Thread: Why We Are in Iraq

Rocco,

The MDMP (JOPP on the joint side) is geared towards creating a plan when you have a well defined mission statement. Breaking Iraq and putting it back together is not a well defined mission statement. You need to frame the environment and problem first before even developing a mission statement. In the case of OIF, this required the civilian leadership to do this and get it right. Because they didn't, the military was boxed in with the odds stacked against them (but I would agree that we then played that hand badly). However, the bottom line is that you can't compare policy decision making with MDMP. They get at two different things.

As to corrupting the NSDM process, while the Bush 43 Administration didn't run a smooth oiled machine, your rarely find that among administrations. You can look to the Eisenhower Administration as a example, but after that, I'd challenge you to show me one that wasn't dysfunctional. In fact, by the very nature of war and the American republic, you expect it to be somewhat dysfunction as opposed to developing "pure" strategy without the constraints of domestic politics. It wasn't that voices weren't able to be heard - the problem was that the wrong voices won out and they made the wrong decisions.

Next, the NDM is crap. As an approach, it opens up military decision making to errors due to systemic biases. It relies on the fallacy of "expert" decision making. The list of social psychology/behavioral economics/etc. literature is long on this topic. As a only when time is constrained and any decision is better than no decision, then it simply describes what happens in an abbreviated MDMP anyways.

Finally, your attributing failure to military leaders for decisions that are clearly those that the civilian leadership should make. Non-starter. Furthermore, if you look at the disbanding the Iraqi military and cutting deep into Baath Party membership, read the books that show that Petraeus pretty much calls Bremer an idiot for doing this (along with some other military members).

I'm happy to criticize the folks for making poor decision, to include the military, but don't blame process when it's the people, and blame the people who actually have the authority to make the decision.

I see the genie is out of the bottle and we've resurrected this thread-if somewhat morphed.

Defining the environment and problem would seem relatively easy WRT Iraq in 2002/2003. If that is the point-of-departure for development of the Iraq Intervention Mission Statement then that portion seems easily framed. What should follow would seem the prescription to the problem which recognizes the temporal conditions specifically imposed by Iraq's particular environment, the near and long-term desirable end state, and the set of requirements to be accomplished between elimination of the problem and achieving that end-state.

Powell's maxim--"If you break it, you own it" deserved examination prior to initiating hostilities. Is it true? What if we'd simply "broke it" and left? Could anybody stop us from doing so? Naturally, we'd have likely issued the admonishment for Iraqis to fix it in a manner to our liking lest we break it again, and again...and again under this assumption.

Let's presume our underlying intent was to establish hegemony throughout the Persian gulf. Wouldn't this demonstration of will and means have been sufficient to establish our dominance? How did remaining in Iraq help us given the Coalition Authority's subsequent dithering? In preference, wouldn't the memory of our latest visit instead left our image untarnished?

Reconstruction aid? What did we really destroy in the march up that Iraqis couldn't repair versus what was subsequently destroyed in the following years of conflict? Let Iraq do so sans our help and money. Part of the price for wandering astray as a nation.

Would we not have achieved our goals-removal of the baathist regime, neutering of its armed forces, removal of any actual or latent WMD threat, removal of Saddam from power, etc? We wish for more from Iraq such as establishing a democratic political system? Dangle the carrot of heretofore undelivered help/aid if they show the requisite eagerness to do so.

A slide back to more of the same? Beat on them again. Maybe with our army (in Kuwait or Kurdistan). Maybe simply by our air force and navy at levels far beyond tit-for-tat no-fly-zone slap on the hands.

Perhaps it's the process. Maybe the people. Perhaps both but we've demonstrated an abject inability to project our power through to acceptable political/social end-states.

Let's be fair. We're not the first nation proved incapable of accomplishing such nuanced outcomes. Only the first hyper-power to show this vulnerability. With the brightest minds and most coherant thinking, however, we're still only half the equation. There are other players possibly acting as wild-cards.

If part of victory includes choosing the battlefield and form of combat, should we not recognize our flaw as an element to be avoided and simply stick to what we do exceedingly well-breaking things? Do we, alternatively, simply avoid conflict altogether since we've demonstrated an inability to execute the processes correctly or identify a leadership mix able to formulate coherant strategy?