Should We Have Disbanded The Iraqi Army?

[NATO AIR]

this may seem like an old question beyond debate, but I respectfully disagree. I still consider it to be the worst decision made in our occupation of Iraq. And when I read wishy wash crap like this

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/065aygqf.asp

I feel sick. There is a sliver of truth in the author's opportunist article, and that is that the Iraqi Army was rotten to the core. That, for quite a bit of the senior leadership, is quite true, perhaps even for a good number of the enlisted leadership as well. Nevertheless, there are good NCO's in almost any army, even enemy ones, and to discount their likely contribution to the defense of their homeland against Iranian/Syrian/Jihadist forces is a serious mistake. We sent hundreds of thousands of men with weapons training (and weapons) home with no contact, no promise of future work, no offer of assistance. Big, big mistake, one our guys are now paying for.

I can argue with opinions and viewpoints, but JON LEE ANDERSON, a journalist who was in Iraq before, during and after the invasion (on his own, not embedded or alligned with Saddam) cooly shows the truth of this mistake and others in an article from the New Yorker, which offers pointed advice to the Bush administration on how to deal with the insurgency. This is a journalist who wants the US to succeed in Iraq, if nothing more than to help the Iraqis succeed. He was in Afghanistan right after 9/11 as well, and the book he wrote about his experiences there with Northern Alliance forces was a fair, detail-rich portrayal of the liberation of Afghanistan. So was his more recent book, the Fall Of Baghdad, which was also fair and detail-rich, without being anti or pro-American to a fault.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041115fa_fact

On April 19, 2003, ten days after the fall of Baghdad, an advance “jump group” of Americans commanded by retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner was flown into the city to manage the occupation of Iraq. One of the first to arrive was Stephen Browning, whose previous assignment had been as director of programs on the West Coast for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Two months earlier, Browning had been summoned to Washington to join a group of experts charged with planning for postwar Iraq. Within a day or two of his arrival in Baghdad, Browning was given the job of getting the Ministry of Health up and running.

Baghdad’s hospitals were in a calamitous state. Many had been looted, and the doctors and nurses had fled. In the Shiite slum of Saddam (now Sadr) City, home to two million people, clerics and armed vigilantes loyal to the radical Shiite Moqtada al-Sadr had taken control of the medical facilities.“When I went into the Ministry of Health, there was no clear leader, no one willing to say, ‘I represent the Iraqis for the health ministry,’” Browning recalled. “Then Dr. Ali Shinan al-Janabi, an optometrist who had been a deputy minister, stepped forward. He told us that he was a member of the Baath Party. And—well, the fact is there was no one else to go to. I asked around, did a lot of research, and almost everyone I spoke to seemed to regard him as an honorable figure, even though he was a Baathist. And, after getting to know him, I came to feel he was a brave and admirable man.”

Browning decided early on that in order to get things done he needed to work with members of the Baath Party. The Party had been virtually synonymous with Saddam Hussein’s regime; it was the instrument through which Iraqis were brutalized. At the same time, its members filled jobs at every level of society and anchored the middle class. On his own initiative, Browning says, he asked Shinan to sign a letter renouncing his membership in the Baath Party. Shinan did so, and Garner named him the acting Minister of Health. “We started working together,” Browning said. “We made real progress in a very short amount of time.”

A few weeks later, Browning and Shinan held a press conference. A reporter from the BBC asked Shinan if he was a Baathist. “He said he was, but that he had signed a letter of renunciation,” Browning told me. “The BBC guy insisted, though. ‘Will you denounce the Baath Party in front of us right now?’ Ali’s response was ‘This is not an issue right now; we need to move on with the emergencies we have facing us.’ And then he said, ‘I was just doing my job.’

“The minute I heard him say that—it sounded so close to what the Nazi sympathizers said in their own defense in Germany after the Second World War—I knew how it would sound to the press outside Iraq, in the West, and I knew right then and there that Ali’s political career was finished,” Browning said. “I walked out of the conference with him hand in hand, and the next morning told him what we had to do. Ali was fine about it; he asked only that he be allowed to continue working as an optometrist. I agreed. Ali said, ‘You are my brother.’ We both had tears in our eyes.”

