What if the United States maintained Saddam Hussein's military?

In 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, Paul Brenner, the US Administrator of the country, issued Coalition Provisional Authority Order 2, which dissolved Saddam Hussein's military. The justification for the order was that Iraqi military bases had already been destroyed, that Shi'ite draftees would not respond to orders from their Sunni superiors and that it would've been a public relations disaster, given that the Iraqi military had committed atrocities against the Iraqi people under Hussein's orders.

14 years on, this is seen as the worst mistake of the US occupation, since most of the suddenly unemployed former soldiers went underground and contributed to the Iraqi insurgency with some officers even joining the ranks of ISIL.

But what if CPA Order 2 was not issued and instead, the army was recalled to active duty to support the US occupation?
 
Some would come back, some wouldn't. Frankly the insurgency was not led by former army officers, it was led by jihadists with some religiously radicalized members of the various security organs.

The problem is the regular army was a broken reed in 2003 anyway and the people who beat them telling them to get back together and fight for them while it would have helped some, frankly most people can't understand their army wasn't was holding Iraq together in 2002 it was other organs of terror and frankly much these organs weren't going to serve anybody but a religious Sunni Arab. Hence the brilliance of Saddam's religious radicalization strategy.

Those who were willing to serve a democratic Iraq ended up doing so even RG members in time in security organs like the ERUs news organs like ABC News are screaming about because they wage war like they did in 2002. Those who weren't going to served a democratic Iraq because of religious radicalization weren't going to serve it.
 
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In 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, Paul Brenner, the US Administrator of the country, issued Coalition Provisional Authority Order 2, which dissolved Saddam Hussein's military. The justification for the order was that Iraqi military bases had already been destroyed, that Shi'ite draftees would not respond to orders from their Sunni superiors and that it would've been a public relations disaster, given that the Iraqi military had committed atrocities against the Iraqi people under Hussein's orders.

14 years on, this is seen as the worst mistake of the US occupation, since most of the suddenly unemployed former soldiers went underground and contributed to the Iraqi insurgency with some officers even joining the ranks of ISIL.

But what if CPA Order 2 was not issued and instead, the army was recalled to active duty to support the US occupation?
It's a safe assumption that at least some of those soldiers would go rogue anyway, or function as a fifth column within the Iraqi army. Not only that, but the countries Shia majority would probably be alienated by these people continuing to hold positions of power and authority- I expect that once Iraq's elections are held there would be a substantial advocacy from both Shia and Kurdish politicians for firing some of these former Baathists.
 
It's a safe assumption that at least some of those soldiers would go rogue anyway, or function as a fifth column within the Iraqi army. Not only that, but the countries Shia majority would probably be alienated by these people continuing to hold positions of power and authority- I expect that once Iraq's elections are held there would be a substantial advocacy from both Shia and Kurdish politicians for firing some of these former Baathists.

That is the problem as would officers like al-Ani below have served the Iraqi state? Not under anything other then a religiously extreme Sunni Arab. Hence the ugly brilliance of Saddam's religious radicalization policies.

The Fallujah Brigade that Bremer sent to the city of former Saddam era officers to secure Fallujah after the Gulf Arabs and locals screamed Americans are occupyers killing us what did they do?

They joined Zarqawi as al-Ani did below before Baghdad even fell.

IS top command dominated by ex-officers in Saddam's army

BAGHDAD (AP) -- While attending the Iraqi army's artillery school nearly 20 years ago, Ali Omran remembers one major well. An Islamic hard-liner, he once chided Omran for wearing an Iraqi flag pin into the bathroom because it included the words "God is great."

"It is forbidden by religion to bring the name of the Almighty into a defiled place like this," Omran recalled being told by Maj. Taha Taher al-Ani.

Omran didn't see al-Ani again until years later, in 2003. The Americans had invaded Iraq and were storming toward Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's fall was imminent. At a sprawling military base north of the capital, al-Ani was directing the loading of weapons, ammunition and ordnance into trucks to spirit away. He took those weapons with him when he joined Tawhid wa'l-Jihad, a forerunner of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq.

