AHC WI: Successful Iraq War

Your challenge, is with any PoD after 9/11, to have the Iraq War still happen but it successfully result in a stable, at least somewhat democratic Iraq, and far less Us losses. Essentially, what if the war had still occurred, but had not been handled incompetently and the occupation had gone much better. How could this be done? What would be the effects? How would the course of events in Iraq since the invasion go differently? What if?
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
The easiest is if Bush signs a Status of Forces agreement and Obama keeps in a long term, Korea/Germany esque garrison.

Not disbanding the Iraqi Army would help as long as there was some sort of screening mechanism in place to both DeBa'athify it and make sure that the Sunni fundamentalists that Saddam put in place would get the boot. That might be more difficult to arrange.

Getting open Iranian assistance of course might make sure there is never a Southern front to the Insurgency, but post-Axis of Evil, that is probably impossible.
 

EMTSATX

Banned
The easiest is if Bush signs a Status of Forces agreement and Obama keeps in a long term, Korea/Germany esque garrison.

Not disbanding the Iraqi Army would help as long as there was some sort of screening mechanism in place to both DeBa'athify it and make sure that the Sunni fundamentalists that Saddam put in place would get the boot. That might be more difficult to arrange.

Getting open Iranian assistance of course might make sure there is never a Southern front to the Insurgency, but post-Axis of Evil, that is probably impossible.

Here is where I say something that is not popular. I think it was naïve and wrong to DeBa'athify the army and civil service. Sort of like Germany post occupation. Was the Gestapo agent a Nazi? Yes. Was the average cop? Well he may have been a party member but was not a Nazi. I think sending a bunch of people who run the Army and command a bunch of 18-40 year old men with weapon's and plunk them into the unemployment line a bad idea. You could have done away with a large part of the insurgency right there. As well as have at least a counter balance to people like Al-Sadr.

As minty fresh points out a status of forces agreement is vital. I am not a fan of Iranian involvement at any level. However I'm dreaming most likely.

I really dislike Bremer. Paul did a hell of a job over there. Having a competent US administration would have been a big plus. Al-Maliki was probably the biggest f-up in the whole f'd up stew. I get you can not avoid a Shi'a prime minister (nor should you) but getting Sunnis to participate is vital and he was not the guy to do it.

Things. Could have gone better look at how we beat the insurgency in the Al-Anbar we bribed to tribal leaders! IMO the way to win Iraq is to stay out. I'm still not sure why I was there. Afghanistan, I get. Iraq not so much.
 
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Wendigo

Banned
Here is where I say something that is not popular. I think it was naïve and wrong to DeBa'athify the army and civil service. Sort of like Germany post occupation. Was the Gestapo agent a Nazi? Yes. Was the average cop? Well he may have been a party member but was not a Nazi. I think sending a bunch of people who run the Army and command a bunch of 18-40 year old men and plunk them into the unemployment line a bad idea. You could have done away with a large part of the insurgency right there. As well as have at least a counter balance to people like Al-Sadr.

As minty fresh points out a status of forces agreement is vital. I am not a fan of Iranian involvement at any level. However I'm dreaming most likely.

I really dislike Bremer. Paul did a hell of a job over there. Having a competent US administration would have been a big plus. Al-Maliki was probably the biggest f-up in the whole f'd up stew. I get you can not avoid a Shi'a prime minister (nor should you) but getting Sunnis to participate is vital and he was not the guy to do it.

Things. Could have gone better look at how we beat the insurgency in the Al-Anbar we bribed to tribal leaders! IMO the way to win Iraq is to stay out. I'm still not sure why I was there. Afghanistan, I get. Iraq not so much.

Firing hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers many of whom were competent who also have access to the nation's 400,000+ TONS of weaponry and munitions and now have a grudge against the "Great Satan" is a tremendously bad idea.
 
This is a pre-9/11 POD, but how about having a different Secretary of Defense, like FedEx founder Fred Smith, who Bush was initially considering for the role?

Rumsfeld was/is intelligent and had a good managerial style/philosophy, but the Rumsfeld Doctrine was-- in hindsight -- a disaster and not the right fit for the situation the US faced in Iraq.

Perhaps Rumsfeld would make a good Administrator of the CPA?
 

EMTSATX

Banned
I would think not only do you get rid of Rummy but have someone sane living in the Naval Observatory. Someone not left over from 41's administration, literally anyone but Cheney. Rumsfeld+Cheney = Iraq war. Cheney(neo-con love to the 4th power) = Iraq war.

Now, if Saddam had said screw it I'll let the inspectors in...well that could of headed off Vietnam part 2.
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
I would think not only do you get rid of Rummy but have someone sane living in the Naval Observatory. Someone not left over from 41's administration, literally anyone but Cheney. Rumsfeld+Cheney = Iraq war. Cheney(neo-con love to the 4th power) = Iraq war.

Now, if Saddam had said screw it I'll let the inspectors in...well that could of headed off Vietnam part 2.
Saddam letting in the inspectors would be like if Hitler decided against the Final Solution. His ego and personality would not allow it.

Now, Qusay Hussein pulling off a coup and allowing the inspectors in, that might be possible. Uday however would have been poison.
 

