How Could the Iraq War be done Better?

[jmc247]

You want to do the war better early on and keep it under 1K American lives. It doesn't even require four hundred thousand U.S. troops.

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/

Have unity of command over the war effort in the hands of Jay Garner for the first year of the war. Instead of putting in a jackass that would reverse the main parts of the post war plan Garner wrote up and the President signed off on.

Mr. Bush has often said that will be for historians decide, but he said during his sessions with Mr. Draper that they would have to consult administration documents to get to the bottom of some important questions.

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/w..._r=1&adxnnlx=1189191906-TrPqSHhBuLZeSOvUKoinQ

Second would be put in Allawi as interim Prime Minister in June of 2003 for two years before elections are held and let him and the U.S. with UN help set up the Constitution to be voted on by the people. The rest would be history.

 

[snali]

was there any attempt to get support from other countries by selling them oil concessions and if not could it have been possbile

 

[King Helü of Wu]

Keep Paul Bremer out of a position of responsibility, and replace him with someone with more common sense who will not:

a) immediately dissolve the army, or
b) ban all former Baath Party members from government.

These were the most destablizing actions taken by the occupational government. The first made thousands of young, armed men immediately unemployed, while the second kept anyone with any experience in governance out of the post-invasion administration, because party membership was the only way to advance oneself in the bureaucracy of Saddam-era Iraq.

Agreed.

But there are two more factors that makes Iraq unstable.

1) The ruling class is comprised of Sunnis, while the less advantaged class are the Shiites. They live mixed and intertwined with each other, making the civil war, once it breaks out, extremely bloody and prolonged.

2) The relationship between the army and the civilian government has never been normal. Part of the reasons Saddam kept waging wars against his neighbors is to keep the army engaged, so that it cannot make coups like it does to his predecessors.

As a result of the two factors, Iraq was not a stable state even WITH the Baathist dictatorship. Whoever lead this nation, from the Hashimites, to Kassim, to Saddam, all failed to achieve stability. It could be surprising if a foreign power can do what the natives cannot.

If the US army really want peace, they should prevent the exiled Iraqi politicians from coming back with their own private army.

In addition, they should allow the Iraqi army to nip the bud off the Mahdi army and other jihadi groups, no matter what it takes.

 

[Gunnarnz]

Haha, I'm sigging this if you don't mind!

Please do

 

[snali]

could there be a way to maintain domestic support for the war

 

[Anaxagoras]

could there be a way to maintain domestic support for the war

Only if there were no insurrection after the conventional phase of the war was over.

 

[Killer300]

Within the resources available to the U.S.? It isn't possible.

I say this because,

A. The U.S. mindset going in can't be changed without changing to an administration that won't want to go in to begin with,

B. You can't impose Democracy. One can encourage it, which is how Japan and Germany eventually gained it, but both of those had previous democratic structures to work with which were homegrown.

By comparison, Iraq doesn't have a previous democratic tradition to work with. It could build one, but it'd need to turn to someone like Turkey for a secular democracy, and need to be homegrown, not imposed by a foreign power.

 

[fb111a]

As the title says; how, with a POD in 2002 at the earliest, could the US have acted differently so that Iraq is better off than OTL, and the war goes better? The assumption is that the war happens, so no comments like "Never invade at all", please.

The only option is a larger force, with NO mucking around with the UN. That makes it less worse, but it doesn't prevent all of the problems.

The best POD is in 1991: In the wake of Desert Storm, the "peace dividend" is put off. They reverse the cuts and hold at 18 active duty divisions and 10 National Guard Divisions for the Army, among other things.

 

[BlairWitch749]

if Turkey let the coalition stage from the north; the occupation would have immensely gone better

the US 4th ID was cut out of the campaign due to Turkey's refusal thus (except for air drops) confining the coalition attack to one direction

during the drive on baghdad, the baathists were able to evacuate huge weapons stockpiles to the unengaged north (and ship quantities into safety in syria for later retrieval)

if the 4th infantry attacked out of the north, they would have interdicted or prevented these moves would which have greatly reduced the ability of the baathists to resist (more tier 1 personalities also get captured right away as well)

 

[snali]

where the Kurds in Iraq part of the insurgency problem

 

[Anaxagoras]

if Turkey let the coalition stage from the north; the occupation would have immensely gone better

the US 4th ID was cut out of the campaign due to Turkey's refusal thus (except for air drops) confining the coalition attack to one direction

But if Turkey is perceived as part of the coalition, and if Turkey chooses to cash in the chips it has earned with the United States by demanding a harsh crackdown on anti-Turkish Kurdish elements, the Kurds might join in the insurgency and make the long-term situation even worse than it was IOTL.

 

[snali]

here this articles about the lost opportuny that the US did not use
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/12/the_iraq_war_that_might_have_been?page=0,0

 

[Killer300]

But if Turkey is perceived as part of the coalition, and if Turkey chooses to cash in the chips it has earned with the United States by demanding a harsh crackdown on anti-Turkish Kurdish elements, the Kurds might join in the insurgency and make the long-term situation even worse than it was IOTL.

This.

Additionally, for all we know, the Iraqi Army would've simply retreated in a different direction, and/or found other ways to hide military equipment.