Review: Fiasco and The Gamble

Having joined the Army in 2008, and having spent three of the previous five years overseas, there was a lot about the Iraq War that I didn't understand. I read these books because I wanted a critical understanding of the mistakes we made and how we fixed it.

With Fiasco and The Gamble, Thomas Ricks chronicles the -- and I say this deliberately -- first five years of the U.S. presence in Iraq. Fiasco covers the lead up to war (from the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War), the invasion itself, and the development of the insurgency.

The fear and desire for revenge that permeated the American mindset after 9/11 was successfully harnessed by the Bush administration to lead a preemptive strike -- under false assumptions -- against the Hussein regime. Best case results, paired with worst case alternatives, pushed the cause forward. All the while, no concrete plans for made for the invasion's aftermath.

After the fall of the Iraqi government, the U.S. found itself strategically and tactically adrift amidst an increasingly disillusioned Iraqi populace. An insurgency developed that the U.S. -- having simply vowed not to get itself in another Vietnam-like conflict -- never devloped its leaders for. It was adrift in a conflict it neither understood nor for which it had a response.

Successful insurgencies need three things: recruiting, weapons, and financing. In many ways, the U.S. approach fed the enemy what it needed -- insufficient troops meant Saddam's weapons caches were left unguarded in the march to Baghdad, unsecured borders left exiles in Syria capable of proxy attacks, and "sweep and clear" tactics generated more "bad guys" than they caught.

The tragedy of Abu Ghraib was that it was not just an isolated incident, but merely the outward sign of a flawed process. The plan was that the Iraqi army would surrender en masse and then be used to run the prison system. When that didn't happen, poorly-trained reserve units were used to house an ever increasing number of detainees. Intelligence units were overwhelmed as the field divisions -- left to their own devices by Central Command -- inefficiently swept up thousands of regular joes with an "arrest first and ask questions later" mindset.

Left without clear direction to the contrary, these soldiers adopted the rationale of their civilian chain of command -- that it was all right to "harshly intitiate" the "enemy" if it meant saving Americans from a mushroom cloud. Their supervisors neglected to issue corrections.

Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Franks, and Bremer make up the quintet of disaster for the U.S. occupation.

• President George W. Bush, despite campaign promises not to use the military for nation building, decided on just that. Whatever his intentions, he pushed the nation into a war of choice under false pretenses and kept leaders in place long after they'd proven their failings. The "Decider" surrounded himself with like-minded loyalists to whom he delegated the war's conduct, and neglected to properly oversee the war's conduct.
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld played power games with the military to reduce the number of troops below requirements, ignored those who disagreed, and then delegated the occupation to subordinates without clear objectives.
• Paul Wolfowitz, influenced by Ahmed Chalabi, believed that the invasion would be a cakewalk and that there would be no need for an occupation. His background, influenced by his family's Holocaust experiences, led him to push for Saddam's ouster as key to political revolution in the Middle East.
• General Tommy Franks led the invasion of Iraq without regard for what would follow. Immediately after toppling the government, he retired and passed on responsibility.
• Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer ensured the mess would take years to resolve by dissolving the Iraqi army (among the few unifying institutions the country had), kicking all Baathists out of the government (including the little guys who knew how to do things), and insisting on economic reform that put hundreds of thousands more out of work.

In sum, these guys did more to mess things up than protect the U.S. They chafed against the sixty-year U.S. legacy of promoting international stability, electing instead to destroy a second-rate threat in the name of regional regime change.

In doing so, they turned the world's post-9/11 sympathy into disdain and mistrust, and further poisoned domestic politics by mixing the war effort with partisan political posturing.

It's the kind of stuff I would have never imagined the U.S. doing.

The Gamble then covers the period 2006 to 2008, when forces working outside the normal chain of command reassessed the situation, developed a real counterinsurgency strategy, and successfully implemented it.

The "glass" is still open to interpretation, but after Rumsfeld's removal in 2006, a retired general successfully circumvented the joint chiefs and persuaded the administration to put General David Petraus in charge.

Amazingly, things began to turn the corner with the surge. Counterinsurgency tactics gained steam with the Sunni Arab minority's disavowal of Al-Qaeda, and the central government's turning against the Shiite militias. Although the Iraqi government still has serious issues, we are no longer facing an ignoble retreat.

The last part of The Gamble focuses on the legacy of U.S. decisions. In deciding to gain support directly from Sunni militias, we may have undercut support for the central government and fueled a future civil war. In working within the existing constructs of Iraqi society, we may have hurt our initial goal of promoting democracy in the area. And in turning over power to the elected majority Shiites, we may be helping the Iranians to manipulate regional politics in their favor.

Our presence in Iraq is far from over, and the effects of the poorly planned "adventure" still remain to be seen. It was one thing to set up permanent bases in war-torn Italy, Germany, Korea, and Japan -- they didn't have AK-47s or IED-making capacity. It will be quite another to stay in Iraq for fifty years.