Now al-Ani is a commander in the Islamic State group, said Omran, who rose to become a major general in the Iraqi army and now commands its 5th Division fighting IS. He kept track of his former comrade through Iraq's tribal networks and intelligence gathered by the government's main counterterrorism service, of which he is a member. It's a common trajectory.

For example, a former brigadier general from Saddam-era special forces, Assem Mohammed Nasser, also known as Nagahy Barakat, led a bold assault in 2014 on Haditha in Anbar province, killing around 25 policemen and briefly taking over the local government building.
...
One initiative that eventually fed Saddam veterans into IS came in the mid-1990s when Saddam departed from the stringent secular principles of his ruling Baath party and launched the "Faith Campaign," a state-sponsored drive to Islamize Iraqi society. Saddam's feared security agencies began to tolerate religious piety or even radical views among military personnel, although they kept a close watch on them and saw to it they did not assume command positions.

At the time, the move was seen as a cynical bid to shore up political support among the religious establishment after Iraq's humiliating rout from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War and the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings that followed.

"Most of the army and intelligence officers serving with IS are those who showed clear signs of religious militancy during Saddam days," the intelligence chief said. "The Faith Campaign ... encouraged them."

In the run-up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Saddam publicly invited foreign mujahedeen to come to Iraq to resist the invaders. Thousands came and Iraqi officials showed them off to the media as they were trained by Iraqi instructors. Many stayed, eventually joining the insurgency against American troops and their Iraqi allies.

http://www.militarytimes.com/story/...-dominated-ex-officers-saddams-army/31332975/
 
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In 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, Paul Brenner, the US Administrator of the country, issued Coalition Provisional Authority Order 2, which dissolved Saddam Hussein's military. The justification for the order was that Iraqi military bases had already been destroyed, that Shi'ite draftees would not respond to orders from their Sunni superiors and that it would've been a public relations disaster, given that the Iraqi military had committed atrocities against the Iraqi people under Hussein's orders.

14 years on, this is seen as the worst mistake of the US occupation, since most of the suddenly unemployed former soldiers went underground and contributed to the Iraqi insurgency with some officers even joining the ranks of ISIL.

But what if CPA Order 2 was not issued and instead, the army was recalled to active duty to support the US occupation?

Not having been out there I can't verify this, but I have heard quite a few times that part of the problem was that the soldiers were not turning up, which meant that the US was reflecting reality by dismissing them. As you suggest above the command infrastructure had probably disintegrated beyond repair.

That said I still think there was much to be said for keeping them in uniform and busy with whatever tasks could be found for them. Idle hands getting up to no good was a pretty logical outcome of firing a large number of young men with no alternative employment in the short term. I don't think much peace-keeping work would have been managed by Iraqi formations, but I do think it would have been possible to use them for clearing damage and any unskilled manpower intensive projects. I also think Keynsian economic principles would suggest that paying them to do something vaguely useful would have helped rebuild the economy.
 

BooNZ

Banned
It's a safe assumption that at least some of those soldiers would go rogue anyway, or function as a fifth column within the Iraqi army. Not only that, but the countries Shia majority would probably be alienated by these people continuing to hold positions of power and authority- I expect that once Iraq's elections are held there would be a substantial advocacy from both Shia and Kurdish politicians for firing some of these former Baathists.

True that, but at a minimum it would have made sense to put those soldiers available onto a gardening allowance or similar. I suspect the priority for the majority of Saddam's soldiers was to put food on the table.

That is the problem as would officers like al-Ani below have served the Iraqi state? Not under anything other then a religiously extreme Sunni Arab. Hence the ugly brilliance of Saddam's religious radicalization policies.

The Fallujah Brigade that Bremer sent to the city of former Saddam era officers to secure Fallujah after the Gulf Arabs and locals screamed Americans are occupyers killing us what did they do?

They joined Zarqawi as al-Ani did below before Baghdad even fell.

Citing a few example of a extreme minorities does not mean making hundreds of thousands of trained Iraqi military redundant, while simultaneously tearing down everything they had previously defended - a smart move.
 
