A Mistake Reconsidered
once i thought i made a mistake but i found out i was wrong
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I’ve long found one of the most frustrating part of discussing the Iraq War to be the idea of mistakes. The issue is not whether or not mistakes were made, the issue is whether those mistakes could have been reasonably considered to be mistaken at the time or whether there was ever a set of correct decisions that could have been made.
I’m a Clausewitzian by training and inclination. I don’t buy 99% of the Fourth Generation Warfare or Network-centric Warfare theory bandied about. I don’t believe there was a correct set of solutions. Rather every decision, like a socio-political version of Newton’s Third Law, was bound to produce a negative outcome as well as a positive outcome. I’ve explored what I think is the cruelest myth, that disbanding the Iraqi Army was a mistake, and others, smarter than I, have explored the potential outcomes of other decisions unmade.
Now another myth is being exploded: that de-Baathification is a bad idea.
Read on.
If one wants to understand where the de-Baathification order one need look no farther than the de-Nazification order issued by President Truman to General Eisenhower
All members of the Nazi party who have been more than nominal participants in its activities, all active supporters of Nazism or militarism and all other persons hostile to Allied purposes will be removed and excluded from public office and from positions of importance in quasi-public and private enterprises such as (1) civic, economic and labor organizations, (2) corporations and other organizations in which the German government or subdivisions have a major financial interest, (3) industry, commerce, agriculture, and finance, (4) education, and (5) the press, publishing houses and other agencies disseminating news and propaganda. Persons are to be treated as more than nominal participants in Party activities and as active supporters of Nazism or militarism when they have (1) held office or otherwise been active at any level from local to national in the party and its subordinate organizations, or in organizations which further militaristic doctrines, (2) authorized or participated affirmatively in any Nazi crimes, racial persecutions or discriminations, (3) been avowed believers in Nazism or racial and militaristic creeds, or (4) voluntarily given substantial moral or material support or political assistance of any kind to the Nazi Party or Nazi officials and leaders. No such persons shall be retained in any of the categories of employment listed above because of administrative necessity, convenience or expediency.
Now the indispensable Nibras Kazimi at Talisman Gate reports:
Today, a Talisman Gate source alleges that U.S. and Iraqi soldiers raided the home of top Sunni parliamentary leader, Khalaf 'Alayan, in the Yarmouk district only to find sizable amounts of TNT, detonators, heavy machine guns and raw footage material that had gone into earlier jihadist propaganda videos (...specifically the attack on the American mess hall in Mosul). Mr. 'Alayan is currently in Amman, Jordan.
Reconciliation between religious confessions is a different prospect than rehabilitating Baathists. Just as the United States took years to restore the civil rights of anyone involved in the Confederate government or military forces and just as de-Nazification continues in Germany, the idea that bringing back members of the Saddam regime after so short a time is ridiculous. The idea that Bremer made a mistake in de-Baathification is a myth that simply ignores the impact of a “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” on the 80% of the population that were oppressed by that regime.
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but Bremmer made many other critical mistakes, and all of my budies who were there, at the beginning, hate him with a passion.
My Grandfather in-law was at the Bulge, among the first to enter Nazi Germany, and remained in Germany for more than a year after VE-Day.
He was incredulous of the fact that when our forces entered Iraq we did not disarm the population. He told me that anyone with a gun in their hand who was not also in an allied uniform was shot immediately, no questions asked.
Bremmer did not take control, and that is why he will be remembered as a complete failure. He set the insurgency up to succeed, and we have been battling back from that position ever since.
The second amendment is one thing, but no matter what you like to call it, we invaded a country, and to leave an armed population while occupying, or whatever you want to call it, that invaded country is moronic, period.
"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem." - President Ronald Reagan
you have to consider the downstream impact of doing that and why it might have solved one problem but created another.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
It wouldn't have helped.
I don't have the reference, but I read about the massive ammo dumps Saddam Hussein had located throughout Iraq. Imagine, if you can, an ammo dump the size of Manhattan. Then imagine one twice that size. Then imagine 10 of them, scattered around Iraq.
Those were just the big ammo dumps. There were plenty of 'smaller' ammo dumps as well. The bad guys were going to be armed from the beginning no matter what we did-- Saddam Hussein figured that he could carry on an insurgency longer than we would stay, so he stocked up on excessively large amounts of all the armament an insurgency would need.
From what I understand now, families are allowed to have one Kalishnikov, which seems like a sensible compromise to me.
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Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community
I've often noted the verbal fallacy used when overloading the word "mistake". Put another way, nobody says "I'm going to make a mistake right now, because I think it's the wrong thing to do."
It's all one big MSM gotcha game.
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See the Academy
but it is easy to say "gotcha" when mistakes are actually made.
Making excuses, or blaming the MSM for pointing them out, isn't going to help matters.
and not what I said.
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See the Academy
According to Paul Bremer, the Iraqi barracks were empty after Baghdad was taken. The uniforms were scattered on the floor, and everywhere else. The military disbanded themselves. There may have been some opportunity to "call up" Saddam's military officers--many of them Baathist thugs--with a firm promise of no retribution for past actions, but the enlisted men--the conscripts--were not happy to be in the military even before the war, and most were Shiites under the direction of Sunnis. They never had any loyalty to their leadership, and certainly wouldn't now, when they had a choice to leave and go home to their familes. That's how Bremer tells it.