EMTSATX

Banned
Oh I 100% agree. Saddam would have never done that. Nor do I think the wonder twins would have dreamt to over throw dear old Dad. His General's on the other hand. Since this is alt history say you have the Republican Guard say something in say December of 2002 like, "hey remember how fun Kuwait was? Maybe Saddam would enjoy a retirement home in Tikrit (or being shot.)" And then they open up to inspection. But you're right Saddam was not into looking like a punk and having his bluff called.
 
How helpful would 300,000-ish troops in Iraq as the generals warned would be needed?

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said we needed a half million troops for about 10 years there, but didn't explain why we needed a much larger footprint and no I don't think we needed that many. Short of a draft we couldn't do it, but we could have done 300K troops for two years after a post 911 troop boost with lower ROEs before pulling our forces down. General Franks (far from the best we have had) said he could do it with 100K and we split the difference at about 200K coalition troops.

As for quickly putting the army back in place that was the plan. But, some who were pushing this war not to just get rid of Saddam, but to create a U.S. dependency undermined the plan.

Forward Observer: General Garner's Lament

When it comes to Iraq, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner has been there, done that for 15 years, so his new plan for getting out of the mess there might be worth listening to. "You couldn't have gotten the 10 most brilliant men and women in America to design a way for us to fail in Iraq that would have been any better than what we have done on our own," lamented Garner, whom President Bush dispatched to Iraq to heal the country only to stand aside as Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III gutted the very post-combat pacification program that Garner had gotten the president to approve.

"I was never able to find out," Garner answered when I asked him where Bremer got the authority to reverse the presidentially approved plan shortly after taking over from the retired three-star general in Baghdad in May 2003.

Garner's plan called for keeping most of the Iraqi army intact rather than send thousands of troopers home with rifles but no jobs and to allow Iraqi school teachers and other vital professionals to keep working even if they had been forced to join Saddam Hussein's Baathist party.

"He just did it," Garner said of Bremer's scrapping of those two major parts of the general's master plan for putting Iraq back together again after Saddam fell. "Maybe Bush didn't know he was doing it."

http://www.govexec.com/defense/2006/12/forward-observer-general-garners-lament/23240/

The problem was similar to the IS war year one in that we were fighting the wrong kind of war with a totally screwed up command structure where the CPA felt it could overrule the military and the President.

What this war badly needed was a Petraeus or McFarland like figure earlier to basically tell the CPA to go shove it. Bush at this point in time was not as strong or decisive as he was in the second term enough to shut them down and just put in Allawi for five years and then hold elections. The problem is we have to stay there with some troops in any case for something like 20 years regardless.

If we pulled out earlier even with the old Iraqi Army it all would have all fallen apart as Iraqi government would have attempted to reign it in and the army and purge the generals and the army may have tried to coup them.

The Surge worked brilliantly, but the zero option combined with the Syrian civil war upended things. But, here is the thing a year from now we will have around 7-8 thousand US troops there and over ten thousand contractors and other coalition countries will have about five thousand.

Iraq is coming back alive again and quickly. People won't be talking a year from now how we were defeated in Iraq or what a horrible mess it is. That focus will be on Syria while the focus in Iraq will be rebuilding, anti-terror ops, etc. Here is the thing about Iraq every time people are ready to declare it a failed state it comes back alive in a year or two. We are in a similar situation as we were in there in 2007 where we are decisively winning on the ground, but it takes a year or so for the understanding of that to get back to the public.
 
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IMHO, not possible with a pre-9/11 POD. A better occupation would require a US troop level that was simply not available after the drawdown. The 500,000 figure (a 20:1000 force to population ratio) plans called for was a bare bones minimum - 6-700,000 would be a closer starting figure, and without stripping forces from ongoing operations in Europe and Asia or a significant call up of ANG & USAR, neither of which was in any sense politically feasable, the US couldn't field that many soldiers.
 
How helpful would 300,000-ish troops in Iraq as the generals warned would be needed?
It can't possibly hurt (except to America's pocket book). The extra troops could have been used for securing the cities bypassed during the American blitzkrieg, occupying Baghdad, keeping an eye on POWs. Broken windows policing definitely applies to military occupation, and the US kind of just let things fall apart.

Getting rid of Bremer and the structural problems might be worth at least 100,000 troops though.
 
It can't possibly hurt (except to America's pocket book). The extra troops could have been used for securing the cities bypassed during the American blitzkrieg, occupying Baghdad, keeping an eye on POWs. Broken windows policing definitely applies to military occupation, and the US kind of just let things fall apart.

Getting rid of Bremer and the structural problems might be worth at least 100,000 troops though.

Bremer took the money from the military commanders we were bribing the tribes with to help us with Intel and other things against the terrorists, that was how stupid he was. He did it because he was against bribery and didn't want to recognize the tribes. He wanted to be moral not utilitarian and realistic and he just inadvertently helped Zarqawi in the process.

But, here is the thing the military also needed a leader and there was a few that knew COIN and understood that mass arrests and nighttime raids just piss off locals. We didn't get one until 2006 in Ramadi who turned around the war in Anbar for us. Who ironically also turned around the IS war for us as well over the past year by recognizing it isn't an insurgeny and streamlining the mission. That was General McFarland.

No CPA and Allawi in charge for five years before elections and a general of the caliber as McFarland leading and we could have done it with the troop levels we had, obviously some more would have been helpful as well. We were disadvantaged by actually having an enemy that unlike Saddam's people knew what it took to win and almost did.
 
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