One doesn’t have to look far to find all manner of carping about the current occupation of Iraq. Much of the carping lacks any broader perspective, and this lack of perspective leaves one at a loss as to how seriously to take, for example, anonymous reports of Iraqi citizens being abused by US soldiers. Setting aside the morally obtuse, who think we should have just left the Iraqis to the continued ministrations of Saddam and the Baathists, those critiques worth listening to at all generally boil down to a complaint about the competence of the occupying forces.
I think that we are seeing is an entirely predictable result of the fact that the American, and to a somewhat lesser degree the British, military forces are designed and operated as war-fighting forces. This is in sharp contrast to most other military forces in the world, which serve as a combination of welfare jobs programs and, in effect, domestic occupation forces. The US army, at least, does not prepare much for occupation work, perhaps because they find their time fully occupied preparing for their primary function of kicking the living crap out of the opposition force. Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
War-fighting and occupation are famously incompatible with each other – one demands the rapid application of lethal force, the other the modulated escalation of minimum necessary force, etc. A war-fighting army cannot transition, on the fly, from war-fighting to occupation, at least not with the speed and efficacy now demanded of the US and British forces in Iraq.
See what conclusion you derive from the following assumptions:
- The West, as a matter of self-defense, will need to occasionally go in and change the regime of a foreign nation. Unless you retreat into pacifist fantasizing, I think that 9/11, not to mention WWII, demonstrates that, from time to time, militarily expedited regime change of hostile nations will occasionally be a necessity for the continued survival of even the most libertarian country.
- The occupation forces need to be operating at near pitch-perfect levels within a few days of the Dear Leader statues coming down. It is apparently now the case that, once the old regime is out the door, the victorious forces must have the place running at least as good as before, in jig time.
- The war-fighting forces cannot operate as an occupation force at satisfactory levels. The current conventional wisdom seems to be that successful post-war occupation requires administrators and enforcers that speak the language and are conversant with local customs spread throughout the country within a manner of weeks, if not days, and no heavy-handed policing or otherwise excessive uses of force allowed.
The only conclusion that I can draw is that the US, and possibly other Western nations, need to diversify their armed forces to include specialist occupation and civil administration units. Since many of the complaints about the occupation have to do with the lack of intimate familiarity with the Iraqi situation, we will need to have units training up to take over and run specific foreign nations years before hostilities actually break out.
Imagine the diplomatic possibilities! Will the French be offended because we don’t deem them enough of a threat to spin up a French occupation army group? Or will they be offended because we are planning to run France, for a bit, anyway?
The logic of sky-high expectations seems inescapable to me – self-defense requires regime change, which requires expert military occupiers and nation builders, which in turn requires detailed advance training in the language and customs of the nation to be uplifted.
The strategic and diplomatic consequences of going this route are, of course, disastrous. Even worse are the potential domestic effects – having a prefab military junta sitting around with nothing but time on its hands does not bode well for the domestic tranquility, does it?
Of course, in my view, this is all unnecessary if realistic expectations are maintained. Occupation is a tough business, one that will satisfy virtually no one no matter how well it is done. The Iraqis have complained, for example, that we don’t shoot looters on sight, and undoubtedly many of the ongoing problems with electricity and the oil industry have to do with the coalition trying to rule with a relatively light hand. But for every step we take toward greater enforcement and protection (more troops, more aggressive patrolling, shoot on sight policies, etc.), howls of protest will go up from both within and without Iraq.
The key, I think, is to keep your eye on progress towards the long-term goal and to maintain some minimal perspective on events. Sadly, in today’s partisan world of 24 hour news cycles, long-term thinking and perspective always run a poor second to political cheap shots and sensationalist video clips.
There has yet to be any tie found between Iraq and 9/11 (or Iraq and WWII, for that matter). This, at best, justifies invading Afghanistan, not Iraq.
No, it doesn’t. Thanks for clearly stating one of the biggest objections to the latest war.
If the media would only say what the govt wants them to say, we wouldn’t need “prefab military juntas” around. Damn that free press for endangering our rights by exercising them!!
