THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF FAILURE IN IRAQ: A RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE RECONSTRUCTION By Kenneth M. Pollack *This article will appear in Barry Rubin (ed.), Iraq After Saddam (Sharpe, 2007). To order, please contact [email protected]. This article examines the course of the disastrous U.S. reconstruction of Iraq from the invasion through the fall of 2006. It locates the source of America’s many failings not only in the ignorance that governed the Bush Administration’s assumptions about the ease of postwar reconstruction and the absence of appropriate or realistic planning that resulted, but also in a series of equally mistaken decisions by the Bush Administration, the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the U.S. military in the years that followed. It argues that the political deadlock, security vacuum, and absence of a functional Iraqi economy today are all the result of these problems and that only dramatic changes in U.S. policy—not the tactical tinkering that the Bush Administration has engaged in over the past 18 months and that many of its critics continue to recommend today—have any chance of undoing the damage of this long chain of needless mistakes. It never had to be this bad. The consistently failed to provide them with the reconstruction of Iraq was never going to be opportunities and the framework to quick or easy, but it was not doomed to succeed.2 Indeed, perhaps the most tragic failure.1 Its disastrous course to date has evidence of this unrealized potential is that been almost entirely the result of a even three-and-a-half years after Saddam’s sequence of foolish and unnecessary fall, with Iraq mired in a deepening civil mistakes on the part of the United States. war and no sign of real progress on the Perhaps at some point in the future, horizon, over 40 percent of Iraqis still clung revisionist historians will try to claim that to the belief that Iraq was headed in the the effort was doomed from the start, that it right direction—with only 35 percent never was possible to build a stable, let saying it was headed in the wrong alone pluralistic, new Iraq in the rubble of direction.3 Saddam Hussein’s fall. However, that is If Iraq does slide into all-out civil war, decidedly not the view of the experts, the the Bush Administration will have only journalists covering the story, or the itself to blame. It disregarded the advice of practitioners who went to Iraq to put the experts on Iraq, on nation-building, and on country back together after the 2003 military operations. It staged both the invasion. Americans returning from Iraq— invasion and the reconstruction on the military and civilian alike—have proven cheap. It never learned from its mistakes unanimous in their view that the Iraqis and never committed adequate resources to desperately want reconstruction to succeed accomplish either its original lofty and that they have the basic tools to make it aspirations or even its later, more modest work, but that the United States has goals. It refused to believe intelligence that Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 10, No. 4 (December 2006) 1 Kenneth M. Pollack contradicted its own views and doggedly reconstruction. Some in the Bush insisted that reality conform to its wishes. Administration had convinced themselves In its breathtaking hubris, the that Saddam was the source of all of the ills Administration engineered a Greek tragedy of the Middle East and that, therefore, any in Iraq, the outcome of which may plague progress on any issue in the region first us for decades. required Saddam’s removal. This was a key piece of the neoconservative support for IGNORANCE AND ARROGANCE Laurie Mylroie’s bizarre claims that Saddam was responsible for the 1993 The invasion of Iraq was born of a great World Trade Center bombing, as well as a many different ideas. As former Deputy number of other attacks.8 Likewise, during Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz noted the 1990s, this author personally heard in an interview with Vanity Fair, the threat individuals who would later become senior of Saddam with weapons of mass Bush Administration officials insist that destruction (WMDs) was simply the one Saddam’s opposition had doomed threat upon which all of the senior members American efforts to make peace between of the Bush Administration agreed—and the Arabs and the Israelis in the 1980s. In believed that it could be used to justify the so doing, they simply dismissed all of the war to the public.4 Not all of these ideas evidence that no Arab leader except Hosni were foolish. Some of their rationales for Mubarak had been more supportive of the war were quite reasonable: the international peace process than Saddam during that consensus that Saddam had reconstituted period. This was the basis of the neo- his WMD programs—which turned out to conservative refrain that “the road to be entirely mistaken but was considered Jerusalem runs through Baghdad.” “incontrovertible”5 at the time;6 the fact that Likewise, this mistaken conviction was part Saddam was one of the most brutal tyrants of the reason that Washington quickly of the previous sixty years; the fact that his shifted its attention from Afghanistan to ambitions ran directly counter to those of Iraq, in the belief that Saddam somehow the United States—and his efforts to stood behind both the Taliban and al- achieve them had destabilized the Persian Qa’ida. It is certainly the case that Gulf for twenty-five years; and the problem Administration figures regularly played fast that the world was losing interest in keeping and loose with the paltry evidence him bound by sanctions, as evinced by the suggesting any kind of relationship between postwar revelations of the Volcker Saddam and bin Ladin, but it is also the commission concerning the corruption and case that they did so because they were manipulation of the Oil-for-Food program certain that it existed, even if there was no by the Iraqi government to secure the evidence to support it and most of the political support of France, Russia, and evidence available suggested the opposite.9 China, among other countries.7 As bad as some of these rationales for However, there were also a great deal of war may have been, far more damaging was unreasonable ideas, and unfortunately these the way in which these rationalizations unreasonable ideas were not only part of the influenced the Administration’s senior justification for the war, but also became leadership regarding the necessity and critical elements of the Administration’s demands of postwar reconstruction. At prewar thinking about postwar bottom, many in the Administration—and 2 Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 10, No. 4 (December 2006) The Seven Deadly Sins of Failure in Iraq virtually all of those leading the march to determined to exclude those agencies that war—simply did not believe that a major were both more willing and more able. effort at reconstruction was necessary. While State’s capacity to handle postwar United States Central Command reconstruction and nation-building probably (CENTCOM), the military command would also have proven inadequate without responsible for the war, was told to prepare massive international cooperation, it was for humanitarian contingencies such as still orders of magnitude beyond what DoD refugees, but little else. Both the possessed. Instead, the Defense Department CENTCOM commander, General Tommy put together a small team (about 200 people Franks, and the office of the Secretary of at the time of the invasion) led by retired Defense made clear that they wanted to Lieutenant General Jay Garner to handle reduce the American military presence in postwar reconstruction—at least Iraq as quickly as possible, and if there temporarily—until a presidential envoy were any serious efforts at nation-building could be appointed.13 Garner was not even to be made, they were determined that asked to head this postwar transition team someone else do it.10 Rumsfeld and other until January 9, 2003, a little more than two members of the Administration, including months before the start of the war. He was even the President, had made it clear that prevented from cooperating with Central they did not believe that nation-building Command planners, and many of his was the sort of operation in which the U.S. requests for key personnel were denied. military should be involved.11 Other Garner and his team wanted desperately to members of the Administration, particularly do the right thing, and some were quite those close to Iraqi National Congress able, but they started with everything (INC) leader Ahmed Chalabi, saw no need stacked against them. Once again, this was for a major American reconstruction effort, particularly true with regard to the because they hoped to turn the country over intellectual foundations of the to Chalabi and have him run it for the Administration’s approach to war, which United States.12 underlay all of the planning. Most of the To make matters worse, officials at the Administration’s chief Iraq hawks shared a Department of Defense (DoD), the Office deeply naïve view that the fall of Saddam of the Vice President (OVP), and some at and his top henchmen would have relatively the National Security Council (NSC) little impact on the overall Iraqi decided that the State Department was governmental structure. They assumed that “against” the war and would sabotage their Iraq’s bureaucracy would remain intact and plans to run Iraq the way they saw fit and to would therefore be capable of running the install Chalabi in power.