Still, Browning was troubled by Shinan’s refusal to denounce the Baath Party, and he asked him why he hadn’t. “He told me that if he did so in public the vengeance on his family would be catastrophic. Which is probably true. There was nobody stopping anything from happening back then—our troops weren’t much in the way of a protection force.”

Browning asked Shinan to continue to assist him, and he agreed. A few days later, he disappeared. Browning later learned that Shinan and his family had left Baghdad. By then, an assassination campaign had begun against former Baathists who were coöperating with the occupation, and also against some who weren’t. The victims of the campaign, which is ongoing, have included doctors, engineers, and teachers, sparking an exodus of Iraqi professionals to other countries.

Not long after, Garner himself was fired, and President Bush named L. Paul Bremer III as the head of what became known as the Coalition Provisional Authority. On May 16, 2003, Bremer issued a sweeping ban of the Baath Party: all senior party members were barred from public life; lower-level members were also barred, but some could appeal. In effect, Bremer had fired the entire senior civil service. The origins of the decree have never been clarified, but Coalition officials I spoke to said they believed that Bremer was following orders from the White House. A week later, he disbanded the Iraqi Army.

Browning recalled a meeting that he and other officials had with Bremer before the announcement. “Bremer walked in and announced his de-Baathification order. I said that we had established a good working relationship with technicians—not senior-level people—of the Baath Party, and I expressed my feeling that this measure could backfire. Bremer said that it was not open for discussion, that this was what was going to be done and his expectation was that we would carry it out. It was not a long meeting.”

The order had an immediate effect on Browning’s work. “We had a lot of directors general of hospitals who were very good, and, with de-Baathification, we lost them and their expertise overnight,” he told me. At the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, which was another of his responsibilities, “we were left dealing with what seemed like the fifth string. . . . Nobody who was left knew anything.”

An American special-forces officer stationed in Baghdad at the time told me that he was stunned by Bremer’s twin decrees. After the dissolution of the Army, he said, “I had my guys coming up to me and saying, ‘Does Bremer realize that there are four hundred thousand of these guys out there and they all have guns?’ They all have to feed their families.” He went on, “The problem with the blanket ban is that you get rid of the infrastructure; I mean, after all, these guys ran the country, and you polarize them. So did these decisions contribute to the insurgency? Unequivocally, yes. And we have to ask ourselves: How well did we really know how to run Iraq? Zero.”

The officer recalled that after Bremer’s decrees the looting of the city “became increasingly professional and organized, and it became not just looting but sabotage, too, and I think a lot of this had to do with the decisions that put all of these guys out of work.” In Baghdad, he saw a truck drive past him loaded with artillery shells, apparently looted from an armory. There were many such armories throughout Iraq, such as Al-Qaqaa, where three hundred and eighty tons of powerful explosives went missing. “Once these guys realized they had been shut out, they just went for it,” he said.
(much much more contained in the article, a must read for anyone wondering about what went on in Iraq after the fall of Baghdad)

 

[dilloduck]

this may seem like an old question beyond debate, but I respectfully disagree. I still consider it to be the worst decision made in our occupation of Iraq. And when I read wishy wash crap like this



I feel sick. There is a sliver of truth in the author's opportunist article, and that is that the Iraqi Army was rotten to the core. That, for quite a bit of the senior leadership, is quite true, perhaps even for a good number of the enlisted leadership as well. Nevertheless, there are good NCO's in almost any army, even enemy ones, and to discount their likely contribution to the defense of their homeland against Iranian/Syrian/Jihadist forces is a serious mistake. We sent hundreds of thousands of men with weapons training (and weapons) home with no contact, no promise of future work, no offer of assistance. Big, big mistake, one our guys are now paying for.

I can argue with opinions and viewpoints, but JON LEE ANDERSON, a journalist who was in Iraq before, during and after the invasion (on his own, not embedded or alligned with Saddam) cooly shows the truth of this mistake and others in an article from the New Yorker, which offers pointed advice to the Bush administration on how to deal with the insurgency. This is a journalist who wants the US to succeed in Iraq, if nothing more than to help the Iraqis succeed. He was in Afghanistan right after 9/11 as well, and the book he wrote about his experiences there with Northern Alliance forces was a fair, detail-rich portrayal of the liberation of Afghanistan. So was his more recent book, the Fall Of Baghdad, which was also fair and detail-rich, without being anti or pro-American to a fault.

