Friday, September 07, 2007
Paul Bremer misses the point
Glenn Reynolds links to this slightly defensive essay by Paul Bremer, in which he defends the disbanding of -- or, more precisely, the decision not to "recall" -- the Saddamite Iraqi army in 2003. He also makes it clear that the Bush administration backed that decision, presumably in response to reports that George W. Bush has said it was contrary to policy.
The nut of Bremer's point is this:
IT has become conventional wisdom that the decision to disband Saddam Hussein’s army was a mistake, was contrary to American prewar planning and was a decision I made on my own. In fact the policy was carefully considered by top civilian and military members of the American government. And it was the right decision.
By the time Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003, the Iraqi Army had simply dissolved. On April 17 Gen. John Abizaid, the deputy commander of the Army’s Central Command, reported in a video briefing to officials in Washington that “there are no organized Iraqi military units left.” The disappearance of Saddam Hussein’s old army rendered irrelevant any prewar plans to use that army. So the question was whether the Coalition Provisional Authority should try to recall it or to build a new one open to both vetted members of the old army and new recruits. General Abizaid favored the second approach.
I'm not terribly interested in who made the decision to disband, or not recall, the old Iraqi army. It also seems to me that Bremer (and others) are correct in their claim that the army had quickly scattered to the four winds, so the actual decision was against the ingathering of the army's diaspora rather than for disbanding a coherent organization.
Unfortunately, Bremer and anyone else who rises in defense of the decision, however it is cast, misses the point. The problem was not, as he suggests, that the original Iraqi army was wrecked and dysfunctional, or that it was "practically impossible" to reassemble it as a fighting force. Stipulate that. The problem was that large numbers of unemployed soldiers pose an enormous threat to all but the most robust societies.
The danger of unemployed soldiers is historically famous. From the routiers who tortured France in the Middle Ages to the rise of al Qaeda in the wake of the war to eject Afghanistan from the Soviet Union, unemployed soldiers destabilize their societies until they are hired or killed or just grow old. Anybody who has read military history -- presumably there are several such people in the Department of Defense -- knows this. That is why many of us who support the war and are sympathetic with the precept that "no plan survives contact with the enemy" are nevertheless appalled that Bremer and the administration seem not to have understood the problem they were trying to solve.
Bremer and the rest of the people involved in this decision thought they were making a judgment about the best way to rebuild the Iraqi army. Actually, they should have been deciding how to deal with hundreds of thousands of unemployed soldiers. Solving that problem did not require intact bases or even a competent officer corps. It only required that we offer jobs -- which could have been make-work jobs for all I care -- to Iraqi soldiers at a sufficiently high wage that most of them would show up to rollcall every day just to get paid. Give them tools to work on reconstruction projects or garbage bags for picking up litter along the road. Who cares? Just get them off the street.
12 Comments:
By 
Escort81, at
Fri Sep 07, 01:36:00 AM:
This comment has been removed by the author.
By Escort81, at
Fri Sep 07, 01:41:00 AM:
Good historical analysis. Let's not forget the worst unemployed soldier of all time -- that Austrian born corporal in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment who served in France and Belgium during WWI. His name was Adolph Hitler.
In terms of Iraq, did the U.S. forces have even partially accurate rolls of the deserted soldiers? How would the U.S. forces ID them if they didn't want to be ID'd, and weren't interested in showing up for a small amount of money at a make work job?
I spoke about a year ago with Trudy Rubin, who is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer on the Middle East. She is clearly not in the Fouad Ajami school of thought with regard to Iraq (I mentioned he was a very much liked assistant professor at Princeton when I was an undergrad), but, in any case, her take on the immediate post-Saddam mess is that the beginning of the insurgency can be dated to a point in time within days after Saddam's statue was taken down -- when the museum and other government places were looted by the general population, and the U.S. forces did nothing to stop them. Who the heck knows?
I have argued previously that true military victory only occurs when the opposing side and its civilian support system are absolutely devastated, and the civilians and everyone else understand the extent of the defeat. Iraq had been more devastated by a decade of sanctions than by any harm inflicted on it during the 3 week war in 2003. Who told the Tikriti-sympathizing Iraqis they were beaten? Maybe they liked the Arab language version of "Animal House" and took to heart John Belushi's line during his pep talk in front of the remnants of Delta House: "It's not over until we say it's over." For whatever their reasons, the early insurgents chose to lash out and had success, others followed, and the U.S. was slow to recognize the problem and respond quickly and decisively.
By 
, at
Fri Sep 07, 11:01:00 AM:
I have long wondered about one problem with the hypothetical 'recall' of the unemployed soldiers that I haven't ever seen discussed: imagine the other decision had been made, even pay them to pick up garbage. After we invaded, knocked over the regime, and the Iraqi Army faded away, the conquering US Army asks all former soldiers who days ago were enemies but now can't really be identified to report for duty, muster in, and be directly subject to our military authority. No matter what we would have claimed we intended to do, would any former soldiers have believed us and shown up? I just find it hard to believe we could have gotten anyone to come back, simply because they would not have trusted for a second that we did not intend to punish them, perhaps kill them. So, no matter how bad the results of the Iraqi Army disappearing to the population, can someone posit a way we could have prevented it once the Army quit mid-invasion? I think it's important, not as a blame game or attack on anyone's motives, but because we really need to know so we can try to prevent it next time, if there is one.
