Hitchens is the latest (tip to Real Clear Politics). He thinks we were right to get rid of Saddam's army:
Take a moment to imagine what would have been written in the liberal press had the old military class been preserved and utilized to "stabilize" Iraq. I can write the headlines for you: "Baathist War Criminal Gets Second Career as American Employee"; "Once-Wanted Man, Brigadier Kamal Now Shares Jokes With 82nd Airborne"; "Kurds and Shiites Say: What Regime Change?"; "From Basra to Kirkuk, America Brings Saddamism Without Saddam." And, if you like, I can add the names of the reporters who would have written the stories.
This is not just another way of saying that there were few good options in Iraq's future, because anybody with any sense knows that already. Nor is it a defense of the very abrupt and peremptory way in which Paul Bremer dismissed the officer corps almost overnight. However, I think it stands to the credit of the United States that it did not insult the population by grabbing and using the existing reins of repression, just as it stands to our credit that we adopted de-Baathification, or, in other words, the policy of demolishing the rule of a corrupt and fascistic party. People say that the poor management of this issue led to an insurgency from quarters that would have hated a change of regime from whichever source it had come. Better that than a revolt against us from the people who detested the whole Saddamist system to begin with—the majority, lest we forget.
Yes, we liberated the Iraqis. And keeping Saddam's army intact to police the Shias would have betrayed that implicit promise. Nor would our press have failed to note this fact with article titles exactly as Hitchens outlines. And as I've said again and again, if we lost the Shias, we couldn't stay in Iraq. What would be the point? So keeping Saddam's officer corps intact ran counter to the morality and practicality of liberating Iraq's Shias.
I disagree with Hitchens in one part. My memory is that we truly planned to keep the Iraqi army around for security (but not the Republican Guards or Special Republican Guards). Prior to the war, we expended effort to get army commanders to defect when we invaded. However, we assumed no Baathist resistance after we overthrew the regime. We assumed a benign post-war security environment. Had that happened, we could have kept the Shia foot soldiers led by a combination of lower ranking Sunni Arab officers untainted by Baathism plus Shias and Kurds promoted to platoon, company, and battalion commands.
With American force keeping Iranian conventional forces at bay, Iraq would not have needed the seriously Baathist senior officer corps to command brigades, divisions, and corps. These officers would have been purged and hired only after proving they were free of crimes under Saddam. Light Iraqi infantry companies and battalions would have been fine until we could train a new cadre of Shia and Kurd officers to lead brigades, divisions, and corps.
Still, it is good to see the growing attack on the conventional wisdom that I have never accepted despite the near consensus on the subjects.