Interesting story --I wonder what Bremers' reasoning was??

 

[CSM]

Really is a tough call. The Baathists were very oppressive in their rule of Iraq. They had proved themselves to be very underhanded in their dealings not only with the US but the UN and other countries as well. Not sure how much we could or should have trusted them right after the fall of Iraq. On the other hand, a lot of institutional knowledge went right out the window.

 

[NATO AIR]

Interesting story --I wonder what Bremers' reasoning was??

I never got a good excuse/reason I could understand or like. Perhaps someone on here can enlighten me and others about this.

I see it as a mistake that along with the idiocy of widespread de-baathifcation cost us lives, money, time and a whole lot of good opportunity to do other, more productive things in Iraq.

I don't think Bremer did a very good job at all. Tenet either. Tommy Franks did great though. (of the 3 people have been screaming about as well as rumsfield)

 

[NATO AIR]

Really is a tough call. The Baathists were very oppressive in their rule of Iraq. They had proved themselves to be very underhanded in their dealings not only with the US but the UN and other countries as well. Not sure how much we could or should have trusted them right after the fall of Iraq. On the other hand, a lot of institutional knowledge went right out the window.

i would think the SENIOR of senior batathists should have been imprisoned and punished. the rank and file guys (those with the knowledge and the expertise) should have been held to a high standard but given a 2nd chance.

 

[CSM]

i would think the SENIOR of senior batathists should have been imprisoned and punished. the rank and file guys (those with the knowledge and the expertise) should have been held to a high standard but given a 2nd chance.

Not arguing with you here...trying to figure it out myself. I wonder just how far down the ranks the you had to go before you got to the rank and file you speak of. I certainly do not understand why the Iraqi Army "rank and file" were disbanded either.

 

[dilloduck]

Not arguing with you here...trying to figure it out myself. I wonder just how far down the ranks the you had to go before you got to the rank and file you speak of. I certainly do not understand why the Iraqi Army "rank and file" were disbanded either.

I hate to say bad intel but it could have been that plus getting some bogus suggestions from Chalabi who wanted it all for himself. We trusted that dude too long IMO.

 

[NATO AIR]

Not arguing with you here...trying to figure it out myself. I wonder just how far down the ranks the you had to go before you got to the rank and file you speak of. I certainly do not understand why the Iraqi Army "rank and file" were disbanded either.

oh no no argument from me on this one. the funny thing is it seems all of us (at least the open-minded ones) are stumped about this, i guess its one for the historians to figure out.

 

[NATO AIR]

I hate to say bad intel but it could have been that plus getting some bogus suggestions from Chalabi who wanted it all for himself. We trusted that dude too long IMO.

i definitely agree about him and the other exiles.

 

[dilloduck]

oh no no argument from me on this one. the funny thing is it seems all of us (at least the open-minded ones) are stumped about this, i guess its one for the historians to figure out.

This is honestly where I think the initial victory came to swiftly and while we were prepared for a war that possibly included chemical weapons the thought of post war planning was one that was still in the beginning stages. Decisions had to be made quickly which easily leads to making the wrong ones.

 

[CSM]

This is honestly where I think the initial victory came to swiftly and while we were prepared for a war that possibly included chemical weapons the thought of post war planning was one that was still in the beginning stages. Decisions had to be made quickly which easily leads to making the wrong ones.

I think you may be right. No one really expected the Iraqi defense to collapse so quickly.

 

[NATO AIR]

I think you may be right. No one really expected the Iraqi defense to collapse so quickly.

very right on that one.

 

[dilloduck]

very right on that one.

This is where the elections I think are going to play a vital role in reshaping the battle field over there. It won't solve everything but it will help draw the lines a bit more clearly

 

[NATO AIR]

This is where the elections I think are going to play a vital role in reshaping the battle field over there. It won't solve everything but it will help draw the lines a bit more clearly

you're right.
hey, even liberals are getting the big picture now dillo.

check this out (yea its got the prequisite bush bashing but in the end, you have to sit back and go damn, this guy just got it, now do the rest of the libs?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/23/opinion/23friedman.html
Worth a Thousand Words
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: December 23, 2004

There has been so much violence in Iraq that it's become hard to distinguish one senseless act from another. But there was a picture that ran on the front page of this newspaper on Monday that really got to me. It showed several Iraqi gunmen, in broad daylight and without masks, murdering two Iraqi election workers. The murder scene was a busy street in the heart of Baghdad. The two election workers had been dragged from their car into the middle of the street. They looked young, the sort of young people you'd see doing election canvassing in America or Ukraine or El Salvador.

