Poor Planning Keeps Troops on the Ground in Iraq

The US Army recently announced that all of the 3rd Infantry Division, the soldiers who seized Baghdad from Saddam Hussein’s regime, would be home by the end of September. Now we hear that the homecoming date has been changed to indefinite. These soldiers who were on the front lines, and still are, have been away from their families for about a year. Neither they nor their families know when they will see each other again. Why the confusion and uncertainty? We can blame it again on failed diplomacy by the Bush administration.

Most observers agree at this point that the US needs to keep up troop levels in Iraq in order to maintain security and to combat what the commander of US forces in Iraq, General John Abazaid, calls "a classical guerrilla-type campaign". NY Times, “U.S. Commander in Iraq Says Yearlong Tours Are Option to Combat 'Guerrilla' War” July 17, 2003. Some are even calling for more troops. However, the US has none to spare and many are saying that US forces are already spread thin across the world. The US has 33 active-duty combat brigades and 21 are on duty. Sixteen are in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. Two are in Korea and one in the Balkans. NY Times, July 17, 2003. Congress is putting pressure on the Bush administration to find some way of sharing the cost of policing Iraq. Last week, Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the cost of the occupation in Iraq was as high as $3.9 billion per month. LA Times, “U.S. May Seek U.N. Assistance in Volatile Iraq”, July 17, 2003

Earlier this month, the US went, hat in hand, looking for allies to contribute more than 17,000 troops to a security force for Iraq, but got rebuffed. France and India specifically said that they would not contribute forces without a UN resolution authorizing it. LA Times, July 17, 2003 Colin Powell is discussing the possibility of a UN resolution for this purpose, but it is not clear how likely such a resolution will be received, given the cold shoulder the US has given the UN in the past 6 month. The US has limited U.N. activities in Iraq to humanitarian relief and has sought assistance from other countries on a nation-by-nation basis. Undoubtedly, countries such as France, Germany and Russia will be looking for some concessions from the US in return for shouldering part of the security burden in Iraq. Some concessions likely to be sought would be that any peacekeeping and reconstruction would be done under UN auspices, rather than controlled completely by the US. NY Times, Europe Weighs Helping Out in Iraq, but Under Its Own Terms, July 15, 2003 Even so, it is unlikely Germany or France will contribute troops, even with a UN mandate. LA Times, July 17, 2003

Much has been made by media pundits of the poor planning that went into post-war occupation of Iraq. It is widely accepted that the US Defense Department did not expect the level of resistance to be this high after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Some at the Pentagon claim that the chaos now seen in Iraq is a natural result of a winning war strategy. NY Times, A Perfect War?, July 11, 2003 This argument seems to be, “We won the war, so don’t get so hung up on winning the peace.” But it is the post-war situation that could cause greater instability in the middle east and the world in the long run. While the war plan was sound and very successful, the Bush administration gave short shrift to how it planned to transform Iraq into a liberal democratic nation. Part of the poor planning was the failure to bring allies on board. The only significant ally that we were able to bring along was Britain. While we may have gotten troops from Australia and Poland and gotten political support from Spain and Italy, this is not enough to keep the peace and reconstruct Iraq. Now, because of the obstinate refusal to take into account the concerns of the international community before the war, the US is isolated and cannot gain the support it needs to do the job it needs to do in Iraq. Perhaps this will be a lesson to the hawks in the Bush administration. Somehow, I doubt it.