But, with hindsight, it also helped set up a lot of the problems Iraq’s had to contend with since: not enough Baathists were killed in the initial invasion; too many bigshots survived to plot mischief and too many minnows were allowed to melt back into the general population to provide a delivery system for that mischief. And in a basic psychological sense excessive solicitude for the enemy won us not sympathy but contempt. Better Nagasaki than a lot of misplaced wicky-wacky-woo.
You'll have to read the piece to understand the last sentence. I'm not going to try.
I have some sympathy for this view but for two factors.
One, the Baathists planned their jihadi importation and insurgency prior to the war if reports are to be believed. I still don't think that Saddam planned to lose and run from spider hole to spider hole (nor does the last stand of his sons look very planned), but it seems like it was his fallback position. So more destruction and killing might have angered more people than killed Baathists planning to keep fighting.
And two, our invasion went through the Shia areas of the south. What good would have killing and destroying in this area have done? We liberated those people, remember? Even an invasion through the north out of Turkey would have had to go through Kurds to get at the Sunni areas north of Baghdad. We didn't want to smash the Kurds, either.
This problem of invading through areas to be liberated was one of the reasons I wanted our main effort to go through the Ramadi Gap, west of Baghdad, and aim right for the capital and also sweeping north of the capital to cut off retreat routes.
I thought a heavy Army corps (an ACR, two heavy divisions and 101st AB) coming out of Saudi Arabia and Jordan would have done the trick, while the Marines and British grabbed Basra and slowly moved north (I assumed that the Iraqis could defend the poor terrain between the Tigris and Euphrates. Instead, the Marines sliced north rapidly) flanked by a feint by a phantom V Corps that simulated a major advance out of Kuwait toward Nasiriyah.
A route through the Ramadi Gap would have had the advantage of avoiding Shia holy sites and of driving through the heart of Saddam's regime supporter areas, imposing the cost of war on them and not the liberated. Still, my thought was to avoid killing our natural allies rather than making sure we killed noncombatant Sunnis.
I guess it is too soon for me to say that Steyn is correct that we used too little force and caused too little collateral damage and presumably civilian deaths. I can't say that more wanton destruction would have cowed the Baathists. In theory, perhaps yes. But I don't think America can inflict the level of death and destruction necessary to cow a population through fear in practice even if it is morally acceptable.
But I will certainly think about this and read what others have to say. Lord knows, I'm not in favor of wicky-wacky-woo.
