PART II: Warmaking in practice: the Iraq War

How well did the Bush Administration execute the warmaking procedure outlined in the previous post? Let's walk though each of the steps:

STEP 1: Specify the objective

What policy objectives were specified for the Iraq War? Two were offered to the American public by Mr. Bush:

1. Eliminate the threat of Mr. Hussein using WMD against us.
2. Eliminate the terrorist threat from the Middle East by converting Middle Eastern countries to democracies, starting with Iraq.

Neither of these policy objectives makes sense. The first assumes that Iraq did possess WMD. We now know that to be false, but subsequent knowledge is irrelevant to the evaluation of the policy. All that matters is the state of knowledge in early 2003.

Defenders of American policy in Iraq state that "everybody knew" that Iraq had WMD. That claim is false. It is correct that some American intelligence units believed that Iraq possessed WMD. But it is also true that some American intelligence units had serious doubts as to Iraq's WMD. The intelligence services of other countries, relying on American misinformation, also suspected the Iraq had WMD, but none of them had any corroborating evidence of their own, and none of them believed that the evidence was strong enough to justify military action against Iraq. After all, the leaders of those same countries opposed the American attack. Do you think they would have done so had they been confident that Iraq possessed WMDs?

But the conservative argument overlooks one of the most important sources of evidence on this: the Blix Commission. Mr. Blix was in Iraq. He had teams all over the country. They were carrying out a thorough investigation; Mr. Blix's final report ran to over a thousand pages in length. Whenever American intelligence suggested a site to investigate, Blix attempted to investigate it. Now, in some cases, the Iraqi government was uncooperative with the Blix investigators. But Mr. Blix's statements in the immediate prelude to the American attack were clear: he found no evidence of WMDs. He could not certify that Iraq was completely free of WMDs, but his investigation had been thorough and he felt that there was not evidence to justify an attack. Mr. Bush ignored Mr. Blix's evidence and proceeded to attack. In the end, Mr. Blix proved to be correct and Mr. Bush proved to be wrong. In early 2003, there was no compelling evidence that Iraq possessed WMD and Mr. Bush ignored the preponderance of evidence, choosing to give greater weight to flimsy evidence. That was a catastrophic blunder that could easily have been avoided by a more rational President.

Thus, the American government's handling of Step 1 was incompetent. The primary policy objective was based on incorrect beliefs.

Step 2: Devise a plan
From this point forward, we will ignore all aspects of American policy decisions in regard to WMD, because these turned out to be irrelevant. We will instead concentrate our attentions on the remaining policy objective: establishing a working democracy in the Middle East.

It should be obvious that the Bush Administration had no plan for achieving this goal. They didn't even have a plan for securing Baghdad once it had been overrun. The city was in anarchy for days after the Americans captured it. Subsequent American actions, such as the dissolution of the Iraqi Army, made matters worse. It is now obvious that the Bush Administration completely failed Step 2: they didn't just have a bad plan, they didn't have ANY plan. Worse, they ignored the advice of the Pentagon. Following standard practice, the Pentagon felt that at least 300,000 troops would be required to occupy Iraq and insure security. The Bush Administration foolishly ignored these recommendations, insisting that the job could be done with half that number or less -- and they proved to be horribly wrong. Iraq was NEVER stabilized. The anarchy of the post-invasion days simply simmered for years while the Americans kept it from boiling over, but never brought it to an end. The first time that the Bush Administration came up with something like a plan was in the aftermath of the 2006 elections, which forced a chastened Mr. Bush to come up with the "surge" strategy -- which attempted only to achieve security in Iraq, and did nothing to achieve the policy objective of establishing a secure democratic regime.

To this day, the Bush Administration has still not revealed its plan for establishing a secure democratic regime in Iraq. That' s because the Bush Administration has no such plan. It can't -- the task is impossible. I'll explain why in the next post. But let's move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Assess the costs
Again, the Bush Administration completely failed to carry out this step. They estimated costs of the invasion in the neighborhood of a few hundred dead and perhaps ten times that number seriously wounded. But they had no estimates of the post-invasion costs. Did they think that they'd just pack up and leave Iraq the day after Baghdad was captured? What were they thinking? Apparently they weren't thinking anything at all. In an especially ironic twist, the Bush Administration predicted that all the costs of the occupation would be paid for by Iraqi oil. Instead, the current projected cost of the war is at least 4,000 American dead and $1.6 trillion. And we haven't even begun to assess the cost in diplomatic clout. American prestige peaked in early 2002, and began a precipitous decline with the invasion of Iraq. Our ability to command the respect and compliance of other countries with our wishes has fallen to a point lower than at any time since the end of World War II.

Step 4: compare the costs with the benefits
Would the establishment of a stable democratic regime in Iraq be worth 4,000 American lives and $1.6 trillion? I don't think so. And we can be certain about one thing: had Mr. Bush honestly presented these figures to the American people prior to the invasion, he would not have enjoyed the support of the American people. It's obvious that the American people regard the benefits as unworthy of the costs.

Step 5: Execute the operation
The invasion was executed competently.

Step 6: Assess progress against predictions
Again, the Bush Administration completely failed this task. It had become obvious that the invasion was a mistake by 2005, yet Mr. Bush insisted on "staying the course" and never wavered from his original plan long after it was in tatters.

Reviewing these six steps, it is clear why the Iraq War was such a disaster: The Bush Administration botched every step of the procedure. They failed to understand and apply von Clausewitz's ideas. And for that, America has paid a high price.

In my next post, I shall explain why the Bush Administration's second objective (establishing a stable democracy in Iraq) was impossible to achieve.