One, those who criticize "disbanding" the Iraqi army after the defeat of Saddam in 2003 are wrong:
Because of this misconception about the Baghdadi Sunnis many foreigners remained highly critical of the in May 2003 American decision to dissolve the former Iraqi Army. That was done because of its ties to Saddam Hussein and his regime. The 400,000 strong-army was not formally discharged, but essentially just told to go home. Many of these troops went home with their weapons. And some of them, especially officers, were soon identified as leaders in the growing anti-government violence. While it was pointed out that that retaining the army was like "keeping the Nazis in power," that was exactly the point of many critics who wanted to again rule Iraq via the most capable locals. No one would admit that view, but that is what it came down to.
I'm sad to say that the Army's official history was written by people who believe that criticism.
I'll add that in May 2003 the order was a formality because the army had dissolved and gone home during the invasion. But it was a necessary formality. I defended that decision again and again over the course of the war in the face of criticism.
Yes, there were risks to starting over. And the difficulty of training officers and senior NCOs to staff and effective army was the main risk of that course. And the five-year war against small but well-organized and -equipped insurgencies and terror campaigns was the result. But by 2008 it worked.
And there would have been risks if the determined Sunni officers had been retained in the security forces or government, with the most obvious being how we'd get the majority Shia and Kurds to accept continued rule by Sunni Arabs? We might have traded an insurgency by 20% of the population for an insurgency by 80%.
And I pointed out a major flaw in that line of thinking following the spring 2004 joint offensive by the Baathists/al Qaeda and the Iran-backed Shia death squads. My archives from that period are dead now, having been on the old Yahoo!Geocities site (and archive sites subsequently died), but here's my commentary--complete with typos--in 2006:
How could we appeal to Shias if we had kept the Baathist government machinery in place? How could we keep the Baathist military intact when it was not trustworthy and the insturment of oppressing and slaughering the Kurds and Shias?
How much worse would spring 2004 have been if the Shias had been alienated from us by these policies in "the plan" just as the enemy counter-offensive began? Baathist-run agencies would have openly delcared for the insurgents and Shias would have rallied to Sadr. It would have been a revolt on the order of the Sepoy Mutiny (at the time, because it was not a wide revolt, I wrote that people should calm down because it was not the Sepoy Mutiny of 2004).
Those Sunnis provided the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq and ISIL as a means for the Sunni Arabs to regain control of Iraq in a Plan B in case of being overthrown, which was one result of Saddam's defeat in 1991 (back to Strategypage):
Between 1991 and 2003 Saddam and his Baghdadi Sunnis prepared for that worst case [of being overthrown]. This involved Saddam making amends to the non-Baghdadi Iraqi Sunni Arabs after 1991. Most of these Sunnis were tribal and most of those were Bedouin, who had always been looked down on by the Baghdadis. To make this work Saddam not only shared the oil wealth with the tribal Sunni Arabs but suddenly because religious. For all his adult life Saddam was a very public secular Arab, openly consuming alcohol while encouraging Iraqi women to be more “modern” (no veils and allowing Western attire). The tribal Sunnis were, like the Bedouins who dominated and ran Saudi Arabia, favored a more Islamic and traditional lifestyle, Saddam publically agreed and Saddam enshrined that as the official (but not always followed in private) law. The Sunni tribal leaders, now wealthy because they had some of the oil wealth, and flattered that the haughty Baghdadi Sunnis finally accepted the ancient wisdom of the Bedouin, became part of the larger Sunni Arab coalition, that now comprised about 20 percent of the population.
Saddam has noted the inspirational power of calling for Arabs to “defend Islam” with fanatic armed resistance and terrorism and using that was the essence of Plan B.
But as noted, that Plan B was defeated by 2008. And of course, there are Sunnis who still want to run Iraq, as the rise of ISIL in 2014 showed most recently until they were defeated by 2017:
Then 2008 repeated itself by 2017 and the Baghdadi Sunni Islamic terrorists were once again in stealth mode, preparing to revive Plan B when the opportunity presented itself. It may take generations for the Baghdadis to lose their zeal for regaining their control over Baghdad and the rest of Iraq. That’s how things work in the Middle East, where grudges remain volatile and lethal for centuries.
We need to stay in Iraq (because we won, don't forget) to help Iraqis move past that history of domination and abuse by a determined and armed minority, which Iran tries to encourage and exploit for their own efforts to dominate Iraq. The ISIL and Iranian presence in Iraq is a strange mutual admiration society in action that we must fight.