Citing a few example of a extreme minorities does not mean making hundreds of thousands of trained Iraqi military redundant, while simultaneously tearing down everything they had previously defended - a smart move.

Most of those hundreds of thousands were Shia and Kurdish conscripts for Sunni officers. You want to recall them you are going to have to keep Saddam's terror apparatus together as a great many weren't coming back on their own accord without the state coercion.

The Iraqi Army by in large didn't keep domestic security, for the most part the RG and Saddam's militias did. The Iraqi soldiers that wanted to be rehired were after a year or two. That was not the original plan signed off on by Bush, but it was what happened.

Hell the ERUs we created over a decade ago pretty much are the RG and Iraqi Army members that have too much blood on their hands for the new regular army to want. And the media bashes Iraq and America all the way for keeping ruthless killers and torturers in the security forces.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/deepdive/brian-ross-investigates-the-torture-tapes-47429895

The primary core that made up AQI were not former Iraqi Army officers BTW nor is ISIS today primarily led by former Iraqi Army officers. Though they did gain quite a number that defected when Mosul fell.

BTW and I am one who thinks we needed to rehire a lot of them faster and give a lot of people jobs who we ended up doing in 2004-2007, but don't think that would have alone solved the security issue alone. If we kept his full terror apparatus then yah it would have solved more, but created more as well as they would have killed any democratic leaders when we weren't looking and installed a Sunni dictator.
 
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BooNZ

Banned
BTW and I am one who thinks we needed to rehire a lot of them faster and give a lot of people jobs who we ended up doing in 2004-2007, but don't think that would have alone solved the security issue alone. If we kept his full terror apparatus then yah it would have solved more, but created more as well as they would have killed any democratic leaders when we weren't looking and installed a Sunni dictator.
I am no fan Saddam or his ilk, but the occupation of Iraq generated more terror than Saddam ever managed. I certainly think keeping more Iraqis in uniform doing menial tasks would have greatly slowed the descent, but the corruption, flawed ideology and systemic incompetence of the occupation meant a catastrophe was always on the cards.
 
I am no fan Saddam or his ilk, but the occupation of Iraq generated more terror than Saddam ever managed. I certainly think keeping more Iraqis in uniform doing menial tasks would have greatly slowed the descent, but the corruption, flawed ideology and systemic incompetence of the occupation meant a catastrophe was always on the cards.

Zarqawi was smart enough to build his ideology of his organization primarily on anti-Shia sentiment with anti Western sentiment being well in second. It allowed them to survive being reduced to a few hundred men again after the Surge and regrow in Syria once they exploded.

Either way the people most primarily screwed over by them have been Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis as some members of both bought their Kool Aid at various points in time.

Look I know what the Iraq war caused in depth to Iraqis and others, but Iraq didn't cause Syria to explode and allow them to grow unhindered nor did going into Iraq make us forget the lesson of Korea that after a war it's good to keep a few thousand forces behind to help out.

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Late 2012.

We did have troops there in 2012 and 2013, but 100 SF confined to a training base and one unarmed drone observing the Syria/Iraq border a month was too marginal to make a difference while things were getting red hot on the Syria/Iraq border. The rise of AQI into an insurgency was on the Iraq war, its handling as well as a segment of Iraqi Sunnis believing they could use them to take over again.

The rebuilding of them into first in 2012 an insurgent and then into a actual state structure in Syria in 2013 had its origins in Syrian Sunni hatred of Assad and Assad gassing and murdering the Syrian people by the hundreds of thousands not on toppling Saddam.
 
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This is personal opinion, but I don't feel it was so much desolving the military of Saddam, as it was the exclusion of all members of the Baath party from the public sector. The order in question also prevented any and all members of the Baath party under Saddam's rule from holding a public job. So it was not just soldiers, but teachers, police, health services, ect.

The majority of the people now cast out of work, in a war torn nation, where people who's only option was join the party, secure your family, or suffer. It's not just the soldiers that where shut out of the new government, but hundreds of thousands. And when there's no money, and there's more guns than food, those people shouting radical slogans promising paradise for those who believe, start become much more credible.
 
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