I only want to address the prediction because failure to predict the long insurgencies is a common slam against supporters (like me) of the war. So let's look at the prediction for Saddam's strategy to defeat our advancing forces:
Phase one assumes eventual defeat in a conventional war. If defeat is inevitable, he must make the most of it.
Anwar Sadat of Egypt reclaimed a measure of Arab pride in 1973 in a war that, while lost tactically and operationally, was fought with enough skill to regain an Arab sense of honour and pride lost in 1967. The next precept is to make the conventional phase last as long and be as bloody as possible for the coalition.
The final sub-phase will be to attempt to turn Baghdad into an Arab Alamo, making "Remember Baghdad" a battle cry, for future generations and the rest of this war. At this point Saddam will go into hiding or exile, portraying himself as having led a glorious struggle against imperialism and vowing to continue. If he uses chemical weapons, I am wrong. There will be no sanctuary.
The second phase is a protracted guerilla war against the occupation (or liberation). The Ba'ath party has seeded the population centres with cadres designed to lead a guerilla movement. This is not a last-minute act. Americans have overrun facilities that have been in place for some time.
The war will be an attritional struggle against occupying forces and any Iraqi interim government. The strategic objective is to tire the coalition, which will turn Iraq over to the United Nations.
Phase three aims to amass enough semi-conventional power to overwhelm the UN and interim government - a combination of Black Hawk Down and the 1975 North Vietnamese offensive that crushed South Vietnam. A success would transform Saddam into a darling of the Arab world; a high-risk strategy, for a high-risk kind of guy.
Let's start with the assumption based on the 1973 war.
One, Sadat could restore some pride in Arab military prowess by initiating a surprise attack by well-practiced (for that task) troops against heavily outnumbered Israeli troops. Saddam was about to be hit by a superior enemy army (the mainly US-British force that struck).
Two, Sadat did not face the loss of his country regardless of the outcome. Israel was not going to conquer Egypt, first of all. And second, like any war waged by allies of America and the Soviet Union, the clock was ticking on the war once the fighting started. Pressure to end the war before it could escalate to super power involvement and the next worry of nuclear confrontation between those super powers limited what the Israelis could achieve. Saddam was on his own and Russia was not going to risk nuclear war to stop American tanks and smart bombs.
So Saddam's ability to replicate Sadat's achievement is not there based on the author's assumptions.
Further, while Saddam assumed defeat in a conventional fight with America, that is why he had little conventional military power to defend southern Iraq.
He did hope to hold at Baghdad because we'd be too afraid of casualties to go house to house, if my memory serves me; and hoped that French and Russian diplomatic help would end the war before we could gather up the forces to take Fortress Baghdad. So Saddam's assumption of losing the conventional war was way too optimistic, too.
For the first phase of conventional war--which was about to end with the Thunder Runs into Baghdad--Saddam did not inflict many casualties at all in the invasion and Saddam's forces broke after the Thunder Runs without making Baghdad an Arab Alamo.
So the prediction of phase I was wrong.
The phase 2 insurgency is where the author apparently earns his predictive reputation.
Yes, Saddam prepared his loyalists in the south to resist us. But Saddam assumed that this resistance would take place behind the front line held at Baghdad by Saddam's conventional Republican Guards divisions. And they'd have to fight only long enough for France and Russia to save his regime and get our forces out. Then, those loyalists would be in a better position to keep the Shias of southern Iraq from revolting as they did in 1991 in the wake of Desert Storm.
Saddam's loyalists did resist after Baghdad fell, it is true. But by December, Saddam was caught and resistance was crumbling. By February 2004, we went a week with zero combat deaths in a month that saw just 20 American combat deaths, and it seemed like Baathist resistance was fading fast.
The only reason that the fight continued was because al Qaeda with Syrian support invaded Iraq, and Iran supported Sadr and Shia death squads to start entirely new insurgencies. Our fight went on but it had nothing to do with Saddam's plans to tire us out. Other actors fought for their objectives--not for Saddam's (who in any case was in captivity).
The last phase ignores that Saddam had no place to build up a semi-conventional military power. I wrote as the war went on that the resistance was actually descending the insurgency ladder. Far from building up units to engage at higher levels over time, the insurgencies regressed to IEDs and rocket attacks with relatively few direct attacks and few of them at even platoon level.
Saddam's, Syria's, Iran's, and al Qaeda's strategies all failed to tire us or defeat us. By fall 2008, we'd won the war.
I don't mean to pick on the man, but this is no record of predicting the future. Not that the author of this is claiming this article as a sign of his ability to see the future. And Max Boot should know better.
And I did not predict an insurgency, I freely admit. Once Baghdad's defenders collapsed, I figured the Baathists didn't have the heart to wage an insurgency. And if they did, as only 20% of the population, I assumed they could not win. Nor did I think we'd let Syria and Iran get away with essentially invading Iraq to wage war on us.
Afghan's forces do need air support--both fire support and medical evacuation--or they won't want to take the field to resist the Taliban once we remove our air power. And you don't need to be Nostradamus to see that coming.
If we need to hire contractors to provide light air support and medical transport, we should do it.
