Powell was always in favor of overwhelming force. Rumsfeld likes light and fast. There were plenty of other generals that said more troops were needed. The primary need for the large number of troops was to maintain securit
This is a popular meme, but I am far from sure that those few, those very few, commentators who are competent to weigh in on it have done so. Most of the military voices backing it are old Army types who don't have experience in the force that was clearly needed and missing, the kind of engineering/military police force that Tom Barnett calls 'SysAdmin'.
Clearly the force that was used was plenty to win the conventional war without the often-predicted 'quagmire' or 'Stalingrad-on-the-Tigris'. Just as clearly, the US failed to establish security after going in, though whether this was a failure of mere numbers, or of anticipation and planning and not numbers is not at all clear to me. The US did not anticipate the orgy of looting when Saddam fell (did the Parisians strip the Louvre when they were liberated?), and did not have the ruthlessness to shoot the looters whom they had just liberated from Saddam. That set a bad start, and there was a clear failure to nip the AQ/Baathist insurgency in the bud before it could get started. But would more American boots have done the trick? or would they merely have presented more targets for the insurgents? It seems to me that the essential nature of the problem - that the Iraqi government fell apart with the fall of Saddam, and needed to be reconstituted on quite different lines, would have remained the same. And that's a slow process however you do it.
Clearly defined mission.
Overwhelming force.
Exit strategy.
Mission: regime change, install a functioning democracy
Overwhelming force: check
Exit strategy: as soon as there is a functioning democracy with its in troops, we leave.
Looks like the Powell doctrine to me. What is it about the Powell doctrine that makes you think it all has to happen inside six weeks or so? There's been a lot of progress in two years, and I would be the insurgency will peter out in the next year or so. If the country has a consitution and a functional government in two years, and the US leaves, that looks like an exit strategy to me. |