Way to miss the point, Scott.
I was saying that playing the media game of sky-high expectations will drive you inexorably toward establishing large-scale military units with the sole purpose, not of fighting wars, but of overseeing civilians. This is quite the opposite of saying that (as you would apparently have it) the chronic short-term memory problems of our corporate media are the only thing standing between us and Ashkkkroft.
The sky-high expectations were what sold the war. If Bush made a speech before the war saying “Iraq has no WMDs, no real way of threatening us, no ties to Al-Queda, and we will have to occupy them for years”, he wouldn’t have gotten his war.
Is “unnecessary” really the worst thing you can say about keeping “a prefab military junta sitting around with nothing but time on its hands” around? How about “travesty”?
Scott, you are addressing the pretexts for the war, not the expectations for the occupation – two different things.
Not really – expectations are expectations. We were told to expect to find enough WMD to kill everyone in the Anglosphere and Bin Laden living it up in a Baghdad hotel, to be greeted by millions of joyous Iraqis who will love us forever, and to have a free, democratic govt set up there in a week. You may not have expected that, but that was what the sheeple believed when Bush herded them into his war.
“The Iraqis have complained, for example, that we don’t shoot looters on sight…”
…and the media here screams in protest as soon as anything remotely similar to that happens. Occupation is, like you, R.C. Dean, said, “a tough business, one that will satisfy virtually no one no matter how well it is done.” And concerning the expectations before the war – I think everyone expected the US Army to win.
I would like to thank Scott for providing a picture-perfect example of how President Bush’s opponents have played the expectation game to undermine and delegitimise what progress is being made in Iraq. That part of my point could hardly be better illustrated.
Ah, the traditional Samizdata non-answer to an objection.
You never answered my earlier question – is “unnecessary” really the strongest thing you can say against training up a permanent military government in waiting?
Scott, I also characterized the end result of the kind of junta-in-waiting demanded by the perfectionists as “disastrous” and “even worse [than disastrous].” Satisfied?
Let me interrupt the wheel-spinning on this thread long enough to point out that Western militaries are diversified enough to throw out dangerous regimes and supervise the aftermath. It is only the American military, by itself, that is not.
It isn’t going to be, either. We can’t raise the number of troops necessary to both fight wars and clean up after them without a much larger military budget and conscription in some form. The expertise needed for reconstruction duty — from language skills to experience building a modern communications network — does reside elsewhere, but would take money and considerable time to incorporate into the American military.
The Western democracies, plus Japan and a few other countries, do have the ability to handle the peacekeeping and reconstruction chores that most American units are ill-designed for. This is part of what Tony Blair has been campaigning for over the last couple of years; dangerous regimes will be a threat forever if the Americans and British cannot remove them, but anarchic areas and the dangers arising from them will be less of a threat to everyone if everyone cooperates in policing them after large scale combat ends.
Acting on this vision would require the Bush administration to give up the idea that it can do anything it wants at any time, consulting only its own interests. But it would also require European countries to accept a responsibility for active collective security that the largest countries among them have refused to accept up to now. An American imperium is not going to happen; an international order designed first to constrain American options and only secondarily to maintain security is not going to happen either.
Actually there was a connection between Iraq and WW2.
Baathist philosopy (such as it is) was derrived from National Socialism – Jew hatred and all.
I’d have to say about the rationale for Iraq: it is a great location for applying pressure to Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. So in terms of war strategy Iraq has what is most important in real estate: location, location, location.
Most Americans are comfortable with this, because we think it is important to keep the enemy guessing even if Americans are not fully informed before or after.
We are about draining the swamp. Afghanistan was not the heart of the swamp. Americans instinctively understand this. Or else they can read a map.
It’s a cowboy thing.
I am in strong agreement. We’ve got the wrong mix of forces, they’ve been in there too long and I fear discipline is getting ragged. It’s time for the peacekeepers to hit the streets. Use the US troops for raids on strongholds or suspected bad guy sites and otherwise keep them off of police duty. And for damn sure, get those guys rotated. (Didn’t they target September for this? It couldn’t be soon enough from what I’m seeing.)
