Why (how) did the Iraq war go so bad?

[Doctor_J]

We have the most expensive, best-trained, best-equipped military in history, and were pretty much beaten by people with "makeshift bombs". What went wrong?

[madokie]

1. reasons and leadership

[ourbluenation]

2. because it never should have happened. Iraq was a powder keg

and freak show saddam kept a tight lid on the keg. unwinnable from the get go.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. It started off on a false premise

and just went downhill from there.

[Robbie Michaels]

4. Here's why

No game plan
No exit strategy
Unprepared forces (ex. Hillbilly armor, parents buying their soldiers Kevlar, etc.)
False pretenses for war

I'm sure this is a partial list. :grr:

[benburch]

5. It was intended that we fail.

Bush's Dad made the "mistake" of ending his war. And Shrub thinks that's why his Dad lost to Clinton.

[bananas]

6. Lanchester's Law

http://www.math.temple.edu/~paulos/troops.html

[Doctor_J]

7. Hmm... I am a math professor

I will investigate.

Edit: I just looked at Paulos's web page. I'm happy that Temple lets him think and write freely. I wonder if he's been harrassed by Horowitz's storm troopers.

[LibDemAlways]

8. Because the neocons were hell bent

on going in there despite the fact they knew nothing about the country, its people, or its history. It was FUBAR from the get-go.

[mmonk]

9. Bad ideas=bad outcome.

Whenever you attack a country unprovoked (even a failed state) and then try to rule it, history shows continued resistance and death occur for an extended period of time. That's how it got bad. People don't like to be ruled by foreign powers.

[Montagnard]

10. Donald Rumsfeld,

Douglas Feith, Ahmad Chalabi, Dick “the Chemical-warfare Suit” Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, the impotent Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Lukud Party, Tommy Franks, Collin Powell, George Tenent, Richard Pearle, Curve-ball, the entire Republican Party….


I am leaving someone out…oh yes,

George “I never change my mind or had a thought” Bush

[heartofthesiskiyou]

11. Because the neocon plan was to stay

We could have gone in dumped Sadame and left and got away with it.. But nooo they wanted permanent bases. It was dystined to become a religous thing at that point. Can you imagine an Islamic country invading a christian country. How about a black country invading a white country.

I saw on MSNBC on Sunday's special, zarqowi is turning away and sending back home suicide bombers. He's got too many. They did numberous interviews with those that were returned home. Asked why they went to Iraq they all said because an Islamic counry is under attack by chirstians. Once religion or race gets into a thing humans just tweak. Standard 2 + 2 ethnocentricity. I don't care if we had a million "boots on the ground". This was doomed to fail from day one.

[bloom]

12. A lot of people think it went exactly how they wanted it to go.

And with the Giant US embassy they are building - according to plan - it's looks like they accomplish what they want to accomplish.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2162249,00.html

[heartofthesiskiyou]

13. a prescription to repeat forgotten lessons

Does the word Custer mean any thing to these folks

[No New War]

14. Simple

We're fighting what started as a pre-emptive war under false pretenses, on foreign soil under shoddy leadership. The American People have no real stakes in winning this war, and the American People is where America's real strength lies.

I'd say we have no stakes in the war, but that couldn't be further from the truth. It's just that we have stakes in stopping the war and reversing the damage. :banghead:

[getwesback]

15. simple: WORST DECISION MAKER.

[Doctor_J]

23. You mean worst DECIDER

but yes, I agree with you there.

[Lexingtonian]

16. As I see it

the part of the war in which the military part was key ended with the fall of Baghdad.

It's essentially been a political debacle with an incidental military component since. Well, the Bush people tried to use their military options to leverage their political ones, but it was ineffective and only added to the carnage. Fallujah, November 2004, is the epitome of it and is going to go down as simply a useless wastage of a city and lives.

The military has been used not to win the occupation, which it cannot, but to prevent losing it to violence precipitated by daring militias and warlords.

The occupation has been lost incrementally. Americans stopped being actively interested in the country when there were no WMDs and no superior charismatic dictator to resume the reins. Iraqis saw their country sacked and partitioned internally, then American guarantees of civil safety given up upon, and then disinterest in their social injustices. That left the political system. The aftermath of the January '05 elections was supposed to be representative democracy in action, but it wasn't. The constitution-writing and elections this fall were supposed to bring representative democracy in minimal manifestations, but at present no one obeys this constitution outside the Green Zone and all Iraqis treat the system as essentially one of quotas that serve tribal interests.

Iraqis have two things left to do before dropping the sham. One is to finish up with Saddam Hussein, and the Shia have apparently decided to let it just drag out until their militias are good and ready. The other is the Shiite counter to the Samarra bombing- some major ritual sacrilege that burns the last bridges between them and the Sunnis. The Kurds could care less and have simply decided to run their own state up in Mosul, i.e. theyv'e long decided to secede when the Sunni/Shiite civil war breaks out.

