They ain’t marching anymore: disbanding the Iraqi Army
It’s become common wisdom to say one of the many huge mistakes of the postwar era in Iraq was to disband the army.
But it’s always puzzled me that so many people seem to think it’s a self-evident truth. I’ve wondered, for example, why people thought there was an army left in the first place, and how they thought they could reconstitute it when it had melted away by the time the invasion was over.
Would we just announce army members should appear at a certain time and place, and expect it to happen? We would get the old Baathist generals in to command them to do so, and why would they cooperate? Or would it be done by a house to house search, looking for old uniforms? Wouldn’t these have been tossed, as well as any papers that went with them? Would we go to some master list in Saddam’s defense department, and round up all the men who’d served under him, and imagine they’d make the switch easily to being in an army that would serve the occupation’s needs? Or would we vet them and sort them out, and be successful in telling who was friend and who foe—and, if so, why would this process be any better or easier than just asking for volunteers, paying them, and starting from scratch?
This is not to say that it’s a self-evident truth that disbanding the Iraqi army was a the best thing to do, either. But it was a judgment call—and a close one, at that—with pros and cons either way. Paul Bremer, who gave the order to disband but did not make the decision alone, has written an op-ed article in the New York Times defending the army’s dismissal. And here’s another piece, written by James Fallows and appearing in the December 2005 Atlantic, which is somewhat critical of Bremer’s decision but presents the pros and cons of each side in a way that seems balanced. Fallows makes it clear there was no self-evident and easy truth here.
Bremer and others defending his decision say that there was no Iraqi army left to reconstitute. Others say there were remnants that might have been revived, and that stopping the pay for the army—even though this was temporary, and payments were reinstituted—alienated those who might have otherwise cooperated.
I think the entire issue is somewhat of a red herring. If other elements had been handled better—most especially, if there had been much more of an emphasis on instituting a sense of order and the protection of civil society by the invasion forces themselves (symbolized at the very outset by the failure to control the looting)—the Iraqi army could have been reconstituted more successfully than has been accomplished so far, and either method would have probably sufficed.
And, in fact, one of the main reasons for the surge is to finally establish enough order and trust to do just that. It would have been far better to have done so earlier. But better late than never. And it appears we have some time left; even Harry Reid and company seem to be reluctantly conceding that.
[NOTE: The title of this post refers to this Phil Ochs song from the 60s. If you want to hear an excerpt, go here and scroll down.]
The issue of the old Iraqi army strikes me as the silver bullet.
In other words, find out what the other guy didn’t do, no matter how minimal, useless, or potentially negative. Then assign all manner of wonderfulness to it. Only after confirming he didn’t do it. Whatever he did do is useless or worse. What he didn’t do is the silver bullet.
As Bremer says, or somebody did, we tried to keep the Iraqi police on board. That worked out well (not, for those not paying attention).
There are rumors that Bremer wanted the military to stop the looting. The military refused because that would have meant shooting a bunch of civilians. The left would have loved it, but they made do with the looting.
Richard Aubrey: The looting dilemma is one the military faces constantly these days. Restrictive ROE’s mean they are very respective of civilians, but the same rules also mean greater ineffectiveness. In some cases this leads to more civilian deaths in the end.
Another Phil Ochs lyric I recall rings a little strange these several decades later: “I believe in God and Senator Dodd and keepin’ old Castro down.”
Neo. You’re preaching to the choir. In Viet Nam, something like 90%+ of the country was considered something other than a free-fire zone. Restrictive ROE. Lots of our guys got killed because of it.
I once surveyed a bunch of chance-met folks, about thirty years ago. Nobody had ever heard of it, unless they’d been in the military. Certainly not through the papers.
This is not to say that it’s a self-evident truth that disbanding the Iraqi army was a the best thing to do, either.
The situation is framed inadequately, Neo. The better question would be “how do you counter-act Saddam’s plans, that took six+ months in the making, to create chaos in Iraq”. The Army and the Police were already planned to be destroyed and faded away, Neo. Unless people address the real situation back then, it doesn’t really matter what they think about Saddam’s conscript and Republican guard army. Unless it is for propaganda purposes.
Bremer and others defending his decision say that there was no Iraqi army left to reconstitute
Why would Saddam leave us a functional army that we could then use to blow up his home town and loyalists?
alienated those who might have otherwise cooperated.
This people are talking as if this was peace time and you are trying to win an election. The war had just shifted to another phase. Talking about who gets alienated is a nice way to get your people killed.
the Iraqi army could have been reconstituted more successfully than has been accomplished so far, and either method would have probably sufficed.