As to point #3.
I don’t think that is possible without fielding an Army that speaks six languages.
Zathras,
I think you will find the American Army capable of handling the chores required.
After all what Army of all the Armies of the world is most requested for peace keeping operations? Hint: it is not the French. Nor the Dutch.
One other trait you have to remember about Americans. Like U.S. Grant we don’t scare worth a damn. We can take our time and adapt as we go. Or muddle through as you like to say on that side of the pond.
Dale,
I’m a follower of the Great War God Patton:
“Never take council with your fears.”
“self-defense requires regime change, which requires expert military occupiers and nation builders”
Regime change for self-defence only requires the death or imprisonment of the leaders of the previous hostile regime, and preventing the re-emergence of a similarly hostile new regime. The latter only requires a credible threat of military action. It doesn’t need any nation builders at all, and may not even require any occupation, let alone a full-scale one.
To achieve its alleged self-defence goals in Iraq, all America has to do is find all the WMD plants and weapons (assuming any exist), and then destroy them and the Ba’ath party leadership. Once this is achieved, its job is done and there is no longer any self-defence reason to stay there (in fact the opposite).
If it fears the re-emergence of a hostile or repressive regime, all it needs to do is leave a few bases behind, staff them with peacekeepers (whether UN or US/UK), and serve notice that wannabe dictators, terrorist groups or WMD manufacturers will be dealth with summarily.
Where does nation building come into it?
In any case, what makes you think that governments would be any good at nation building, when they are so bad at governing their home countries?
I’m glad someone else has noticed and identified the trend toward empire exhibited by my country’s pattern of wars. not that empire is a pejorative term, but there has been a tendency toward imbalced auto-augmentation in historical societies. the powerful become moreso and vice versa. wonder if this empire will go the historic way of empires, or will it eventually be recognized as a positive influenc? positive. the road to hell is paved with good intentions…
Cobden, it strikes me that, between the credible threat of military action and leaving bases behind, you are verging awfully close to an occupation. That said, there are degrees of nation-building.
Still, if we bail out at a very early stage without ensuring a viable government and society, aren’t we just setting the stage for another nutball to take over and start the whole cycle again.
There is an analysis floating around, I believe presented at the War College, that shows that terrorism and similar threats arise in that area of the planet occupied by dysfunctional governments and societies (brief internet search did not turn it up, sorry). Long-term security seems to be best served by ensuring that some minimal level of functionality is left behind when we leave, now generally recognized as a market economy and a representative government with some method of ensuring that power transitions peacefully. In short, nation-building to at least some degree.
I’m not happy about any of this. My concern is that the expectations game is being played by people who are focussed on ensuring that Bush and the US fail in Iraq. The post is really no more than an attempt to play out the implications of taking this expectation game seriously and to its logical conclusion, in order to discredit the game. That conclusion is not really a place that anyone wants to go.
No one really wants an Army Group of several hundred thousand soldiers who have a primary mission of taking over and operating a nation for an indefinite period of time. The hard question is, in my mind, how do you establish a functional society without such an Army Group?
I think your proposal falls a little short of achieving long-term security. I am not yet convinced that what our occupation of Iraq is a failure, or is even likely to fail at this point. I note that the occupation of Afghanistan seems to have achieved a 30 percent economic growth rate last year, for example. Perhaps there are some lessons there.
Cobden,
If all that was to be done was to restrain one nation I might buy your prescription.
What is needed though is to retrain 20 some nations. For this purpose hit and run leaving a few guard shacks behind will not do.
R C Dean writes
There is an analysis floating around, I believe presented at the War College, that shows that terrorism and similar threats arise in that area of the planet occupied by dysfunctional governments and societies.
Would that description apply to Britain and Spain then?
Eamon
You said
Of course, in my view, this is all unnecessary if realistic expectations are maintained.