And along the way, American troops are out there and do their 'job' by policing, but also torturing people, killing others, destroying property, and behaving very uncomprehending that they have no productive role to play in internal Iraqi affairs. In return the nationalist resistance and jihadis kill them with IEDs and such, destroy their equipment and property, and generally retaliate for the abusive patronization. That in turn makes American soldiers mad and they ratchet up the torturing, property destruction, killing at the slightest opportunity, etc. It's simply gang warfare while the real powers argue and scheme and arm up militias.

[mikelewis]

17. What makes you think anything went wrong?

If I wanted to rip off the American people and then bankrupt their country, starting an insurgency that required billions and billions of dollars to fight would be a hell of a way to do it. Just look at the Soviet-Afghan war. The idea was to lure the Soviets into a Vietnam style conflict that would sap their strength and which incidentally led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, we have the same guys who ran this operation in charge of our country and the exact same thing is happening. Only this time, it's happening to us. All the while, the military industrial complex, which Eisenhower warned us about, is growing richer and more powerful every second. With America bankrupted and weakened, who can stand in their way?

[ConsAreLiars]

18. The first "mistake" was invading thinking that it was just some board game

like "Risk," with the outcome determined by weaponry and supply chains, and that the people were not relevant in any way. This is what happens when those in power are game-playing ideologues who spent their own lives in a protected womb of privilege and never had to face reality in any way. They have no heart, no soul, and no connection to the real world. They are monsters who kill and maim and butcher without the faintest sense of guilt or any clue or concern about the consequences.

[MikeNY]

19. We don't have the truth on our side

When Germany and Japan were defeated during WW2 you didn't see this kind of resistance because the population of those countries realized that their leaders had abused their power and waged a war of aggression..

In this case, WE'RE actually the aggressors. WE are not the ones with the moral right to win this war... as horrible as that may sound.

We screwed up bad. We went to war with a country that was contained, disarmed, and of no threat to our own nation.

[raysr]

20. The Iraqis didn't want

democracy SHOVED down their throats?

[Rocknrule]

21. Because it started

[leftofthedial]

22. it's gone (and continues to go) almost exactly as PNAC wanted it

to go

they want chaos, not "victory"

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. Dumb people using "Smart Bombs"

[mnmoderatedem]

25. the nature of the warfare

Guerilla type insurgencies are extremely difficult if not impossible to control. Doesn't matter if the military supriority is overwhelming. If the locals want to resist they WILL resist; you can't control it. Look at Vietnam. Look at the Soviets in Afghanistan.

[tenshi816]

26. A lot of fine answers in this thread,

and I'll throw in my $.02: a complete lack of understanding of the tribal factions in Iraq and also the unwillingness of the population to accept occupation by foreign invaders.

Just because the Iraqis hated and feared Saddam didn't mean they were going to welcome our troops in to push them around at gunpoint.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

27. It went wrong the second the NeoCons decided to invade....

...Iraq based on a pack of lies. The decision to invade Iraq was made quite some time before the NeoCons officially occupied the centers of U. S. Government in January 2001. To justify the invasion, the NeoCons falsely claimed the following:

*Iraq was involved in the attacks on 911
*Iraq was allied with Al Qaeda
*Iraq had WMDs

The NeoCons also claimed that American troops would be greeted with open arms by the Iraqis.

Nothing but a pack of lies. All of it.

[opihimoimoi]

28. Bush is a Noob..dats why and dats whot went wrong....

Rookies will soon learn when on the job....Bush is not capable of learning in the normal sense...he needs special units to inform him....even after weeks of prepping he still blows a joke and/or mispronounces words....Pathetic and Sad.

[Hubert Flottz]

29. Because it was WRONG from the get go.

Our government lied to start with.

[Skinner]

30. Bottom line (IMHO):

Because the people in charge, who should have known better, believed their own spin.

It never crossed their minds that their absurdly rosy view of the situation might actually be wrong. And whenever someone in the administration or the military tried to disavow them of their ridiculous notions, that person would be fired.

[madokie]

31. occupation

I wouldn't stand for it, no one will

[MadHound]

32. Because we haven't learned from history, even our recent history.

It has been proven time and again, from our own Revolutionary War to Vietnam, that it is very, very difficult, if not impossible to win a guerilla war. While we are spending millions of dollars a day to fight this war, the insurgents and guerilla fighters we face spend only hundreds or thousands daily in their effort. This is a sure fire recipie to bankrupt a country. Britain learned this lesson fighting the US, Russia learned this in Afghanistan, we're relearning this lesson now, after having learned it in Vietnam.

The only way that a larger force can win such a war is to lay waste to an entire country, and we're not going to do this. This administration is committed to preserving the oil infrastructure in Iraq which prelcludes them from destroying vast swathes of Iraq. And options that we had in Vietnam, such as the nuclear option, are so moraly heinous that politicians are prevented from using them.

Thus, with no set piece battles, no physical ground to hold onto and declare victory with, all we are left with is fighting a war of attrition, which we are losing. The only question left now is how much do we have to lose in terms of men and money before we figure out that it is time to cut our losses and get out while we can.