Citizen's Empire: November 2014

Lessons from the Iraq and Afghanistan War

The Afghanistan and Iraq Wars have tought America important lessons about the limits of hard power and liberal idealistic notions of governance. The United State Military fought heroically and executed a sohpisticated and complex invasion that facilitated a rapid conquest and then implemented a counter insurgency operating system that was effective at stablilizing regions and maintaining adequate support from local populations. Miguided pressures and the wrong types of support from the United Nations, failures in phase IV planning, an ideological state-centric state department and false assumptions about nation-building undermined the goals of these missions. In Afghanistan, on short notice, an impressive long range bombing campaign and the CIA orchestrated lead of the Northern Alliance sent the Taliban running. In the Iraq War, US military personel and the full strength of Great Brittain and our allies successfully and easily went up against what was once the fourth strongest military in the world, and took their capital. These shows of hard power had numerous positive effects, including causing Gaddafi to hand over his nuclear weapons, Iran to hault its nuclear weapons program and for the region to collaborate in aggressively participating in our war with Al-Qaeda and other related terrorist groups. Planning for what happens after the occupation were misguided, innapropriately staffed and ultimately undermined efforts to successfully route out violent Islamist extremism.

While the United States went to war as a result of the September 11^th, 2001 attacks, failures to understand the Middle East and intelligently consider strategic components of regional security were prompted by political and bureacratic self-interests and a neoconservative belief that by spreading democracy the regions problems would dissipate. In the aftermath of the Taliban's ousting, the hunt for Al-Qaeda, became a war against the Taliban and the international community flooded money to Kabul to build a western style government that would never be sustainable with by way of its own economy and its ability to trade. It tried to spread national level democracy, when there were already natural tribal dynamics that were already inherently democratic and then we tried to build a massive military, that armed and trained, had little belief in either democracy or some liberal form of govenrment, were not loyal to the Kabul govenrment and essentially looking to do what paid the best and were paid prices that severely distorted the economy and market. With the mission doing adequate in Afghanistan, the Bush Administration quickly turned our attention to Iraq, as intelligence supporting ongoing chemcial and biological weapons research was exagerated in part by misreading Saddam Huessein's bluff to deter Iran, and in part because many of the previous chemcial, biological and nuclear programs that he had in the 1980s were developed with the direct support of our CIA to bolster their strength relative to Iran, posed a relatively insignificant risk as it related to their possession by a reasonably rational nation-state actor, or were already destroyed by Israel, respectively. This is not to criticise 80s era stategic policy, but to contend that the Bush Administration was more concerned with selling the war to the public for political purposes than it was in setting the right expectations, telling us the truth and considering scientifically whether or not such was the best strategic move against Al-Qaeda and the related militant islamist groups.

Irregardless, Saddam Hussein was a true monster, posed a risk to regional security and did have chemical weapons in his possession and some casual contacts with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The Invasion of Iraq was a tremendous success and also had the secondary benefits outlined above. It was around the time that George Bush declared mission accomplished, that all went wrong. There were inadequate studies on democracy in Islamic countries or understanding of democratic pre-requisites and pressures from the left and the UN forced the military to push western notions of law and equality on a culture that had no understanding of them or interest in them. Our emphasis on ideas undermined functional tribal cohesion and contributed to insurgent recruitment. An excessive usage of security contractors and mercenaries prompted a range of behavioral problems that resulted in wide spread rumors of foul play and at times, undermined the successes of the DoD. Paul Bremer, as the head of State Department made three horrid decisions. The first was to disband the Iraqi military. This sent all of the nations young men home with their weapons, without a chain of command and no clear promise of a future paycheck. The Second was to deba'athify the government causing niche roles unconnected with the attrocities of Saddam's regimes such as those working in utilities and judicial activities to be replaced by novices with no real world experience. The Third was to try to create federal parliamentary system that failed to provide adeqaute soveirgnty and decision making at the natural Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish state governate levels. These three factors inevitably lead to insurgency by providing competent young men with guns to be recruited, poorly functioning governance at municipal levels and dissatisfaction at what would become a Shi'ite dominated and therefore, Iranian alligned government.

