Posted on 04/20/2015 5:10:42 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
I trusted Bush’s judgment at the time Shinseki made his 500K man occupation force recommendation and, along with the rest of the GOP choir, dismissed Shinseki’s view as the politically-motivated words of a man appointed to his position by Clinton. Now it’s obvious he was doing Bush a favor. It’s not that Bush was never told - he just chose to ignore the advice.
Yet another mis-statement. The Mongols weren't Nazis. Their chief concern was armed revolt, not the preservation/purification of some mythical race. Anyone, of any race or ethnicity, who joined the tribe and pledged fealty to the khan became a Mongol. The female captives were distributed to the troops, either as wives, concubines or servants. Any male captive taller than the axle of a wagon wheel was executed.
Oops!
I was defending the honor of Frederick Franks, who led 7th Corps in the Gulf War. He was often criticized for not killing enough of the Republican Guard during the Gulf War, under Bush the First. I mistook Tommy Franks for him - a whole other General Franks. Fred Franks kicked ass!
I’m also just a keyboard jockey doing this analysis for fun, but I give Bush a lot of credit for biting off a difficult and dangerous task, and have been impressed by his character in respecting and caring for those who served. As Teddy Roosevelt was fond of saying, credit belongs to man in the arena.
In 2003, we were heroes to many Shia in Iraq, after removing the brutal persecutor Saddam - a Hitler-like monster. Even Iran, as “Death to America” happy as they were, took some time before starting to agitate against the US within the Iraqi Shia population, so powerful was the popular joy over the downfall of Saddam. In 2004, American soldiers could walk around Baghdad individually.
But Iran was immediately at work infiltrating their loyalists into positions of power in the new Government, and preparing to fight in Iraq. Iran had much more to fear from the US than Syria - suddenly surrounded in Afghanistan and Iraq by their “Great Satan” who had openly called them part of the “Axis of Evil” (which they were). The Iranian/Saudi surrogate war entered a new phase when Saddam fell, with the Gulf Arabs still funding their B team terrorists, while Iran stood up its militias within the Shi’ite community.
I believe that dissolving the Iraqi Army was absolutely necessary, because they were totally an organ of the Ba’ath Party (which had twice conquered Iraq through Secret coups). The Ba’ath had extensive plans to retake power. The Army was central to their plans, and was by far the most powerful asset they could use to do it. US occupation forces would have been vulnerable to sudden mass slaughter, if the Iraqi Army had launched a sudden surprise revolt targeting the Americans.
So Iraq was a big undertaking, and Democrats (as well as many Republicans) were actively seeking to limit resources, so Rumsfeld was was selling his better/faster/cheaper concepts to accomplish the mission within the financial constraints from Congress. The bottom line was that no 20 new divisions would be coming from Congress. Of course, we could have done more with more, and at less risk. We had a budget then, and great difficulty in raising spending without raising taxes - it is shockingly different from today’s environment of wanton disregard for math.
From my perspective, Rumsfeld was the big proponent of the lean footprint, and the State Department institutionally desired (as is typical) less military influence or control of the situation. Ultimately, I believe you are right, that a lot more resources would have decisively improved the situation. Congress then exercised the power of the purse.
The conventional approach to reducing the size (and thereby the cost and casualties) of your occupation force, is to install a strongman regime, and let them impose order. We tried to both have a lean occupation force (based on theories that technology and tactics could be force multipliers), and to allow a lot of political freedom. Enemies exploited freedom to organize, and there was a dearth of honest leaders to administer the Government. A more Machiavellian use of the CIA and an imposed Iraqi strongman regime could have made a big difference as well, but with other costs.
As you noted, the Mongols were incredibly efficient in occupation. They did in fact use repeated instances of wholesale genocidal slaughter to enforce their rule. Parts of Afghanistan, like Bamiyan Province, were totally depopulated by the Mongols in retribution for rebellion. To this day, the local Hazara population are descended from the Mongol occupation force.
The buck stopped with Bush. Re the power of the purse, the time to ask for 20 new divisions was in the weeks after 9/11, when his poll ratings were in the 80's, and Congress would have denied him nothing. The "go shopping" thing made him look unserious and the "tax cut" thing made like look like he was engaged in business as usual, using wartime-related political capital to reward the GOP's fat cat backers. He came off looking simultaneously lightweight and hyper-partisan.
Standing up new divisions would have simultaneously given the nation the clear messages that business as usual was out of the question, and that the nation was at war, and sacrifices would be needed. It would also have given him the ability to blanket Afghanistan with troops to corner, trap and demolish the Taliban instead of playing whack-a-mole because of insufficient troop coverage before moving on to Iraq.
The theme that sticks out again and again is the way in which at every critical juncture, he made the wrong decision. The recurrent media theme is "Bush lied", which is flat-out wrong. My problem with Bush is that he was just a lousy decisionmaker. He asked the wrong questions, and made the wrong decisions every step of the way.
I can’t buy into such a sweeping condemnation of Bush as, “at every critical juncture, he made the wrong decision.”
Getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a great thing. He was a truly evil man, who consciously modeled himself (by his own telling) after Hitler, Stalin and Al Capone. His regime murdered their own citizens at a greater rate than occurred during the height of the sectarian violence after our invasion (2006-2007). He initiated one of the largest wars of the 20th century against Iran, and had plans to conquer the mid-East oil fields and make himself a superpower.
He was then the world’s largest State sponsor of terror, paying $25,000 (enough to fund a retirement for a Palestinian) to the family of any suicide bomber who would attack Israelis. He made Iraq the Grand Central Station of terrorist training. The Salman Pak facility south of Baghdad had the fuselages of all the main commercial jets in service to rehearse hijackings, and classrooms equipped with storage and handling facilities for chemical and biological weapons, as well as radioactive materials.
His intelligence services were actively focused on attacking the USA, being represented in the al Quaeda Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 5 January 2000 to 8 January 2000, where the 9-11 attack was coordinated. The John Doe #2 from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing has also been rumored to have been an Iraqi. Ramzi Yousef’s phone records showed him placing calls to the family of Terry McNichols wife prior to the bombing, and both Ramzi Yousef and Terry McNichols were in Cebu City in the Philippines three months before the bombing. The US Government separately publicized an operation they had uncovered, where Iraqi Intelligence was preparing to assassinate former President Bush Sr. So eliminating Saddam was a significant historical accomplishment, although no easy feat.
When you stand up an Army Division, you incur long term costs, which are scored over the entirety of the ten year Congressional budget window, and extend long beyond it. You must build and operate a base for them to live. You must budget to train, equip and maintain additional capacity to transport them when needed. You must budget for their retirement and lifetime medical and disability costs.
Army Divisions are hugely expensive long term investments, which take several years to stand up. To stand up twenty, would require huge expansions to the training base schoolhouses, to the industrial base to equip, and perhaps, a draft to man them, as you would conservatively need at least a half million new soldiers. It would triple the number of Divisions in the Active Army today. In other words, it is an entirely unrealistic possibility. Even calling up a few Divisions from the Army Reserve to Active duty would likely be too costly and difficult for us to do. That is the reality of it.
So if you want to analyze George Bush’s decisions, it is unfair to compare his options with unrealistic imaginary options. Congress would not have given him 20 divisions. In fact, although they authorized the use of military force, they explicitly denied any expansion of permanent force structure. The next President will be even more sharply restricted after Obama’s draw down, program cancellations, massive debt, and structural increases of permanent new costs for Obamacare, food stamps and such.
The more you know about al Qaeda and ISIS the more you know Assad is facing his own blowback...
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