RAND has published a monograph entitled After Saddam: Prewar Planning and the Occupation of Iraq.  Similar to the Leavenworth study On Point II (which The Captain’s Journal could only review it in small bites), a few citations will be made below.  Similar to the Leavenworth study, some of the RAND report focuses on organizational issues.  This bores us.  To be sure, there are some issues of organizational instransigence that become so burdensome that change must occur in order to accomplish the mission.  This is seldom the case.

Corporate America has a habit of reorganizing.  It reorganizes when the organization fails, and sometimes even when it succeeds.  It reorganizes when the management wants to, or for financial gain.  It reorganizes in order to grant promotions, and in order to take them away.  The U.S. military might do well to study corporate America concerning some things, but organizational structure (and change of such) is not one of them.  The workers go on working in spite of the organization – and its constant change.  The story of Iraq is not one of organization.  It is one of heart, soul and mind.

We’ll supply a few quotes and then offer some comments.

Page xx: Two particular sets of assumptions guided U.S. prewar planning for the postwar period. First, administration officials assumed that the military campaign would have a decisive end, and would produce a stable security situation. They intended to shrink the U.S. military presence down to two divisions—between 30,000 and 40,000 troops—by the fall of 2003. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz succinctly expressed this assumption during congressional testimony on February 27, 2003, when he stated, “It’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army.”  Second, they assumed that the Iraqi population would welcome U.S. forces. Three days before the war, Vice President Richard Cheney clearly articulated this view by stating, “My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” Iraqi exiles supported this belief by emphasizing that the Iraqis would greet U.S. forces with “sweets and flowers.”

Page xxvi: Looking back, we can see that the failure to plan for and adequately resource stability operations had serious repercussions that affected the United States throughout the occupation period and continue to affect U.S. military forces in Iraq. Because U.S. forces were not directed to establish law and order—and may not have had enough forces for this mission anyway—they stood aside while looters ravaged Iraq’s infrastructure and destroyed the facilities that the military campaign had taken great pains to ensure remained intact. Because Iraq’s own police and military evaporated shortly after Saddam fell, ordinary Iraqis lived in a basically lawless society for months, during which, among other things, insurgents, terrorists, and criminal gangs assembled with impunity. And because U.S. forces have had to focus on providing security for their own personnel (both military and civilian) as much as for Iraqis, the buildup of coalition forces did not bring the degree of safety and security it might have brought had order been imposed from the start.

Page xxvii: … few military voices besides that of Army Chief of Staff General Eric K. Shinseki called attention to the possibility of a major, long-term security challenge in post-Saddam Iraq. One reason other military voices remained muted was that the military operated within the prevailing assumptions set by senior civilian officials, which did not identify security as a problem. Also, as General Franks makes clear in his memoirs, the senior Army planner for OIF was reluctant to take responsibility for security and stabilization missions in the aftermath of major combat. This was not seen as the military’s role or mission.

Page xviii: Although CENTCOM’s commander, General Tommy Franks, refers to Phase IV frequently in his memoirs, for example, he never identifies the specific mission that U.S. forces should have had during that time. To the contrary: He expresses the strong sentiment that his civilian superiors should focus on postwar operations while he focused on the war itself. He goes on to argue that civic action sets the preconditions for security rather than the other way around. And he justifies his decision to retire right after combat ended because the mission was changing and a new commander should be there throughout Phase IV.

What the hell is Wolfowitz talking about?  Where did he hear that assertion?  Who taught him that?  It isn’t at all difficult to imagine that it would take more troops to maintain order than to topple the regime.  Wolfowitz simply asserted axioms in his testimony and took them to be fact.  Actually, it’s worse than that.  Wolfowitz had heard before that it would take more troops than planned from General Eric Shinseki and General Anthony Zinni, and then had to go back in front of the press again and insult Shinseki in order to save his axiom.

There were two failures here.  The first was with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and their group think mentality in which they bullied generals to agree (or at least stay silent).  What is indeed difficult to imagine is that men would have reached the age Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney were and still have been unable to think critically.  The second failure is with generals who are equally unable to think critically.  Jumping to the last quote, the notion (viz. Tommy Franks) that civic actions set the preconditions for security is directly contrary to what we have argued in too many articles to cite: security sets the preconditions for civic actions and reconstruction.  This seems so basic that any child experienced at playing on a schoolyard would know it.

A test was performed by criminals immediately upon the fall of the regime.  This test ascertained whether the U.S. troops could maintain security, law and order.  It is easy to argue that more troops would have been better early on (and we have many times argued just that point), but this issue requires a more nuanced understanding.  The ROE (rules of engagement) and RUF (rules for the use of force) essentially follow the SCOTUS decision in Tennessee v. Garner, and disallow deadly force for anything but self defense.

Here, more troops to watch as looters took what they wanted wouldn’t have helped.  It was left to individual property owners to take up arms and – you guessed it – use deadly force to protect their belongings.  Thus, since nothing will change regarding the ROE or RUF, the Iraq experience has shown us a gaping hole in our ability to provide law and order in a society which is accustomed to the use of deadly force (like Iraq).  The notions of restrictive ROE/RUF and maintenance of post-invasion law and order in a society such as Iraq (or many other Middle East or African countries) might be irreconcilable.  To date, The Captain’s Journal is the only voice speaking on this issue.  In the future, it should be understood that the ROE/RUF will change, or there will be anarchy after a regime is toppled.  Take your pick.

The one place that the military can learn from corporate America is rejection of the notion of group think and also of unchallenged assumptions.  It was too easy for Tommy Franks.  Given the military assets in the possession of the U.S. at the time of the invasion, our grandmother could have led the toppling of the Saddam regime.

Critical thinking, challenging of assumptions, elevation and highlighting of disagreements rather than agreements, and scholarship.  These are the elements of the Armed Forces of tomorrow – if it is to be successful, whether in near-peer or counterinsurgency warfare.