Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America's Enemies

Peter Galbraith is among the most experienced and highly regarded of U.S. diplomats, with extensive experience under multiple Presidents and years spent studying and working in the Middle East. He is in a strong position to evaluate the effects of policies pursued by former President Bush in Iraq. His critique of those policies ought to be widely read, as the policies pursued by the Bush administration directly relate to the U.S. national debt, the destruction of America's standing in the world, the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism, and the abject failure to achieve any of the stated goals. His book begins with an introduction to the announced intents of the invasion of Iraq and the realities that ensured during the subsequent occupation. The book chronicles the profound ineptitude of Bush administration staff and their policies, and leads us through the sequence of events that lead from broad public support to deep public opposition to the war in Iraq, and to the profound changes that resulted from the '06 and '08 elections (but stops before the election of Barack Obama). Highly recommended and essential reading for anyone who wishes to better understand the differences between on the ground fact and Bush administration fiction in Iraq.

In its ignorance, incompetence, deceit, and fervent ideology, Peter Galbraith is the sort of career foreign diplomat that the Bush administration willfully ignored when it invaded Iraq. Since graduating from Harvard, Oxford, and Georgetown, Galbraith has spent three decades in government service, most notably as America's first ambassador to Croatia and a United Nations diplomat in East Timor. He's been an adjunct professor and lecturer at the National War College (1999 and 2001-2003). His earlier book The End of Iraq (2007) received wide-spread acclaim for its analysis based upon Galbraith's decades of experience in Iraq. Despite what the Bush administration told the public about its rationale for a war of choice, we now know that Iraq did not possess WMDs, Saddam Hussein was not involved in the 9/11 attacks, and Iraq was not a base for al-Qaeda (although it became one after the war started). The later justification of producing a democratic Iraq has failed miserably. In fact, on almost every count, Bush's war produced the opposite results of those he intended. Whereas Iraq did not have WMDs, North Korea, Iran and Pakistan have grown as genuine nuclear threats. The "war of terror" has emboldened terrorists and swelled the ranks of their recruits. The agenda of a free democracy "now has US troops fighting for pro-Iranian Shiite theocrats [the government] and alongside unreformed Baathists [the Sunni Awakening]." The attempt to marginalize Iran has made its influence in Iraq stronger than it has been in four hundred years. Syria is now more bold, not more threatened, and Israel is less rather than more secure. Turkey has been transformed from one of America's biggest supporters to a nation of virulent anti-Americanism. The "shock and awe" of American superiority has revealed gross failures of intelligence, planning, and politics. American prestige has been squandered, five million Iraqis have been displaced and at least 100,000 killed, the Republican party decimated, and our own country floundering. When he left office in January 2009, Bush did not concede that he had made any mistakes. In Galbraith's analysis, the central problem in Iraq rests in the deep divisions between and among Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, and even those who remember a good life as secular Iraqis. These groups, says Galbraith, have "irreconcilable differences" and are merely "biding their time" until the next civil war. The army and police are highly sectarian. There are few mixed neighborhoods anymore. Kurds will never agree to be integrated in a centralized and unified Iraq (nor should they, in Galbraith's view). In short, as he argued in his first book, reality dictates that there never will or can be a unified Iraq. President Obama intends to remove most American troops by 2010, but in his book The Gamble (2009), Thomas Ricks quotes sources that envision American troops in Iraq until 2015, in which case we are only at the half