By Purple Avenger, at
Fri Sep 07, 11:05:00 AM:
The Soviets used to use the army to help bring in the harvest in the fall.
Bremer was a fool. Everyone knows a few hundred thousand young men milling about aimlessly is a problem.
By Prariepundit, at
Fri Sep 07, 12:45:00 PM:
Whether the army could have been reconstituted will continue to be a matter of conjecture. Beyond the point of what to do about unemployed soldiers is something that was within our control.
We evidently had planned on using these troops to help police the peace that followed major combat operations. When we knew they were not going to be available for what ever reason, Gen. Abizaid chose to stay with the small foot print strategy rather than bring in enough troops to have an adequate force to space ratio which was needed to control the battle space, relying instead on a more costly whack-a-mole strategy which had our troops having to buy the same real estate over and over at a high cost of blood for all sides.
By , at
Fri Sep 07, 01:32:00 PM:
Well stated...
In relation to a previous question, you were absolutely correct.
McCain did urge for more troops in Nov. 2003, but perhaps overstated his saying 'doomed' to failure.
McCain: Force levels in Iraq inadequate - 11/5/2003
By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain sharply criticized the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war Wednesday, saying the United States should send at least 15,000 more troops or risk “the most serious American defeat on the global stage since Vietnam.”
“Victory can be our only exit strategy,” said McCain, one of the strongest supporters of the war.
cCain also challenged Defense Secretary Donald Rumfeld’s assertion that the 132,000 American troops in Iraq can defeat the insurgency in the country. “The simple truth is that we do not have sufficient forces in Iraq to meet our military objectives.”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-11-05-mccain-usat_x.htm
By Dawnfire82, at
Fri Sep 07, 03:08:00 PM:
Said Iraqi soldiers were poorly paid, if at all, and involuntary conscripts held in check by the threat of force from the regime. The idea that they would have stuck around without a gun pointed to the backs of their heads is a mistake, demonstrated by the mass desertion as soon as they heard that Baghdad fell.
Those troops were not there out of nationalistic fervor or some sort of sense of patriotic sacrifice; they were there because the government, which they hated, said they had to be. I think that the idea that these guys would report back to serve under a foreign, conquering army is naive at best.
As for the 'masses of unemployed soldiers' theory, again, this was a conscript army. Lots of people are 'veterans' and almost every household has at least one assault weapon. It's not like this dissolution infused the population with a great mass of military experience and equipment.
Plus, if we have corruption and efficiency problems now with reasonably well-paid, semi-professional Iraqi police and troops, how do you think a great mass of poor, pissed off conscripts would have behaved?
It's all well and good to say, now, 'we should have done this' because no one will ever be able to prove that that wouldn't have worked better. But at the time, letting the army go was a reasonable decision.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Sep 07, 07:25:00 PM:
We're talking about politicians here. The decision probably was political.
Patton left some Nazis in place to run things in Germany for a brief period after WWII. Patton had no one else to manage things effectively. But Patton endured a considerable amount of criticism from Congressmen and the news media for that decision.
The Bush crowd probably wanted to avoid the same kind of criticism. Remember most people in politics and government are surface thinkers.
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat Sep 08, 01:15:00 AM:
I think that the idea that these guys would report back to serve under a foreign, conquering army is naive at best.
A reliable paycheck can be pretty convincing.
By , at
Sat Sep 08, 05:54:00 AM:
Actually, I think this post misses the point. Those soldiers were not "unemployed" when the army disbanded itself. Saddam was still around and most believed he would eventually return to power, one way or another. Those soldiers did not all go home looking to be peaceable and pick up a steady paycheck; they went home to form a hidden reserve, to facilitate Saddam's return to power.
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Sep 08, 09:43:00 AM:
Anon 5:54 - I'm sure that was true of some of the officers who were mostly loyal Sunni Ba'athists, but the enlisted ranks were Shiite conscripts who had no affection for Saddam. Even among the officers, many of them were loyal to Saddam because he provided for them and it was the best way to survive, not out of personal affection or ideology. No, in a situation like this the enemy soldiers are the first people you should employ or otherwise co-opt.
By , at
Sun Sep 09, 08:29:00 AM:
Tigerhawk,
Yes, they were conscripts and you are almost correct about their loyalties, and had this been a European culture, your points would be well taken. But it is not. There was simply no way we could co-opt these people right after the invasion; indeed, it has only been in the last couple of years or so that we have started to achieve that position in Iraq.
C. Owen Johnson
