Errors

[Soon to be] General Petraeus cites errors in Iraq. So, what of them?

One)

"[T]here were a number of assumptions and assessments that did not bear out. Prominent among them was the assumption that Iraqis would remain in their barracks and ministry facilities and resume their functions as soon as interim governmental structures were in place."

The first error was a reasonable assumption that did not work out. It was (and is) a problem, but is not an error in the sense of being obviously wrong prior to the war.

We hoped that we could lop off the Baathist leadership and that the remaining security and governing bodies would be usable. This was not an unreasonable assumption. We even tried contacting Iraqi generals to get them to defect with their units once the war began. This transition to post-Saddam governance did not work out the way we hoped, although it might have had the Baathist insurgency not prevented non-Baathist Sunni Arabs from cooperating in the early days.

Two)

"There was the feeling that elections would enhance the Iraqi sense of nationalism. Instead, the elections hardened sectarian positions as Iraqis voted largely based on ethnic and sectarian group identity."

The second was not an error. I wasn't happy with the voting- by-slate method of selecting their rulers. I would have preferred to have individual candidates running by district as we have. With local concerns rather than slate loyalty, we would have been better off.

It was, however, a reasonable choice given that at the time the choice appeared to be between an imperfect voting system based on party slates or delaying the elections to try and establish better individual identification and census data for elections as we know them. Experts said we could not carry out this method of voting because we did not have enough information on demographics to set it up. Had we delayed, we would have risked alienating the Shias who might believe we were conspiring to prevent them from assuming the power their numbers warranted.

The alternative was delaying voting by years and continuing our official occupation role--both "bad" options. So the difference wasn't between voting the right way and the wrong way, but between two bad options. While we have problems that flow from the decision, it is far from clear that we made a mistake given the choice we had. I'm not yet willing to judge that we picked the wrong "bad option."

Three)

"There was an underestimation of the security challenges in Iraq. . . . It repeatedly took us time to recognize changes in the security environment and to react to them. "

This is definitely an error. We failed to react quickly enough to the initial Baathist insurgency in the summer of 2003, thinking it was the remnants of the security forces burning out rather than seeing it as the embers of a growing fire. I plead guilty in this error.

We also failed to react quickly to the jihadi and Sadr threats that arose in spring 2004. We held off the enemy counter-offensive but we did not destroy the Fallujah sanctuary until November 2004 and we never finished off Sadr after the spring and August revolts that we suppressed. I was not guilty of missing this shift. I wanted aggressive action to kill the Sunni Arab jihadis and careful focused efforts to kill Sadr.

Finally, we reacted slowly to the rise of Sadr as the main threat to victory after February 2004. Our first real reaction wasn't until late summer 2006 and it failed to quiet Baghdad. Now we try a new way that the war opponents want to stop. Again, I recognized this change yet hoped that our first assumption that Iraqis could deal with Sadr would work. I hoped that our second try in late summer would work, too. And along the way in 2006 I asked repeatedly why Sadr was still alive.

Four)

"Disbanding the Iraqi army . . . without simultaneously announcing a stipend and pension program for those in the Army. . . ."

Please note that this is not the same as complaining we disbanded the Iraqi army. We did recruit for the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and new army from the ranks of former soldiers, after all. And keeping the leadership of Saddam's army intact would have been a grave error. The mistake in the mind of Petraeus was not handing out money on the assumption that Iraqi Sunni Arabs would not have worked for the insurgency if they had paychecks. We did announce stipends if my memory serves me, but it must not have been done at the same time that we formally disbanded the Iraqi army organization.

Again, this is a debatable error. Given the vast amounts of money the Baathists had available and the large amounts they paid for helping them, could monthly stipends or pensions have competed with the large cash payments made for each attack on US troops? When these guys believed themselves to be the heirs of a long line of Sunni rulers who exploited the "inferior"Shias and Kurds? I don't think so. It is way too early to judge this an error of any magnitude at all.

Five)

"We took too long to recognize the growing insurgency and to take steps to counter it, though we did eventually come to grips with it."

Again, yes. This was part of the failure to react quickly to changing circumstances after the major combat operations were successfully concluded. Not seeing this, we persisted in building a conventional army of 40,000 Iraqis to be the cadre of an expanded Iraqi army years down the line. We recruited light infantry with little training to handle routine security duties. And we took on the counter-insurgency fight on our own. We did beat down the Baathists through the fall and winter of 2003, but the Baathist resistance bought time for the jihadis and Sadrists to rise up in revolt in spring 2004.

I was guilty of failing to see all this coming. Or more specifically, I assumed that the Baathist's rapid defeat meant they did not have the will to resist. Had the Baathists tried to stand and fight at Baghdad, I would have assumed enough morale existed to fight on after the fall of the city. Even if there was resistance, I assumed that the 80% of the population would easily beat whatever fraction of the 20% Sunni Arabs that would revolt. I didn't appreciate the vast amounts of money and munitions available inside Iraq to the Baathists. And I assumed that Syria and Iran would be too scared to intervene against us. These errors in assumptions led me to fail to recognize the growing insurgencies, too.

So of the five errors that Ricks highlights (he of Fiasco fame, so surely he picked the biggest and most obvious errors), how do we stand by my reckoning?

One reasonable assumpion.

One reasonable choice.

One systemic failing rather than a choice that can be called an error.

One minor error.

One error.

And these are the five "errors" Ricks chose to highlight.

Bring on the next plastic turkey.