10 US Lesson’s of Iraq’s Occupation
As this month marks the ninth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, "Foreign Policy" magazine listed 10 lessons US must learn from its occupation of Iraq.
According to the paper the 1st lesson is that "the US lost".
"The first and most important lesson of Iraq war is that we didn't win in any meaningful sense of that term," the reporter Stephen Walt wrote recalling some of the announced US war purposes.
"The alleged purpose of the war was eliminating Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, but it turns out he didn't have any," he stressed.
The report further confirmed that "the destruction of Iraq improved Iran's position in the Persian Gulf - which is hardly something the United States intended - and the costs of the war easily exceeding $1 trillion dollars are much larger than US leaders anticipated or promised."
Lesson 2 that Walts asserted is that "it's not that hard to hijack the US into a war."
"The remarkable thing about the Iraq war is how few people it took to engineer," he clarified pointing out that "it wasn't promoted by the US military, the CIA, the State Department, or oil companies."
"Instead, the main architects were a group of well-connected neoconservatives, who began openly lobbying for war during the Clinton administration," the "FP" viewed.
Moving to the 3rd lesson of occupying the Middle Eastern country, the famous US
magazine stated that "the US gets in big trouble when the ‘marketplace of ideas' breaks down and when the public and our leadership do not have an open debate about what to do."
Lesson 4 that the reporter listed is that "the secularism and middle-class character of Iraqi society was overrated."
Reflecting a painful US reality of believing exiles, Walts concluded a 5th lesson from his country's war on Iraq.
"Don't listen to ambitious exiles," he said noting that "the case for war was strengthened by misleading testimony from various Iraqi exiles, who had an obvious interest in persuading Washington to carry them to power."
According to the "FP's" report, the 6th lesson Washington must learn is that "it's very hard to improvise an occupation."
"The US military found itself facing a genuine insurgency; it took years before it began to adjust its tactics and strategy in a serious way," the analyst highlighted.
He further called the US military and political circles to acknowledge the 7th lesson.
"Don't be surprised when adversaries act to defend their own interests, and in ways we won't like," the magazine stated.
Lesson 8 that Walt listed in his report is that "counterinsurgency warfare is ugly and inevitably leads to war crimes, atrocities, or other forms of abuse."
"Local identities remain quite powerful and foreign occupations almost always trigger resistance, especially in cultures with a history of heavy-handed foreign interference," he affirmed
Another lesson that the "FP" highlighted is that "better ‘planning' may not be the answer."
"Planning alone isn't the answer if politicians ignore the plans," Walt confirmed reiterating that "had Americans been told about the real price tag of the invasion - i.e., that we would have to send a lot more troops and stay there longer - they would never have supported the invasion in the first place."
The Last lesson the magazine concluded is that "rethink US grand strategy, not just tactics or methods."
"Once it becomes clear that we face a lengthy and messy struggle, the American people quite properly begin to ask why we are pouring billions of dollars and thousands of lives into some strategic backwater. And they are right," Walt said.
He further said that "we ought to work harder on developing an approach to the world that minimizes the risk of getting ourselves into this kind of war again."
Source:FP, Edited by moqawama.org
