The Lost Year in Iraq
Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.
Part 4.
Part 5.
Part 6.
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16 comments:
I've only had time to watch the first video but it's really interesting, as I've been reading an analysis of Lord of The Flies- and there are parallels of what happened in Iraq.
America failed in post-planning. The war was wrong to begin with but its what happened within hours of the fall of Baghdad. The leaders and the rule of law was abolished. Along with that came chaos and looting.
I believe it has been studied in the States, but I don't have sources to mind- it's been demonstrated areas that are under-maintained (eg. broken windows, graffiti etc..) for a long time, increases crime and lowers morale of the area. The peoples vision of community and sense of respect dissipate.
That is what happened in the first few hours of occupation on a massive scale. If they had embraced and implemented Clinton's plan for nation-building, they would be able to put down us critics intelligently and without effort.
Alex,
Actually L Paul Bremer does make a fair argument in a recent oped concerning events after we deposed Hussein.
As a side note, one of the most notable practical applications of the Broken Windows Theory was by Rudy Giuliani.
Jason,
It's a fair defence Bremer makes, but I would still say that America underestimated the effect of looting and 'broken windows'.
Thanks for highlighting the broken windows theory. It's interesting that Giuliani is usually remembered for, what is named as, his 'zero tolerance' policy, but in actual fact it was not just a zero tolerance strategy, but also a fixing broken windows strategy.
It seems pretty simple to me, what prevents Mr. Average on the street from taking items out of a shop window during a normal day, as opposed to during a blackout, hurricane or civil war? It's about who will notice and who will care. Repairing broken windows shows a community and authorities care. In turn, everyone will notice when the next window gets broken- eg. more chance of the perpetrator being discovered.
Do you agree?
Alex,
The intitial failure to restore order in the streets led to the breakdown of social order. In any society we all desire order, it's why policemen are respected in every culture. None of us can survive within chaos and that is what we created for those people. And it all came down to exactly what general Shinseki said before the conflict - for which they simply let him go - that the US needed far more troops than Rumsfeld had sent if they were to have any chance of keeping the peace.
Jason,
I read his defence and wouldn't expect him to say anything else, but the comparison between the Ba'athists and Hitler is blatantly absurd.
There were school teachers who were Ba'athists and they were members simply because membership gave them better pay. The de-Ba'athification process set 50,000 people underground with guns and grievances.
But, more importantly, where there had been order - even if we didn't like the kind of person who was enabling that order - there was suddenly anarchy. I suppose you didn't watch the film.
When the Ba'ath party was banned from office all help from the Iraqis stopped. The army were relying on these guys to assist in the rebuilding of Iraq. Suddenly there was no-one. No police force, no fire brigade, nothing. If a building caught fire it literally would burn for days as there was no-one to put it out.
In time the worst elements of the Ba'ath party could have been dealt with, but Bremner literally threw the baby out with the bath water.
"There were school teachers who were Ba'athists and they were members simply because membership gave them better pay."
You are generally right with that assertion.
I worked with an Iraqi the year before the invasion. He didn't think it was a good idea. I'm not sure of the business he was in but his father worked in Saudi Arabia, he couldn't get a job in Iraq because he was not a member of the Ba'ath party and would not have earned enough money and struggled to find employment.
I often wonder what became of him and his father.
Alex,
It certainly seems from my limited vantage point that there was some underestimation on the part of the US and lack of planning for instituting law and order.
The US plan, hampered by the dead-enders and jihadists, was to repair the windows so to speak. That is, they had plans to affect a positive change through trying to repair a society that was already quite broken and barely functioning since before we arrived. My understanding is that while they have made good progress in parts of the country, in other parts they are simply unable to follow through with their plans.
That said, security, infrastructure repair, and jobs will go a long way to making the situation more stable. Unfortunately I believe it takes 9-10 years on average to defeat a counter-insurgency and my guess is that the liberal surrender monkeys in my country won't allow us the time required.
kel,
You must not have read the oped as Bremer quite clearly stated that the CPA de-Ba'athification plan only called for the removal of high-ranking party officials. He quite explicitly stated that in the military for example, ranks from Colonel and below were not to be affected. The Shia however had other plans.
comparison between the Ba'athists and Hitler is blatantly absurd
On what grounds is the comparison between the baathist party and nazi party blatantly absurd?
Side note: I don't know if you have any control of the captcha system or if it's all blogger, but the time allowed is just ridiculously short and quite annoying.
Jason,
I will agree to a limit that the US tried to repair broken windows. But where we probably differ is who broke the windows in the first place- it was the US.
