Escaping the trap: "... U.S. policymakers need to absorb the larger lesson of the Iraqi debacle. Launching an elective war in pursuit of a nation-building chimera was an act of folly. It is a folly they should vow never to repeat in any other country.".

• Author: Carpenter, Ted Galen
• Position: Worldview

IT IS CLEAR in retrospect that the Administration and its supporters miscalculated badly about the Iraqi intervention. Pres. Bush's May 1, 2003, speech aboard the aircraft cartier USS Abraham Lincoln beneath a large "Mission Accomplished" banner was the perfect symbol for the misplaced optimism about Iraq that pervaded the Administration and its hawkish political allies. Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Defense Policy Board, an informal advisory group to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, famously predicted that the mission would be "a cakewalk." Other advocates of the war equally were ebullient. It would be like Paris in 1944, with the Iraqis greeting American troops as liberators, not occupiers. In December 2003, pro-war syndicated columnist Mark Steyn predicted that, "in a year's time Baghdad and Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs." Furthermore, there would be "no widespread resentment at or resistance of the Western military presence."

According to that rosy scenario, the transition to a democratic Iraqi government would be swift and easy. Defense Department planners assumed that U.S. troop levels would be down to 60,000--or perhaps even fewer--by the end of 2003. Washington Post reporter Tom Ricks noted that some Pentagon officials had hoped to have troop levels down to perhaps 25,000-30,000 by September 2003. Some military experts, though, warned that such optimism was unwarranted. Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, cautioned that the occupation would require "several hundred thousand troops" for a period of "many years."

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz flatly rejected Shinseki's assessment in congressional testimony. For his pains, Shinseki was rendered a lame duck when reports of his retirement were leaked to the press. Wolfowitz also scoffed at notions that the occupation would be a financial drain. He predicted that Iraq's oil revenues would pay for the entire cost of reconstruction. An drew Natsios, the administrator of the Agency for International Development, stated that costs of the reconstruction effort to the U.S. "will be $1,700,000,000. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this." Again, officials who dared sound discordant notes were shown the door. Lawrence Lindsey, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, warned that the cost could exceed $200,000,000,000. He was pressured out of his post soon thereafter. Of course, in one sense, Lindsey was wrong. The Iraqi war has cost $350,000,000,000--and counting.

By late 2006, it was clear to all but the most obtuse individuals that the Iraqi mission was not going well. By virtually every measure, the Bush Administration's expectations for Iraq were being dashed. On the economic front, reconstruction programs were far behind schedule and riddled with corruption. On the legal and social front, Iraq appeared to regress, with religious zealots running roughshod over their fellow citizens, enforcing edicts on such matters as alcohol consumption and standards of grooming and dress. The small Christian minority endured an upsurge in persecution, with tens of thousands forced to flee the country. Iraqi women fared very badly, often losing rights and privileges that were routine under Saddam Hussein's regime. On the political front, the rise of Islamic hardliners accelerated. Instead of electing moderate, nonsectarian candidates for the new Iraqi government, voters have empowered stridently sectarian parties, with Shiite political factions friendly to Iran exhibiting especially impressive strength. Moreover, the stark divide among Kurds, Sunnis, and Shias clearly was reflected in the balloting. Parties and candidates that sought to bridge that sectarian divide were routed. Most crucial of all, the evidence of massive disorder in Iraq became irrefutable as the security environment, which was bad even during the initial period of the occupation, sharply deteriorated.

Even the most tenacious optimists concede that the level of violence has become alarming. Whether Iraq now is engulfed in a civil war is debated, but that largely is a matter of semantics. If one adopts a strict enough definition, Iraq probably does not fit the category. Most experts, though, do not employ such rigid definitions of civil war. They use the term when two or more ethnic, ideological, or religious factions generate violence on a large scale to pursue their political ends. The conflict in Lebanon during the 1970s and 1980s is an example, and virtually all experts consider that episode a civil war. The situation in Iraq today seems very similar.

Iraq's violent chaos

Whatever term one uses, the security situation in Iraq is extraordinarily violent and chaotic. Furthermore, the nature of the violence in that country has shifted since the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of Shia Islam's holiest shrines. The Sunniled insurgency against U.S. and British occupation troops and the security forces of the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi government remain a significant factor, but no longer the dominant one. The growth in turmoil primarily is in explicit sectarian violence between the Sunni and Shiite communities. Baghdad is the epicenter of that strife, but it has erupted in other parts of the country as well. The Iraq Study Group noted that four of Iraq's 18 provinces are "highly insecure." Those provinces account for about 40% of the country's population.

A July 2006 UN report highlights the extent of the growing carnage: More than 14,000 Iraqi civilians died violently in the first six months of 2006, mostly in insurgent attacks or sectarian strife, and the trend is becoming even more worrisome. The death toll in January 2006 was 1,778; in June, it was 3,149. A November 2006 UN report notes that 3,709 Iraqis perished in October. Put another way, the death toll is running at approximately 120 victims each day.

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