An NSF Occasional Commentary
Remembering the Invasion of Iraq
“A Colossal Strategic Error”
By Dr. Steve Hull
The tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq has been noted in many ways. After hearing two of the war’s chief architects, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, reaffirm their infallible support for the decision to launch a pre-emptive war, I recalled my own thoughts and emotions and how they evolved as the possibility of war first appeared, and then became a chaotic and destructive reality. I found retracing this history was necessary to challenge the arrogance and unapologetic righteousness of Perle and Wolfowitz, and more importantly, to remind me that when war is personal it has a ubiquitous, smothering presence.
One of my children was in the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion. She would eventually spend three tours and three years in Iraq from 2003 through 2009. I felt none of the real fear, or anything close to it that our troops, contractors, and civilians fighting in Iraq did, but there was not one second, as a parent, that I was not afraid.
By February, 2003, the war drums beat louder and so did demands for answers to questions about the nature and extent of the Iraqi threat. Colin Powell’s now infamous February 5th intelligence presentation to the United Nations Security Council attempted to show that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), while Saddam was simultaneously executing a comprehensive effort to deceive the world about the location, identity, and number of these weapons. On February 7th the Department of Defense announced the deployment of the 101st Airborne Division to Kuwait. My daughter was likely on her way to war.
Retrospectively, it appears President Bush had already made the decision to invade. His administration would later blame going to war on “faulty” intelligence. This was gross negligence or a lie and one of the many myths about the war that continues to this day. The decision to go to war was not based on “faulty” intelligence, but rather on the poor interpretation of existing intelligence, the failure to fill known intelligence gaps, and the administration’s practice of cherry picking intelligence that suited its purposes. This modus operandi would be repeated again and again during course of the war.
As our troops and other coalition forces poured into Kuwait in February and March 2003, public support for the war became a fait accompli. The Dixie Chicks may have questioned the impending war and the President, but Americans were going to support the troops massed on Iraq’s border if and when Mr. Bush pulled the trigger.
Air strikes against Baghdad the night of March 19th and the ground invasion on March 20th ended all speculation. We had been led into a pre-emptive war with ill-defined and questionable war aims. We were soon to learn that the invasion force was insufficient. It was also ill prepared for the long-term occupation of a hostile country that was logarithmically more volatile, culturally and ethnically diverse, economically weak and politically complex than our leaders realized. The price exacted in blood and treasure for these miscalculations would be enormous.
The invasion was brilliantly executed over three weeks. Baghdad fell on April 14th. The 101st Airborne reached the Iraqi capital after battling the 571 kilometers from Kuwait to Baghdad and destroying three Iraqi Republican Guard divisions. The war was over. Or was it? My daughter had been told they would be in Iraq no more than 60 days following the conclusion of hostilities. The hostilities never concluded. On April 22nd the 101st was ordered 500 kilometers north to occupy Mosul, a bustling city of 1.8 million people. Internal turmoil and chaos began to grip much of the country, dumbfounding President Bush and his administration. Nevertheless, on May 1st, the President flew out to the USS Abraham Lincoln lying off of San Diego and declared, “Mission Accomplished”, and the end of the war.
Shortly thereafter the Bush administration’s failures to adequately plan for the occupation began to emerge. First there was the firing of Lieutenant General Jay Garner (USA, Retired), who had been charged with administering the occupation. Even though he had a sound understanding of the region and the causes of and remedies for the growing domestic chaos in Iraq, he was never resourced properly. Garner was quickly canned. He became the first scapegoat for the administration’s failure to prepare for the occupation of a defeated and defiant Iraq. The disastrous reign of Ambassador Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority followed. Bremer is best remembered for disbanding the Iraqi Army, shaming 375,000 trained, armed, angry, and now unemployed fighters. This instantaneously contributed to a mushrooming insurgency and sectarian conflict, and significantly compounded the challenges faced by our troops and contractors fighting to stabilize the country. It would require nearly eight more very difficult, sacrifice-filled and costly years before we were able to disengage and leave Iraq.
In the end, what have we wrought? According to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies report, “The Cost of War”, 4,448 American servicemen and women have been killed, along with 179 known U.S. contractors, and somewhere between 169,000 and 180,000 Iraqis. Hundreds of thousands have been wounded, injured, and permanently disabled on all sides. In addition to the nearly $2.2 trillion dollar cost of the war, Iran’s power and influence in the region have been dramatically strengthened, we have knowingly over used and worn down our military, and Iraq has emerged as the antithesis of the stable, vibrant, democratic anchor in the Middle East President Bush dreamed of creating.
Is the Iraq War a disturbing precedent setting example of how our Republic goes to war in the future? The decision-making apparatus for choosing and sustaining this unpopular war and the availability of a military to execute such a war have been alarmingly strengthened. The all-voluntary nature of the armed services has made it easier than ever for the United States to go to war. Between 2003 and 2013 less than one half of one percent of the American people were on active duty at any given time. Fighting and dying for one’s country has become the province of the few. The front line defense of the Republic has been separated from the vast majority of its citizens. Few have real “skin” in the game. This is why we were able to fight this war without hardly noticing or caring. We went to the Mall and, occasionally, remembered the troops by putting decals on our SUVs.
My thoughts about the Iraq War always gravitate back to my daughter and Captain Josh Byers, USA. I first met Josh in the fall of 1991. The son of Baptist missionaries, tall, blond, smart and charismatic, Josh was the Reed High School (Sparks, Nevada) student body president. He had applied for and been accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Military Academy. Commander Steve Schumacher and I met with Josh to try and sway him towards Annapolis. However, Josh had West Point in his heart and he eventually became part of the Long Gray Line’s Class of 1996. On July 23, 2003, Josh was killed by an IED near Ramadi, Iraq. He was 29 years old. If only Steve and I had succeeded in convincing him to go Navy.
And my daughter? She recently left the active army after twelve years. She and her husband collectively spent seven years in Iraq. This is her matter of fact assessment of the war. Regardless of the final outcomes, she recognizes what we must all acknowledge—those who were asked to fight the war did their duty.
“I consider the Iraq War to be a colossal strategic error for us and the Iraqis, both monetarily and in human terms. I’m not sure we made things better there, and very likely we made them worse by hastening and complicating what was always going to be a difficult and violent regime change. If there is anything positive to take away, it would be at the individual level—all of us who were there made, or think we made, a positive contribution at specific times and places with specific people. However, none of us as individual military members, contractors, or aid workers, could control strategic decision-making and its outcomes.”
Dr. Steve Hull is a retired public educator and active participant in the NSF. He served six years on active duty with the Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer and twenty-four years in the Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer. Three of his children have served on active duty. He holds bachelor and masters degrees from the University of California Santa Barbara and a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon.