Strategic Study Faults Handling Of Post-Saddam Iraq

[Barrett808]

Strategic Study Faults Handling Of Post-Saddam Iraq
By Breffni O'Rourke

Prague, 20 October 2004 (RFE/RL) -- The initial military success of the United States and its allies in invading Iraq last year is clear. But the task of winning the trust and affection of the Iraqi people has proven much more elusive.

So concludes a report just issued in London by a leading British research organization, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

In its yearly review of the capabilities of the world's armed forces, the IISS says that "Operation Iraqi Freedom," as the invasion was called, started with "fast and successful" fighting."They underestimated the centrality of the regime, meaning that if you take that out, and also take the army out, and take the Ba'ath Party out, then there is no state left, and I think they totally underestimated that."

But it says that since then, the operation has provided some hard lessons that the United States should learn.

In an introduction to the study, senior IISS analyst Christopher Langton writes that once the initial battle had been won, the postconflict phase demanded priority be given to winning a different sort of territory, namely the hearts and minds of the population. He says forging contacts with the local people requires a lot of manpower as well as skills which go beyond those of the average military man.

But the U.S. preparations in this regard were not adequate. Commenting on the IISS study and its findings, analyst Marc Finaud, of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in Switzerland, says: "Although there was initially in Iraq a sense of relief and satisfaction to see the end of the Saddam Hussein regime, then there were very high expectations from the Iraqi population that this would be immediately followed by an improvement in living conditions, in the security conditions."

(more)

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/10/ad25a4f1-47dc-4006-893c-6e1645824491.html

[teryang]

1. the initial military blunder is clear

...anything else is post hoc rationalization.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Interesting analysis -- thanks for posting