Is the "Mess" in Iraq Fact or Fiction? Newt Gingrich, Winston Churchill, and Robert Kaplan Make Their Cases

I was recently asked, “Is Iraq really a mess, or does the media just portray it as a mess?” The knee-jerk reply to such a question would be to blame the media, since liberal media bias against President Bush and the military has been so well-documented in alternative media including Spy The News! However, the recent criticisms by Senator John McCain of the management of this war, which echoed similar criticisms he leveled in 2004, remind supporters of the war effort that criticizing war management does not equate to being anti-war or in favor of our withdrawal from Iraq.

Is the situation in Iraq a mess? Liberals and conservatives agree that it is. The difference lies in what one does with that realization. Liberals interpret the mess as confirmation that we cannot win the war and should withdraw our troops as quickly as possible regardless of the long term consequences for Iraqis and anxious neighboring nations. Conservative critics, except for cut and run advocates like Chuck Hagel, understand that the current situation is a mess, but favor learning from our mistakes and adapting strategy to achieve the original, noble purpose of the war. Both sides have engaged in useless political posturing, with Democrats and some weak-kneed Republicans passing non-binding resolutions assigning blame to someone else despite their own votes for the war in 2003. Republicans too, like McCain, have attacked former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for what they consider mismanagement of the war strategy.

Assigning blame will not make Iraq any less of a mess than it is now, and merely creates personal animosity when the more important matter, fixing the current situation in Iraq, receives secondary attention. To improve the current situation, it is essential to recognize what mistakes were made (not who made them) and correct the mistakes.

Critics seem to be in agreement that the biggest mistake was our failure to incorporate the then-existing Iraqi army and local tribal sheiks in our efforts to win the hearts of the Iraqi people and offer them security. In a book frequently recommended by radio and blog personality Hugh Hewitt, Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond, journalist Robert Kaplan, who was embedded with Army and Marine units in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, observed the following about our failure to utilize tribal leaders and the Iraqi army:

In fact, repression had not been the only tool used by Saddam Hussein. He had also bribed the paramount sheiks of the Sunni Triangle with cash, fancy cars, tracts of land, and other tangible gifts. But the American-led invasion dismantled that entire system. And what had the Americans brought in return to assuage such notables, who for millennia had affected the thinking of their extended clans? The promise of elections? What was that? An abstraction that meant little to many here. In a part of the world where blood was thicker than ideas, it was a difficult step for one Muslim to dime out another Muslim, especially for something as intangible as elections.

Thus the Sheiks and others, driven by narrow self-interest-as if that should have surprised anyone-made it known that they were open to deals with Syrians and assorted other jihadists. . . . It didn’t help matters that the very militarization of the state facilitated by Saddam had turned Iraq into one huge ammunition storehouse for the supply of rockets and mortars to the jihadists, and the making of IEDs. . . . And with the Iraqi army disbanded, there was now a pool of people with knowledge of ordnance and explosives, and the incentive to use it against the Americans.

In Kaplan’s writings, it is clear he is no fan of the Bush administration, yet his book provides one of the best firsthand accounts of what our Army Special Forces and Marines have faced. The failure to respect and utilize local tribal sheiks to suppress radical insurgents was perhaps the most shortsighted error made in Iraq. After decades of oppression and firm control by Saddam’s regime, Iraqis lived in fear but knew who was in charge in their local areas. After disbanding the Iraqi army, we left no force other than the American military to suppress insurgents, something the Iraqi army had been successfully doing prior to our arrival.

Lest one think that the observation of one embedded journalist is unreliable, consider this excerpt from Newt Gingrich’s book Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America:

The decision to have an American administration in Baghdad was a mistake. We seemed to be doing relatively well in Iraq until late May 2003 when the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) transitioned into power.

Instead of the CPA, we should have created an interim Iraqi government in June 2003 as we had in Afghanistan. It took only three weeks to identify Hamid Kharzai in Afghanistan. The people actually involved in Iraq’s interim government in June 2004 were all known and available in 2003.

The decision of the CPA to disband the Iraqi military, putting hundreds of thousands of armed young men out of work, was a disaster that our military warned against. Had the Iraqi army been kept intact-as General Tommy Franks and General Michael DeLong recommended-it is possible that most of the subsequent violence would have been averted.

History, in fact, provided ample tactical and cultural information about Afghanistan and Iraq that was apparently ignored in the design of “Shock and Awe” and other chest-thumping strategies. As quoted by Kaplan, in 1897 young Winston Churchill (in his Story of the Malakand Field Force) observed the following about Afghanistan, where the British Empire was attempting to hold sway against indigenous forces:

A roadless, broken and underdeveloped country; an absence of any strategic points; a well-armed enemy with great mobility and modern rifles, who adopts guerilla tactics. The results . . .are the troops can march anywhere, and do anything, except catch the enemy. . . .

“The unpractical,” Churchill replied, “may wonder why we, a people who fill some considerable place in the world, should mix in the petty intrigues of these border chieftains.” Some, whom Churchill calls “bad and nervous sailors,” would simply cut and run, even though that would be impossible in the circumstances, whereas others call for “full steam ahead,” that is, a dramatic increase in military and other resources until the frontier valleys “ are as safe and civilized as Hyde Park.” But, as Churchill intimates, there are usually neither the troops nor the money nor the will to do any such thing. Therefore, he concludes, the “inevitable alternative” is a system of “gradual advance, of political intrigue among the tribes, of subsidies and small expeditions."