The war to eliminate the threat of Iraq's nonexistent WMD ended up with Iran and North Korea much closer to deployable nuclear weapons, given Iran a role in Iraq it has not had in four centuries, helped the terrorists, made Turkey among the most anti-American countries in the world (from 60% favorable opinion in 2000 to 7% in 2007), and cost the GOP control of both houses of Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008. Further, the surge was fortuitously timed - Al Qaeda had overplayed its hand by assassinating local Sunni chieftains and forcing marriages between their daughters and Al Qaeda fighters. The chieftains went to General Petreaus for help and received funding for their militia and subsidies for their leaders. This also limited Al Qaeda's ability to foment sectarian violence. The Mahdi army stood down during the surge (the U.S. would be leaving soon anyway); there is every reason to suppose that once the U.S. forces leave the Shiites will resume their terror campaign to drive all Sunnis from Baghdad, as well as their internal civil war. Meanwhile, the Kurds' status vs. Iraq has not been settled (they do have their own army and police), the Baathists have not been reintegrated, and the Iraqi army is still segregated by sect and strongly biased against adding Sunnis. Bush's "solution" is to push the problem into 2009 and blame the next president. The Iraq War is already lost. Actually, it was lost at the beginning - after six weeks of unchecked looting left facilities unable to support resumption of services, and installing an incompetent U.S. government (Bremer et al) instead of Iraqis. During this time period Bush totally abdicated his responsibility as "the Decider." The U.S. is now hamstrung vs. Iran because we need its cooperation in Iraq, and our international credibility was blown in the Iraq pre-war hysteria. Making matters worse, the U.S. is supporting the shah's son and an Iranian terrorist group in its efforts to achieve regime change. Iran, together with Iraq, could also wreak havoc on the world's oil economy. Public diplomacy (Voice of America, international tours and exchanges) is a waste - the world understands too well our actions vs. Iraq and Israel. The less said about our freedom agenda the better - Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the 2000 elections, etc. speak louder. Galbraith also points out that the U.S. dismissed Iran's 2003 willingness to give up nuclear enrichment and help in Iraq - if we assisted it in efforts against its internal MEK terrorist problem. Galbraith's words have added credibility from his involvement in the area.

I hope that the newly elected President has read and will re-read this book that ought to have been a primer for the last President. It teaches us not only about the war in Iraq and its bad pursuit. More importantly, it can teach us how to think about foreign policy and how to avoid mistakes like the hideous ones we made. Perhaps, it can even help to guide the path to more intelligent and useful planning and action. The author shares a great deal. It is up to us to profit from it.

Peter Galbraith, a State Department professional and insider (who just coincidentally happens to also be the son of the famous Harvard economist), claims in this critique of the Iraq war that "Bush's folly," is the classic case of what can go wrong when a nation embarks on an ill-conceived "one-part plan" whose execution requires "several other missing parts." The book makes clear that it is one thing to sketch out on the war room drawing board an idealized scenario of a war that theoretically has winnable objectives, and quite another to proceed to the battlefield before "filling in" the minimum required implementing details. Usually even if the stated reasons for going to war, appear to be sound on the surface, as was the case in Iraq II -- that is to say, to strengthen democracy in a troubled region, to rid Iraq of WMD, to change the regime of a brutal dictator, to serve as a warning and to undermine emerging nuclear states and undemocratic despots in the region, to support our only democratic ally in the region, to wrest control of the oil pipelines from anti-U.S. and anti-Western forces, and to enhance U.S. military presence and influence in the region -- having only idealized goals without clearly thinking through the implementing details is what might best be described as "how to fight a dumb war, dumbly." Galbraith's main point here in this cleanly written "no-holds barred" critique is that "fighting a dumb war" only can have the worse of unintended consequences, and did exactly that in Iraq II. He gives a laundry list of the unintended consequences of the Bush Folly into Iraq. The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld War fought dumbly resulted in the following unintended consequences: --It handed Iran its greatest strategic triumph in four centuries by facilitating the construction of a Persian run Shiite Super-state in a country that for the past four centuries had been dominated by the Ottoman installed Sunni Muslims. U.S. troops now fight to support an Iraqi government led by religious parties intent on creating an Iranian-style Islamic Republic. --As part of the surge, the United States created a Sunni militia led by the same Baathists the U.S. invaded Iraq to overthrow. Their return would cancel out the only collateral objective accomplished, regime change and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. --It caused Iraq to be divided, de facto, into three informal partitions: with the Iran backed Shiite majority controlling most of the country, but also with the much feared Baathist Sunnis controlling the Center of the oil wealth, and the Kurds maintaining a semi-autonomous region in the North (just as Democratic Senator from Delaware Biden had predicted would happen); -- It greatly weaken the U.S. military, draining the U.S. of valuable resources needed at home, including its treasure of men and women, which so far as resulted in the deaths of 4, 000 plus U.S. soldiers and 30,000 plus injured, as well as nearly a million Iraqi soldiers and civilians k