I see Iraq as like trying to rebuild a condemned house and the US being a wrecking crew. OK so the wrecking crew went in a pulled the old one down, but then they didn't step back and and call in the builders. They simply kept bashing away at the foundations, hoping that at some point, during their continual bashing, something would build itself. The only tool the US has chosen to use is that of a wrecking ball. So the wrecking ball is brought in every time a problem is discovered, instead of using precision instruments, wood cutting tools and building blocks.
You know, I'm for withdrawal but I think you're right- it's going to take years, if they ever do manage to get Iraq back on it's feet. But what the US should have done a long time ago is humbly present itself before the UN, admitted the war was a disaster and asked for help in nation building.
If they applied the same level of intensity and sincerity in doing that, as they did with the Colin Powell Amateur Dramatics Society did with that Anthrax bullshit- they may have won the international community onside.
The US could have stepped back and let the UN take over with peace-keeping and nation building, what's more it would have salvaged some of its already damaged reputation.
You are right about the timescale, but it's time to admit mistakes and give the wound a chance to heal. You are now the wrong guys for the job.
It is also quite possible that the UN could step in once the US leave.
t takes 9-10 years on average to defeat a counter-insurgency
I should have said defeat an insurgency obviously.
Alex,
My impression is that very few in the US believe the UN is capable of doing much of anything, and that basically it's a debating society. Witness Darfur. Another example would be Bosnia. The UN totally screwed up their mission in Darfur and the only thing that salvaged the situation was the US taking over under the guise of NATO.
The UN in many ways are responsible for the situation in Iraq by refusing to meaningfully enforce their resolutions. Still, the UN had the opportunity to contribute meaningfully and instead turned tail and ran when their compound was bombed.
I think the UN is rarely the answer for anything.
You must not have read the oped as Bremer quite clearly stated that the CPA de-Ba'athification plan only called for the removal of high-ranking party officials.
Watch Part 2 of the documentary even if you can't be bothered to watch the rest. He is splitting hairs. His first order was for the de-Ba'athification of Iraq. He himself, in the video, admits that he was told that some 20,000 people would be put out of work. If he now claims that he was only talking about high-ranking party officials then it's hard to conclude that he's being honest. Especially as in the speech he made - and again it's on the tape - he talks of the complete removal of Ba'athists and Ba'athism from Iraq. He certainly said nothing at the time about his order concerning only "high ranking officials".
On what grounds is the comparison between the baathist party and nazi party blatantly absurd?
Firstly, because the Nazis had taken part in the largest systematic extermination of a people in recorded history. The Ba'athists were simply not on that scale.
Secondly, unlike what took place after the Iraq invasion, after WWII the Americans hired many Nazis and used them in their next war with the USSR.
Whenever anyone makes the Hitler comparison it always leads me to suspect that they are on very thin ground when it comes to making a coherent argument. It reminds me of the caustic open letter that Uri Avnery once delivered to Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime minister who always likened Yasser Arafat in Beirut to Hitler in his Berlin bunker in 1945 – Avnery entitled his letter: "Mr Prime Minister, Hitler is Dead."
The Bushites have found comparisons with Hitler in Arafat, Saddam, Ahmadinejad and numerous others. Hitler's crimes were unique in that he, and he alone in history, set out to remove every trace of another race from the planet. This is such a horror that I think we cheapen the scale of what he attempted by likening every enemy and every situation to Hitler and the Third Reich.
Side note: I don't know if you have any control of the captcha system or if it's all blogger, but the time allowed is just ridiculously short and quite annoying.
No, that's me. I have set the days showing to three days as this makes it easier for the pages to load. I'll set it to five and you can let me know if that's any better.
No time to respond to the rest, but captcha, or image captcha in this case, are the word images used to verify posting. Blogger, or maybe one of your settings, has the timeout ridiculously low in my opinion so that you often have to end up submitting more than once since the first captcha has expired.
Sorry about that Jason. That's got bugger all to do with me. If Alex or anyone else knows a way to fix this I'd appreciate an email or a suggestion posted here!
Jason, I think you mean the word verification thing. I can switch this off although we will get spam I can simply delete that by hand.
Yep, the word verification image. I wouldn't switch it off. It's not worth the spam. I just didn't know if there was some kind of configurable timeout that Blogger gave you access to, but apparently there isn't.
Oh fuck it Jason, I've switched it off. Let's live dangerously...
I can always delete the spam by hand... and if we get over run by spam, I'll switch it back on...
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