The Iraqi Army still could not have maintained law and order thorugh Iraq, not if Americans wouldn’t even do it. The Iraqi Army were still obeying and looking towards America, to tell Iraqis what to do. And if America doesn’t even want to tell their own troops to conduct law and order, why would the Iraqi Army, assuming one even existed, be a substitute? The Iraqi Police could have conducted law and order, but not in the Sunni Triangle. The grassroots networks just did not exist.
So Essentially, even if Bremer had gotten an Iraqi Army up, it still would not have mattered given that Washington DC was still… Washington DC. They made the strategic blunders and not anyone else.
I think that the quote at the beginning of Bremer’s piece pretty much sums up the situation.
It was an ‘intervention’; or ‘liberation’ would be acceptable, too.
“…invasion was over.” A minor point but remember Iraq was not a sovereign state, it was a ward of at least the security council; you can not invade an area that you have jurisdiction over; Saddam forfeited sovereignty with his invasion and annexation of the sovereign nation of Kuwait, for starters. Again, minor point but… my 2 cents.
The debate over disbanding the Iraqi Army is an oxymoron; was it not the case that by the time that the 101st reached Mosul, the streams, if not flood,of unarmed young Iraqi men moving south, shed of any military clothing, was in fact the Iraqi Army in total disarray. In fact a case can be made that the Iraqi Army, except for units of the Republican Guard and some others, were outflanked, out gunned, and in a state of defeat as soon as Coalition units appeared. I sugegst that it was a major planning shortcoming not to prevent the horrendous looting frenzy that folloed the collapse what remained of the Iraqi state, The looting and rioting episode may well have set the stage for the chaos that followed.
Donald. To prevent the looting would have meant shooting huge numbers of Iraqis.
Who were “only trying to survive”. See the excuses for looting in New Orleans and the anger directed at those who said it was a bad idea.
It would have been a good idea for the liberals, having all those dead Iraqis to blame on the US.
The libs, cheated of another triumph.
The US is always caught in a lose lose proposition, given its natural disadvantage in propaganda defenses. Such weaknesses tempt many to attack the US, causing any action the US takes, to have extremely negative consequences. This causes people to also believe that inaction is good action. Which is also bad, just not as quickly apparent.
Bremer has one opinion but others on the scene disagree. They had developed contacts with the former Iraqi officers who were ready to reformulate their units. Watch “No End in Sight” for another perspective.
I really think we could have used more forces, even Iraqi to stabilize the situation much faster, and with an Iraqi face on it it would have been much more effective in my opinion. No recalling the army I think added to the concern among the Iraqis about our plans there, and granted the insurgency a huge source trained recruits. I just think it was a blunder from top to bottom and watching No End in Sight you get the impression that even Bush was surprised by it.
Here is a quote from a interview of someone shown in that film:
“(Ret.) Army Col. Paul Hughes is a senior program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace. While on active duty, he was responsible for U.S. efforts to reorganize the Iraqi Army and is one of the subjects of the documentary, No End in Sight. Before serving in Iraq, he was a senior military fellow at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies. He holds two Master of Military Arts & Sciences degrees and was a visiting professor at the Elliot School of International Affairs…..
“Hughes: Well, certainly that’s what you get from the documentary. I can only speak to the one that revolved around the disbanding of the Iraqi military. In our time in Washington, D.C. with Jay Garner before we departed for the theater, we had talked about what we would do with the Iraqi military. We understood that they were large. We understood that these men knew how to use weapons. We understood that there were a lot of weapons and ammo dumps across the country.
So the intent for us was to get in there, make contact with the Ministry of Defense and then organized a process where we could pay these men twenty dollars each. That was the equivalent of about six months of pay so that they could take care of their families and hopefully stay off the streets long enough for us to sort out what the military was going to be doing.
We had two processes that we were putting into play. One was to reform these units as work battalions to help clean up rubble and things of that nature. The second one was to establish what we called DDR, which is Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration. It’s a process by which you take former combatants and reintegrate them into society so that they become productive members of the economy.
This all had been briefed to the president. The president approved it before we left Washington. But then when we got out there and when Bremer showed up, suddenly there was this snap decision made by these four men in the Pentagon, as the movie portrays, and you know the history. The Iraqi Army was disbanded.
Tavis: And the result of that that you obviously are chagrined by, for lack of a better word, is what essentially?
Hughes: Well, five days after the decision was announced, we took our first attack on the highway between what most people call the Green Zone and Baghdad International Airport. Two soldiers were killed and two Humvees were destroyed. It was the night before Jay Garner was to depart Iraq forever. This came about, without a doubt, as a result of the disbanding of the Iraqi military.”