol. GW Bush may have started down the peace dividend path but Bubba took it to the hole, and he took the rest of us with him. No one knew that was a bad call at the time, but we’re paying the price on it now and it’s disingenuous to suggest that a 45% peacetime cut of head count could be made up in war time using a volunteer force.
You lived through those days. Squadrons and in fact whole air wings went into preservation for months for lack of funds to operate. How can you forget what that was like?
I know we often disagree, but it’s almost always in good faith. It’s hard for me to believe that you actually believe any of what you’ve written here.
“…but Bubba took it to the hole,…”
Was that strictly necessary, Cap’n?
Yea I lived through the those days and I am at a loss to understand why you think I am somehow a Clinton supporter. I was and remain opposed to most of his “military as a social experiment” agenda and the whole cutting people program. I watched a lot of good guys get IRAD’ed as I am sure you did.
What I get tired of though, is the idea of transferring all the blame to Clinton while ignoring the role that others played in the the reductions. The military itself made some pretty boneheaded decisions in the 90’s-not all of which were orginated at the White House. A lot of the improvements that are in place today are out of a recognition that we could have done better then. Our current flag leadership has said as much in public forums. Our flag leadership then should have been screaming bloody murder- or at the least getting retired flags out there to bang on desks. Remember what happened in 1998 when the JCS finally got a spine? The 99 and 2000 budgets grew. ( It probably did not hurt that Clinton was in trouble politically, but whatever works).
I think that even GWB’s Dad had been re-elected the force would have gotten smaller-not as much to be sure, but the pressure to balance the budget and cut taxes would have been intense-especially as die hard Republicans kept would have kept throwing his ( I beleive) courageous decision to raise taxes in his face.
The hindsight record now is pretty clear that in 2002, the military wanted to execute the OPLAN with more troops and it was vetoed in the SECDEF’s office. I agree that it was hard to see that the Iraqis would be so stupid as not to sieze the opportunity given to them, but there were voices that were pointing that out-particularly within the Army in the late fall of 2002.
Bush came into office pledging to re-vitalize the military and fix the “broken military”. Those were his words. The actions of those he appointed to do his bidding were exactly the opposite-from personnel, to benefits, to end strength the actions were 180 degrees out from the rhetoric. The documentation is there, if anyone wants to look. The second tier management at the time earned every bit of the scorn that has been directed at them IMHO.
An 80,000 person increase in Army end strength over five years was doable -because it was done before. Also, I have no problem with a draft if the number of volunteers is not enough.
The point was though that Rumsfeld and the rest of the herd was fixed upon cutting people because they were “expensive”. I submit the money is there-the government just has to after it.
I really do believe what I write here. I have evolved as I get older, I will admit that-and politically I am a lot more open minded than I was 20 years ago. I regard that as an improvement.
It’s not the things he doesn’t know. It’s the things he knows, that just aren’t true.
Hi Skippy,
Your number 3 is decidedly Marxian – no slur intended – can one assume you also believe economics (or “our capitalism”) is the “religion” of North America and will ensure our continued existence? Your solution to the problem appears to reduce the issue to creature comforts – surely you’ll admit the evidence in human history points elsewhere. If you were correct then only the poor & dispossessed would commit crimes. As to the oft tried “Leveling the playing field”; it’s also the ideal of every thief and worse.
Tom G.
If the gap between the standards of living of the industrialized world and the rest of the world is not addressed-then terrorism will have the lifeblood of resentment on which to feed.
I’m not advocating Marixan ideas at all. Economic inequality is the oxygen that fed communism however and will feed Islamic terrorism.
Men a lot smarter than me are pointing out that if that gap is not addressed, the seeds of future conflict will be sown.