While Iran did cooperate in the early parts of the Afghanistan invasion and early parts of the Iraqi war, as the occupation carried on its elite force, Al-Quds, began providing guns, weapons such IEDs and money to anyone willing to fight the US and the allied occupying forces with the assumption, that what was bad for the US was good for them. Pakistan's ISI, increasingly provided material support to the Taliban to hedge against an Indian and US friendly Afghanistan government. Pakistani nukes and agreements to fund their security provided for tough bargaining position. While General Mushraff was relatively reliable and valueable partner, addressing rampant Islamic extremism undermined pushes from their functional and liberal legal class to enact democratic reforms. Furthermore, while the Generals were willing to fight the Taliban, often lower levels of the military were ideologically opposed to the Generals' pentagon coordinated approach. This complicated efforts to coordinate with the Pakistani military and effectively squeeze the Taliban, jumping back and forth across the Afpak border to wage seasonal attacks. In effect, Pakistani nukes allowed them to blackmail us for money, that leaked from the ISI, to the Haqqani network, to both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. While Al-Qaeda was predominately defeated in AfPak, the Al-Qaeda core shifted the center of its operations to Yemen, while developing affiliates in Somalia, Mali, Syria and the lawless regions of the North African desert, allowing the Taliban to complicate and carry-on Osama Bin Laden's strategic vision of bleeding the United States economic might in a long fight with the Islamic world's toughest, in what he dubbed, “The Graveyard of Empires.”

The Surge significantly turned around the situation on the Ground in Iraq, particularly in Anbar province where improved security provided improved trust and cooperation from the Sunni Tribal leaders in what was called the Sunni Awakening. Essentially the US armed the Sunni Tribes and empowered them to kill off and capture Al-Qaeda, that predominately consisted of recognizable foreign fighters. Without Ba'athist regime technocrats and dueling insurgent groups priotizing attacks on the oil industry and efforts to restore basic govenrment services, challenging US and allied efforts to maintain support for the occupation. While elections were successful and brought hope, the Sunni regions largely protested the votes, or were intimidated from voting and as a result, in a parliamentary national system, were without adequate representation and under-represented in the legislative process. The Shi'ite prime minister had the Sunni Vice President arrested and then used the national military that the US trained and paid for to viciously oppress the Sunni's of Anbar province in lieu of enacting policies geared towards restoring healthy markets and basic governmental function. Essentially, the nature of the US military, and militaries in General, is nationalistic in its ideology and in nature, and since it is what it knows and what works for them, they prioritized teaching it as a facet of nation building, to the detriment of other options that could have undermined the insurgency, encouraged productivity and improved the standards of living for Iraqis. A focus on healthy city government and secure access to the marketplace would have been a better utilization of men and resources.

The Surge worked in Anbar, Iraq (the Sunni dominted region of Iraq) and so Barack Obama surged in Afghanistan, despite it being a far different country and far less likely to suddenly become a functional Kabul controlled nation-state. Ultimately, Barack Obama provided less troops than the military requested and while they won town after town they were undermanned in their efforts to hold in a manner conducive to the type of strides that could potentially have lead to meaningful and enduring societal transformation as occurred in occupied Germany and Japan after World War II. There also was not enough flexibility on the part of the troops in these regions that were in better touch with the cultural practices and tribal dynamics within the individual villages, or consideration as to how pentagon policies would affect such and US and allied relations with them.

Flooding the region with foreign aid, undermined the functionality of the local economies and our emphasis on nation building and defeating Al-Qaeda, prevented us from achieving more minimalist but vital strategic ends of securing air and military bases capable of projecting US power on Iran, Pakistan and China, protecting gas pipelines and purchasing Opium from non-Taliban farmers to convert to opiate derivative medicines such as morphine and vicadin. Valueable mineral contracts were often rewarded to China, who did not carry their fair share of the security burden. Building up the Afghani Army was popular in DC, but resulted in us paying a high price tag to provide guns and training to individuals that we may very well have to fight in the future and also prompted green on blue violence that unneccessarily cost US lives. The flood of US dollars to anyone who could smile and mutter a few reassuring English phrases caused endemic corruption and dependence on a system that would be unsustainable with US departure.

