Who Lost Iraq?

James Dobbins

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2007

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Summary:  The current debate over the United States' failures in Iraq needs to go beyond bumper-sticker conclusions -- no more preemption, no more democracy promotion, no more nation building -- and acrimonious finger-pointing. Only by carefully considering where U.S. leaders, institutions, and policies have been at fault can valuable lessons be learned and future debacles avoided.

James Dobbins directs the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation and served as Assistant Secretary of State under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He was the Clinton administration's special envoy to Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, and Somalia and the Bush administration's first envoy to Afghanistan.

In the aftermath of national catastrophes, people have a natural tendency to look for an explanation based on a single point of failure. Such explanations are often unhelpful in devising subsequent policy. Simplistic lessons drawn from World War I persuaded the United States to embrace isolationism and Europe appeasement, both of which contributed to World War II. The lesson many Americans drew from not opposing Hitler sooner -- "no more Munichs" -- became a powerful rationale for the United States' entanglement in Vietnam in the 1960s. The subsequent national rejection of counterinsurgency missions -- "no more Vietnams" -- greatly hampered U.S. military performance in Iraq. If the current debate over the United States' failure in Iraq is to yield constructive results, it will have to go beyond bumper-sticker conclusions -- no more preemption, no more democracy promotion, no more nation building.

Individuals have been the first target of criticism: President George W. Bush, of course, but also Vice President Dick Cheney; Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense; General Tommy Franks, the former commander of U.S. Central Command; Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense; Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy; L. Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority; and George Tenet, the former CIA director. All except two of these individuals have been out of office for some time: the Bush administration is already on its second defense secretary, third CIA director, third commanding general in Iraq, and fourth top diplomat there -- and thus far, none of these changes has reversed a worsening situation. This suggests that the source of at least some of the United States' difficulties in Iraq transcends particular personalities.

Meanwhile, the White House, Congress, the State Department, the Defense Department, and the CIA have engaged in continuous blame shifting over Iraq. President Bush and Congress have accused the intelligence community of misleading them about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Tenet has responded that the administration's senior policymakers never seriously debated the decision to go to war. Rumsfeld says that the president never asked his advice on the matter. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says that he provided the president with his views on the wisdom of war unasked, but to no effect. Former intelligence officers allege that the Defense Department and the White House manipulated, exaggerated, and manufactured intelligence appraisals to support a decision to go to war. Bremer says that he learned after serving several months in Iraq that the Pentagon was not sharing his reporting with the White House or the State Department. Tenet insists that the CIA warned the administration of the difficulties that would be encountered in the occupation (and recent press reports quoting CIA memos substantiate this).

During the Vietnam War, dissatisfaction with the conflict first became evident at the bottom of the military pyramid, and criticism of the U.S. military's performance was often leveled at its lowest ranks: the conscript riflemen whose disaffection, alcohol consumption, and drug usage increased ...

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