Hastily disbanding Iraq army was key error (Trudy Rubin article)

[tblue37]

I recommend you read the whole piece. It's escellent, and Rubin is among of the few US journalists who know what they are talking about where Iraq is concerned.

<snip>

America’s abolishment of the Iraq army on May 2003 left tens of thousands of armed men without salaries or job prospects. It practically guaranteed the emergence of a strong Sunni resistance. I was in the audience in Baghdad when Paul Bremer, Bush’s special Iraq envoy, made the momentous announcement. It astonished me and those of my colleagues who had any knowledge of Iraq.

<snip>

After the press briefing, I rushed to a district where many army officers lived. The message from all of them was the same: “You dropped leaflets telling us not to fight, and we obeyed, and this is our reward. We will fight you.” And that was just what they did.

<snip>

As for the president, he signed off on the decree on May 22 during a videoconference with Bremer. Never mind that he had just approved a totally opposite plan; according to the Times, Bush raised no questions. Rumsfeld refused to be interviewed. This slapdash decision-making on crucial issues reflects the way the whole war was handled. Bush didn’t ask, Rumsfeld wasn’t interested. U.S. military commanders were ignored, and those with knowledge of Iraq were left out of the loop. Here we have the whole story of the war.

Equally disturbing is how little Bremer and Slocombe understood about the country they were charged with remaking. I interviewed Slocombe in Saddam’s palace in November 2003, at a time when car bombs were already exploding and an incipient insurgency was apparent. He brusquely dismissed the idea that the army could have been rebuilt and demanded we change the subject.

<snip>

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2008/mar/21/hastily_disbanding_iraq_army_was_key_error/?opinion

[yourout]

1. The key error was the decision to invade.......everything else is secondary to it.

[magellan]

2. Absolutely. n/t

[tblue37]

4. Oh, I agree--but having invaded, the lelast they could have done

was do it right, not destroy Iraqi society altogether. Her points about Bush and Rumsfeld being ignorant and uninterested, and about the decisions being made by people like Bremer who had no knowledge at all about Iraq are right on.

[L. Coyote]

5. Correcto! This is the excuse de jour to cover up that key error!

The key error was to treat a criminal act as reason to start a few wars, instead of an investigation to determine who to bring to justice. Wanton killing was the wrong the path to choose, when we could have demonstrated that we were above barbarity and believed in the law to punish crime.

[Vincardog]

3. The ILLEGAL invasion was the first "Mistake" unless you WANT ETERNAL WAR.

THE PNAC WANTs ETERNAL WAR.

[ConsAreLiars]

6. This was not an "error." The plan was to destroy as much as possible.

The essay describes HOW they accomplished this objective, but the idea that this was somehow an unintended consequence of the PNACers tactics is either naive to the extreme or an attempt to provide cover for the actual plans.

The "error" was the one always made by cowards. They believed that if they utterly destroyed Iraq's existing institutions and infrastructure the people would have no option but to prostrate themselves at the feet of the invading master class behave like beaten dogs. They projected their own craven outlook on the Iraqi people, believed that they, like those unprincipled cowards, would simply cower and submit.

(edit minor typo)