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Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Welcome to the Neno's Place!

Neno's Place Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality


Neno

I can be reached by phone or text 8am-7pm cst 972-768-9772 or, once joining the board I can be reached by a (PM) Private Message.

Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

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    State Craft on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq: a failure by all accounts, and it

    Rocky
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    State Craft on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq: a failure by all accounts, and it Empty State Craft on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq: a failure by all accounts, and it

    Post by Rocky Tue 28 Feb 2023, 6:13 am

    [size=38]State Craft on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq: a failure by all accounts, and it did not anticipate Iran's role in it[/size]


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    February 27, 2023[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
    Baghdad / Obelisk: As the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq approaches, responsible statecraft newspaper called for reflection on the lessons that the United States must draw, and whether these lessons will deter any future military operations to bring about change in world systems.
    A report published by the newspaper, on 02/27/2023, said that the US invasion of Iraq failed by all measures to achieve any goals set by US policy makers to justify the massive military operation in Iraq.
    Aside from the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, the country continues to suffer from instability, corruption, sectarian conflicts, economic turmoil, dysfunctional infrastructure, and terrorism.
    The report concluded that the great politicians in America were ignorant of the establishment of modern Iraq, and the establishment of Shiite Islam in the year 681 after the “martyrdom” of Imam Hussein bin Ali in the city of Karbala in southern Iraq, just as our leaders did not appreciate the depth of the grievances of the Shiite majority in Iraq, which was ruled by them. Sunni minority since the formation of the country in the early 1920s.
    The report believes that Iran's deep-rooted geopolitical and religious interests in Iraq go back to the sixteenth century when Shia Islam became the official religion of Iran, as Najaf and Karbala have long constituted the center of the most influential Shia religious institutes or centers of learning, also known as hawzas, to which students flocked from Iran. and other countries throughout the Islamic world to study Shiite theology.
    The report continues: The great ayatollahs who headed these seminaries were the main source of religious authority in the Shiite world. After the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 and the subsequent war with Iraq in the 1980s, Iranian Shia clerics turned to Qom in Iran as the main Shia religious center of learning, along with the Najaf and Karbala seminaries.
    This helps explain why Iran became involved in Iraq after the invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Armed Shiite factions backed by Iran began staging rebellions against the American “invaders.” These forces also began to finish off what remained of the structure of the Sunni power in Iraq after the American invasion.
    Several months after the invasion, senior policy makers were asking government analysts to explain why the “Shia thing,” as they put it, was so important in Iraq and why Iran focused on it! As one analyst noted at the time, "Our leaders should have known about the centuries-old link between Iraq, Shiite Islam, and Iran before the invasion, not months later."
    'The morning after' questions
    Aside from rudimentary knowledge of the Iraqi reality, senior policymakers in Washington did not focus on what would follow Saddam's regime. Reflecting a sense of "can-do" arrogance, some believed that the massive American presence would in itself create and maintain stability in Iraq.
    Some senior officials viewed regime change as a manageable process that involved replacing one leader with another while maintaining business as usual.
    Throughout Iraq's turbulent history, the Shiite majority has been excluded from power and never allowed to develop a leadership cadre that could one day rule the country. As a result, top US policymakers relied on Iraqi Shiite exiles, such as Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, who seemed eager to return and run the country. This decision, made at the highest level of the US government, ignored Chalabi's murky background and bare-bones political ambitions.
    In their frequent briefings to senior policymakers on the eve of the invasion, government analysts raised several key questions they felt the need to address once Saddam Hussein was removed. (Similar questions, by the way, were posed to British officials in 1920 by Gertrude Bell as Iraq was being established under the British Mandate. Unfortunately, our government in late 2002 and early 2003 had a similar experience.)
    These included:
    What are the same tribes, clans, or religions that American military and diplomats should communicate with when entering Iraq?
    Who will rule Iraq - local or expatriate leaders after Saddam is toppled?
    How do you deal with senior Shiite clerics, such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani?
    - What form of government should replace Saddam - democracy, elections, or the distribution of power among religious or ethnic sects, similar to Lebanon?
    How are oil revenues distributed among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds?
    How can regional powers be involved, for example, Shiite Iran and the Sunni rulers of the Gulf, in post-Saddam Iraq, which was ruled by Shiites?
    What does “victory” look like and how long should the American forces remain in Iraq after the country is “liberated”?
    In the run-up to the war, senior policymakers asserted that Iraqis would welcome US forces as "liberators" and view the occupation as "liberation". And soon after Saddam's fall, the euphoria of "liberation" turned into occupation, and rebellion against the "occupiers" broke out across Iraq. Al Qaeda and ISIS led the fight against the US and Western military presence. Many senior Sunni military officers who lost their jobs after the dissolution of the Iraqi army ended up participating in the insurgency.
    How De-Baathification Wreaked Chaos In Iraq
    The chief architects of the Iraq War in Washington on the eve of the invasion knew very little about the centrality of the Baath Party to all levels of Iraqi society. They were told that the party was the backbone of Saddam's regime in Iraq and that party membership was absolutely necessary to get any job - from a janitor to a university professor. But membership was not necessarily a sign of loyalty to the party but rather a means of making a living.
    Some senior policy makers believe that de-Baathification in Iraq could be as effective as de-Nazification in Germany after World War II. But it didn't work that way in Iraq. By sacking thousands of Iraqis from their jobs because of their affiliation with the Ba'ath Party, the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq (CPA) faced overnight millions of jobless, professional and angry Iraqis, many of them Sunni Muslims who flocked to Iraq.
    De-Baathification and the dissolution of the Iraqi army were the two most dangerous decisions taken by the US administration in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam. Had the senior architects of the war in the Pentagon and the White House in 2003 been aware of—or even curious about—the political and demographic realities of Iraq, they would have recognized the shortsightedness of these two important decisions.
    Lessons learned?
    Intelligence and political expertise on Iraq were made available to policymakers at the highest levels, but this expertise and in-depth analysis were ignored. It was groupthink and a seeming disinterest in what expert analysts had to offer that underpinned the decision to go to war, which in turn led to the disaster that followed.
    As the country celebrates the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and before our leaders embark on another adventure of regime change, they must base their decision on deep experience about the target country, solid verifiable intelligence, a nationally accepted rationale, and a clear ending. Goals. Above all, they must show genuine humility regarding the limits of the United States' ability to control the course of events, the resulting outcomes, and the broader ramifications. Translated by Adnan Abu Zaid
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