The US easily could have negotiated immunity and base agreements if it had been willing to commit to a larger force that would have made Al-Malaki feel safe from what would have been percieved by many of his own, as an act of treachery to the likes of Sadyr's militia and their Iranaian sponsors. Similiarly, efforts to protect the moderate Shi'ite clerical establishment were inadequate, and gradually Iranian interests in their ear increasingly influenced their spoken words. This, combined with a cold-hearted and indecisive policy relating to the Syrian War, allowed for the rise of ISIL, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Iraqi Al-Qaeda affiliate split from from Ayman al-Zawahiri's command over tactical practices insighting ethnic and sect motivated attacks after successes in Syria and then in Anbar province under the command of Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi who would gradually expand a coalilition of rebel forces and seize control of Iraq's second largest city, Mosul and declare himself caliphate, Al-Qaeda in Iraq morphed it into the Islamic State that was actually functional as a government, but once reports of genocide broke, an air campaign was launched with broad international support but unknown results or achievable ends beyond the political appearance of action. As much blame as Bashar Assad carries in creating the problems in Syria, the collapse of his regime and total victory of the Islamic State would likely lead to wholesale genocidal slaughter of Allawites, Shi'ites, Christians and Kurds. Negotiated peace in the civil war is possible and the preferred alternative but any chance of its success is going to require mechanisms of reassuring both sides that agreements will be kept. This usually means that the peace will need to be guaranteed by outside militaries willing to take specific actions to punish violators. If previous outlines of a peace agreements in the my earlier paper, “The Dividing Lines,” are agreed to, US troops in the proposed Maronite Christian South East of Syria along the Israeli border, could gurantee the peace of Sunni regions with Saudi coordination, while Russian naval bases along th coast near Damascus could do the same for the Shi'ite and Allawite governates. The Sunni's want to build up larger Sunni armies but seem more interested in ousting Bashar Assad's Allawite regime, raising anxieties for Israel that has been facing prolonged and extensive aggression from its neighbors. There is a very real risk, that arming these rebel groups in Jordan as proposed, could lead to the creation of a strong enough and well positioned Islamic military that if united under the Caliphate could turn its attention to the Israeli borders and prompt attacks that would nessitate outside military assistance. There needs to be US and British troops on the ground to contain continued contaminuum from the wanton violence. Simultaneously, UN reports on Irainian nuclear weapons programs have been systematically repressed, with it clear that negotiations for a peaceful nuclear program are a previously used tactic where after bringing themselves to break-out capacity, they will then return their attention to warheads and long-range missiles capable of delivering them against US and allied interests. The acquisition of the deterrent would prompt a regional arms race, with Saudi Arabia and Turkey both hardening on similar acquisitions, and free up these regimes to arms and fund Islamist militancy without fear of retaliation that would undermine what is left of the Israeli/Palestinian peace process and endanger fragile democracies in North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Administration could have and should have kept at least the more important bases in Iraq and in Afghanistan, by offering more troops in Iraq and by compromising on issues of entering Afghani homes in Afghanistan, but it seams some have deliberately supressed these realities because they wanted an excuse to cut and run, taking the bad advice of proponents for fall-back military positioning and fellows such as Keneth Waltz dangerously preaching that a nuclear armed Iran will prompt regional stability. This ignores the immediate collection of three pre-paid nuclear weapons that Saudi Arabia will call for from Pakistan in this event, it overlooks the undeniable ties between Iran's Al-Quds forces and the multitude of Shi'ite and Sunni militant groups of various ethnic groups that have taken money and weapons from Iran to attack the US, our allies and our partners. Extremism is prevalent across these regimes and even if current leaders are rational, that does not mean that the next will be or that they can secure such weapons from more radical elements of the military that likely have direct connections with global terrorist networks such as Al-Qaeda in the event of a coup or regime change.