If we insist on expecting what the govt lied about to get their war (govt being dishonest? who knew?), then would you consider “all this” necessary or would you pull out of Iraq?
It may very well not be what you intended to say, but it sounds like you’re giving political cover to the govt by blaming opponents of the war for any extreme measures the govt winds up taking.
Great, Uncle Sam ended the drought by military invasion. Not.
Scott,
We were told to expect to find enough WMD to kill everyone in the Anglosphere …
No, we weren’t.
… Bin Laden living it up in a Baghdad hotel …
No, we weren’t.
… to be greeted by millions of joyous Iraqis …
Yes, we were told that, and it was a correct prediction.
… who will love us forever …
No, we weren’t told that.
… and to have a free, democratic govt set up there in a week.
No, no-one said that. On the contrary, those who supported the war warned repeatedly that setting up democracy would take a very long time, while the anti-warriors kept demanding that it be done unrealistically quickly.
You may not have expected that, but that was what the sheeple believed when Bush herded them into his war.
Your use of the word “sheeple” reveals your utter contempt for the public, not Bush’s.
The question of empire is a kind of a strange thing. First off, I doubt America nor Bush want an American Empire, at least on the model of the British Empire of the 19th century. We jsut want to not get blowed up. And if that means we gotta free the Iraqis and kill Saddam, well, it sucks to be him. If it means we have to rebuild those nations, then wait for their UN veto when the next threat hits, well, we can live with that.
But Scott seems convinced that he was lied to before this war. First off, its kind of a moot point, that serves no purpose at this stage of the game. The war went on, whether Scott was lied to or not, Saddam is on the run, and his sons are dead. The torture chambers are shut down, and that alone would not have happened unless the US went in and did what it did.
Second, even Scott has to recognize that we are not going to be told everything. Telling us, tells the bad guys as well. There is no way to keep a secret amongst 275 million people in the US, and not let it slip outside the border, especailly with CNN, et.al. What other intelligence Bush has, I don’t know. That is kind of why we hire a President in the first place, to deal with and make these kinds of decision.
Third, whether Saddam had WMDs or not, was for him to prove, not the Bush administration. The central causus bellis was Saddam’s failure to live up to the terms of the 1991 cease fire. Which he never did. And that is why 1441 got a unanimous vote in the UN authorizing military action.
This has nothing to do with empire building. It has to do with making Americans safer from terrorists. It has done that in a number of ways, both obvious and subtle. It is going to take time to rehabilitate Iraq’s culture to where it will not decay back into a totalitarian nightmare. But after it is back on its feet, we’ll have as much influence on them as we do in Germany, or anywhere else we have military bases.
while noone really seeks the establishment of empire, the world often tends to one. the rest of the world either adores or despises said. history, while not my field of expertise (opera student) illustrates repetition in all it’s aspects, empire-tendencies also.
Not sure why I bother, but in response to Scott:
“It may very well not be what you intended to say, but it sounds like you’re giving political cover to the govt by blaming opponents of the war for any extreme measures the govt winds up taking.”
Not at all. Read my earlier post, where I pointed out that the political opponents of Bush and the war are playing a very old game of running up expectations on their opponents, so that no matter how well things go on the ground, they can claim that it was actually a failure.
If we took their expectations seriously, and formulated policy based on their expectations, then we would indeed have to head down a disastrous path. If the Bushies are stupid enough to fall for this game and head down that path, then you can be sure that the line to bust their balls will start behind me.
There seem to be two kinds of leftists. The one’s who can’t wait to be dhimmis. And the one’s in line to kiss the mummified testicles of Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Oh hell, if they’re not one and the same. My bad. Handle these people with a forked stick. Your life and/or freedom may depend on it.
It will take time for the US and the US military to developed good nation building skills. We are new to science, but we will learn. I do not think we will ever turn much of this execise over to the Europeans or the UN. We no longer trust Europe and we really have never trusted the UN. So it’s inconceivable that we would ever put the welfare of our nation and the lives of our citizens into the care of someone like the French or Germans. That is suicide. France is clamoring for dhimmitude.