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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (81748)	10/29/2004 3:12:11 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793841

The execution of the initial combat stage of the Iraq war was stellar. However, the post-war has sucked, mostly because the post-war planning appears to have been practically non-existent. This is CW of the moment, but I'm dubious. The war went quicker than expected, so anybody who thought he would have more time to get a feel for post-war circumstances was left in the lurch. Second, there was post-war planning, but it was for scenarios that didn't happen - the decapitation scenario, the Stalingrad on the Tigris scenario, the millions of refugees scenario, the burning oil wells scenario. The orgy of looting caught everybody unprepared, and an army that wanted to be seen as liberators did not like to put it down the only way they could have - by shooting the looters. Ignore the carping that says if only we had had 500,000 soldiers, we would have been able to blanket the country, it's nonsense. The problem would have been the same, just slightly easier to handle. So the post-war planning didn't work well, and that was definitely bad, but take a look at the state of Europe in the fall of 1946 to see a bunch of bad planning also. Post-war planning always comes second to war planning, and the WWII planners did not have the excuse of such a short time to adjust to events! Look at any war in history for that matter. There is a tendency in today's coverage to see, "well, that strategy didn't work, the generals must have been idiots". War is a risky enterprise and lots of things don't work. Lots of things go very badly indeed, the proper question is, how does your side adjust to adverse events?