One was kneeling with his arms behind his back, waiting to be shot in the head. Another was lying on his side. The gunman had either just pumped a bullet into him or was about to. I first saw the picture on the Internet, and I did something I've never done before - I blew it up so it covered my whole screen. I wanted to look at it more closely. You don't often get to see the face of pure evil.

There is much to dislike about this war in Iraq, but there is no denying the stakes. And that picture really framed them: this is a war between some people in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world who - for the first time ever in their region - are trying to organize an election to choose their own leaders and write their own constitution versus all the forces arrayed against them.

Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq.

As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, "These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age." They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It's time we called them by their real names.

However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for.

Indeed, they haven't even bothered to tell us otherwise. They have counted on the fact that the Bush administration is so hated around the world that any opponents will be seen as having justice on their side. Well, they do not. They are murdering Iraqis every day for the sole purpose of preventing them from exercising that thing so many on the political left and so many Europeans have demanded for the Palestinians: "the right of self-determination."

What is terrifying is that the noble sacrifice of our soldiers, while never in vain, may not be enough. We may actually lose in Iraq. The vitally important may turn out to be the effectively impossible.

We may lose because of the defiantly wrong way that Donald Rumsfeld has managed this war and the cynical manner in which Dick Cheney, George Bush and - with some honorable exceptions - the whole Republican right have tolerated it. Many conservatives would rather fail in Iraq than give liberals the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Rumsfeld sacked. We may lose because our Arab allies won't lift a finger to support an election in Iraq - either because they fear they'll be next to face such pressures, or because the thought of democratically elected Shiites holding power in a country once led by Sunnis is anathema to them.

We may lose because most Europeans, having been made stupid by their own weakness, would rather see America fail in Iraq than lift a finger for free and fair elections there.

As is so often the case, the statesman who framed the stakes best is the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Count me a "Blair Democrat." Mr. Blair, who was in Iraq this week, said: "Whatever people's feelings or beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror. On the one side you have people who desperately want to make the democratic process work, and want to have the same type of democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy, and on the other side people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better future for Iraq."

 

[dilloduck]

you're right.
hey, even liberals are getting the big picture now dillo.

check this out (yea its got the prequisite bush bashing but in the end, you have to sit back and go damn, this guy just got it, now do the rest of the libs?)

hooray--another point for the good guys !

 

[NATO AIR]

hooray--another point for the good guys !

yep, i'm wondering who's next to wake up speaking common sense?

 

[freeandfun1]

anybody remember that country song that goes like this [/screaching voice]Hindsite's 20-20 and I'm nearly going blind......[/screaching voice]

should we have disbanded it.... in hindsite, probably not. But we didn't have a crystal ball at the time so we did what we thought would be best. We were wrong.

 

[dilloduck]

anybody remember that country song that goes like this [/screaching voice]Hindsite's 20-20 and I'm nearly going blind......[/screaching voice]

should we have disbanded it.... in hindsite, probably not. But we didn't have a crystal ball at the time so we did what we thought would be best. We were wrong.

agreed---fun to analyze but more important to learn and move foreward. We'll get this thing done right unless we elect an idiot that screws it all up

 

[NATO AIR]

agreed---fun to analyze but more important to learn and move foreward. We'll get this thing done right unless we elect an idiot that screws it all up

I think we averted that disaster already

i bring this all back up because it weighs on certain individuals (bremer especially) recieving honors and acolades they do not deserve.

in addition, in future regime change situations, we need to learn our lessons from iraq, as we did from afghanistan.

 

[dilloduck]

I think we averted that disaster already

i bring this all back up because it weighs on certain individuals (bremer especially) recieving honors and acolades they do not deserve.

in addition, in future regime change situations, we need to learn our lessons from iraq, as we did from afghanistan.

I hope your right--maybe the new Republican opposition will get the whole WOT idea down and keep on fixing it instead of throwing in the towel. Best thing Bush ever did was to finally engage these bastards militarily !