It has been reported by reliable sources that in the first night the US handed over control of operating bases in Afghanistan thirty villages fell to the Taliban. ISIL has continued to hold ground and garner recruits as the air campaign has waged on, terrorizing from above and undercutting some of the municipal level progress that occurred as the efficient management of Abu Bakr that employed Ba'athists and technocrats to govern after driving out the repressive national military. Many of these technocrats would opportunistically change loyalties, but it would require boots on the ground by competent foreign forces that only the US and Great Brittain can provide. Some of the threats in Afghanistan can be limited by maintaining adequate force, consolidated and tucked away in areas easier to resupply and faced with less resistance and significantly reduced mission that keeps them safely bunked and defended in the baracks, ready for action as neccessary.

The Administration is walking on very thin ice and as it has continued its predecessor's tendency towards serious strategic mistakes. A cut and run approach will create a power vaccuum, that Iran will eagerly fill, cascading security risks across the region and around the globe. The US and its core allies need to aggressively and militarily retake key bases of operation and bolster them with the troops and weapons to deter assault and then shift their focus of force to the most vital of assets in those regions. It should no longer train or arm rebel Muslim militaries beyond the most trusted among the Pesh Merga and thoroughly vetted moderates, foreign support should instead be dediciated to fostering healthy, safe and sustainable marketplaces, projecting US military power, while reducing military objectives to defeating our enemies, disarming them and at minimum offsetting the costs of our operations with the most economically viable options available. The United States of America and our British allies should plan on staying until every last cent that was invested in these military activites and these nation building forays have been paid back in full, and hopefully, then, we will have improved the standards of living enough that these countries will both figure that they might as well allow us to stay indefinately. The hard truth is that production of goods and services for the market is the higher priority before all else and as a result governments need to devise laws and administrative strategies that prioritize the sustainability of this end, even when it seems politically unpopular do to the tendency of the markets benefactors to quietly work, while those not working and therefore not benefitting directly from the marketplace voice their grievances and gripe, pushing for alternative systems.

The US and Great Brittain can no longer reasonably conduct a foreign policy strategy that emphasizes an extended list of human rights and pushes for democracy irregardless of outcome in parts of the world where literacy rates, a plurality of parties and other democratic pre-requisites are woefully absent. The US and Great Brittain need to priortize the safety and security of our shared civilization first by prioritizing the health of our economies and the global economy by balancing regional independance with global integration. Empowering and endowing competent governors to assign and reward competent admintrative officials, to enact and execute laws emphasizing contract enforcement, the free flow of capital and strong property rights is the only means of preserving the neccesssary economic base to provide our higher standards of living and protect us from our enemies. The US needs to spread an ethos of economic liberty and allow for traditional cultural norms, tribal dynamics and strong religious institutions to provide for what the welfare state once provided. Prioritizing traditional and tougher, simpler systems of criminal law with shorter but harsher sentences that the populations respect, such as Sharia law in Afghanistan and Iraq, are respectable if banking institutions adjust to provide Shar'ian approved financial products to merchants and middle class workers in Iraq and farmers and craftsmen in Afghanistan. These adjustments will not necessarily be easy, but they will set us on a sustainable course and direct us towards a more prosperous and free future. What we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, is that when the US enters into a war it needs to win the fighting first and instead of arming the population or flooding them with money, it needs to pivot its focus to developing sustainable marketplaces and basic locally cooridinated government functionality, prioritizing some form of criminal law, contract enforcement and property protections that then blend with religious practice, custom and tribal dynamics.

The US military fought courageously and successfully in almost all of the battles it engaged in and double hatted in a range of roles that they never should have had to undertake. The State Department ran into problems, largely because it was under-staffed and staffed innapropriately, it's focus should have been on basic government and the marketplace, items that the military should have prioritized protecting. The state-centered, nationalistic democratic approach pushed from the Distric of Columbia was neither effective, efficient nor innovative, diverting and waisting the time and treasure of our generation and Republic. The politics of the day will see many jump on these failures to suggest that military force is inneffective, but they are wrong, military force is necessary to secure healthy economic conditions conducive to individual liberty and the common wealth. It is national socialism that is the failure.

Inspired by “More Small Wars” by Max Boot and “Pick Your Battles” by Richard K. Betts along with a long list of readings in coordination with San Diego State's Master of Science in Homeland Security Program.

by T. Johnson

johnson.theo@gmail.com

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