Did we enter Iraq with small expeditions and forward operating bases (FOBs) spread throughout the country to assess and adapt to local tribal leaders and situations? No, we drove impressively to Baghdad in a glorified televised event, captured Saddam, disbanded the Iraqi army, failed to “grease the skids” with the local sheiks who employed small military forces of their own, and then Washington seemed surprised that an insurgency arose. Of course, bribing tribal sheiks sounds corrupt and even antithetical to the effort of establishing a democracy, but in reality a democracy can only succeed when each local tribe feels safe to go to the polls and feels adequately represented in the national government.

The tribes trusted their sheiks, but the U.S. CPA was loathe to deal with them and chose its own representatives for the tribes. We lacked adequate cultural intelligence to make appropriate decisions, and the sheiks and their armed followers were understandably offended. It would have been far wiser to “shock and awe” the tribal leaders with our monetary generosity. Gifts and yes, even bribes, would have made them forget the past payments expected of Saddam and secured their cooperation in securing local villages and cities against insurgents who could disturb this comfortable arrangement.

Was there military intelligence or training material that could have predicted this eventuality? Kaplan quoted the following from the U.S. Marine Corps Small Wars Manual(initially published in 1940):

Hostile forces will withdraw into the more remote parts of the country, or will be dispersed into numerous small groups which continue to oppose the occupation. Even though the recognized leaders may capitulate, subordinate commanders often refuse to abide by the terms of the capitulation. Escaping to the hinterland, they assemble heterogeneous armed groups of patriotic soldiers, malcontents, notorious outlaws. . .and by means of guerilla warfare, continue to harass and oppose the intervening force in its attempt to restore peace and good order throughout the country as a whole.

It seems clear that the Marines in 1940 were already providing keys to success in the War on Terror 61 years before 9/11, Afghanistan, and eventually Iraq. Kaplan and Gingrich also identified other mistakes that we have made that can still be corrected. Kaplan was embedded with a Marine unit in Al-Fallujah and witnessed what he described as progress in the battle against the insurgents there. Just as our military seemed poised to score what could have been a decisive victory, the Bush administration called for a cease-fire for, as journalist Kaplan writes in Imperial Grunts, media and public opinion reasons:

The focus of the media. . .on Al-Fallujah. . .was central to the decision-made at the highest levels of the U.S. government-to call a cease-fire that would end the Marine assault. This happened just as the Marines, strengthened by the arrival of a whole new battalion, may have been about to overrun the insurgents.

To be sure, the decision to invest Al-Fallujah and then pull out just as victory was within reach demonstrated both the fecklessness and incoherence of the Bush administration. While a case can be made for either launching a full-scale marine assault or continuing the previous policy of individual surgical strikes, a case cannot be made for launching a full-scale assault only to reverse it because of political pressures that were foreseeable in the first place.

The tendency of our political leaders to be swayed by media coverage and subsequent public opinion polls, led to decisions that rendered the tasks of the on the scene military commanders impossible. Those commanders are not being allowed to wage brutal war against a brutal enemy. Had we decisively defeated the insurgents in Al-Fallujah, one of the most violent areas of Iraq, the course of the war might have been vastly different than what we have experienced. Newt Gingrich went into more detail about our mistakes in the public opinion war, specifically that we have not waged one:

We also underestimated the effect of the Arab media’s propaganda campaign against us. We had no information program in the Arab world or in Europe capable of effectively communicating what we were trying to do. CPA media efforts were wrongly focused on American public opinion, not Iraqi public opinion. That made it much harder for us to mobilize Iraqis to our side.

In the global struggles against fascism and communism, the United States waged a military, economic, and propaganda war. Yet we have done nothing similarly organized and coherent in the war against Islamists and the rogue states.

While there is much to criticize about the management of the Iraq War, and plenty of blame to go around, the enduring lesson is that in the course of difficulty it is preferable to recognize and mend mistakes than to withdraw in defeat before the stated goal of the mission is accomplished. The stakes are high for our own security, our international credibility, and most importantly, the future of 50+ million Iraqis. The Boy Scouts are taught to always leave a place better than they found it. Regardless of how Iraq became a mess for us or who contributed to the mess, we are now obligated to leave Iraq better than we found it. Removing Saddam was the right thing to do, but we will not be leaving Iraq better than we found it if we abandon it to a Sunni-Shiite conflict that will quickly escalate and embroil neighboring nations eager to expand their borders and resources.

The only asset in short supply for Americans is patience. The media, possibly influenced by the initial “shock and awe” bluster, focus only on body counts, rarely reporting the rebuilding of infrastructure and other humanitarian work occurring in Iraq. But in fairness, the civilian affairs groups that typically provide humanitarian efforts have been largely unable to operate in Iraq because we have not yet secured the country from insurgents. As a result, as Kaplan describes effectively, our military is forced to fight insurgents while also rebuilding villages, schools, and utilities. The dissatisfaction among the troops in Iraq stems mainly from not being allowed to focus on the duty they are best trained for: engaging and killing the enemy.

Why are they not allowed to engage the enemy fully? Because casualty rates kill campaigns, and we are now in another election cycle. It is time for Republicans and Democrats who are serious about national security and winning the War on Terror to stop making war decisions based on small random sampling polls that purport to represent national opinion. Engaging the enemy more fully despite casualty risk, along with our propaganda efforts and outreach to local tribal leaders, can be corrected and proven effective, but only if we avoid a rash rush to retreat.