Divide, Colorado (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Disregard for negative outcomes.
Dismissing the adversary’s interests and motives.
Distraction from objectives.
Displays of concern for the president’s political future.
The dysfunction of the renewed war in Iran reminds me of what I saw as a strategist in Baghdad in 2004: the same toxic optimism, the same lack of focus, the same partisanship, and the same treatment of others as nonplayer characters that undermined any chance of success in that war.
In fall 2004, I volunteered to leave my teaching duties at the Air Force Academy to work on policy and strategy at coalition headquarters. When I arrived on 13 August, Iraq had just regained its sovereignty. Both countries were preparing for elections—President George W. Bush’s campaign for a second term in 2004 and a series of Iraqi elections in 2005 designed to bootstrap a legitimate government amid increasing violence.
My new book, Chaos in the Green Zone, covers what I observed as an active-duty participant in the aptly named Republican Palace. I there offer many examples of the parallels, but here I focus on one salient event: the Second Battle of Fallujah in early November.
I had been assigned to the strategy office for a day (after three weeks working on militia demobilization) when my new boss told me to evaluate which city in northern Iraq would be the best option for a “kinetic operation” in the fall. I concluded that no such operation was a good idea, but the worst choice was Fallujah.
My boss made it clear with personally and professionally insulting vulgarities that this was the wrong answer, the same wrong answer that two better-qualified strategists had already reached. The decision had been made: We were going to attack Fallujah. I and everyone in earshot received the message that dissenting views were not welcome, just as we see now in Iran and elsewhere in American policy.
A silver lining of sorts was that we would act soon. I had concluded that any urban assault should end before Ramadan began in mid-October. Attacking during Ramadan seemed like a bad idea, and waiting until after Eid al-Fitr would have been too close to the Iraqi election.
Not that we knew whether that mattered. My next task was to organize a two-week interagency review of the campaign plan to determine the decisive points along the way to achieving our desired end state. Just as in Iran, we planned a major military offensive before we understood our primary goal, which in the Iraqi case was an election accepted as legitimate by the people. It took until 8 November (the first full day of the Second Battle of Fallujah) for us to realize it would be better if the resulting government included members from across Iraq’s ethnic and religious communities.
This modeling took so long in part because I was distracted by side tasks, much as American foreign policy in general has been. Some of these were important (the campaign plan review), some interesting (a proposal to announce we would withdraw in early 2006), and others merely time consuming. An example of the last was a series of “strategic surprise” scenarios that supposed our adversary would try to kill many of us to sway the American election toward John Kerry.
Securing Bush’s reelection was a prime concern among the Red Team assigned to understanding our adversary’s motivation. They even wanted to include it as a prerequisite for success in the campaign plan review. Such political concerns seem likely in the conduct of the current war as well.
Instead of thinking of our enemy as a resistance to occupation or an insurgency against the new government, Red Team treated them as Enemies of the New Iraq, without their own agency and goals—akin to how recent American policy has treated Iran’s government and people.
This had consequences beyond distracting us from understanding the importance of the upcoming Iraqi election. Treating the adversary as an enemy rather than as people who had their own political interests undermined the strategic patience that would have been needed to achieve a good outcome in Iraq.
Although Second Fallujah was an operational success, it was a strategic disaster for the reasons we had projected. A flood of refugees poured into nearby Baghdad just in time for Eid, and coverage of the battle dominated holiday televisions. This led Sunni Arabs to boycott the January election, their exclusion from the process of writing a new constitution, and the enduring paralysis of Iraqi politics.
Fallujah was a strategic disaster because it was delayed, which is not to say it would have been wise if done quickly. Only five days elapsed from when the Blackwater contractors were killed in March until the First Battle of Fallujah. But nearly two months passed from when we were told the second battle was imminent until it began. Time our adversary used to build up defenses; evacuate the most skillful leaders; and plan a wave of counterattacks in Mosul, Baghdad, and Baqubah. Time during which the operation could have been reconsidered based on our growing understanding that Sunni Arab participation was important.
Time during which Bush was reelected.
I do wonder whether Fallujah was delayed for that purpose, though I have only inferences. I know the interest in Bush’s reelection was real; Red Team even claimed the commander shared it. I know the operation took much longer to start than the first one, much longer than we were told in early September. Perhaps, as with the withdrawal announcement proposal, there was clear direction from Washington not to proceed. Perhaps it was just that concerns about the possible political repercussions led people to try to reduce the risk of failure, leading to a delay that increased the strategic harm of even a successful operation.
Even setting aside the partisanship, Second Fallujah was launched without enough concern for the consequences, without enough concern for whether it would advance America’s overall goals, and without enough consideration of our adversaries’ interests.
This seems very familiar.