Yes, Virginia, there was a Postwar Plan Posted by: Jon Henke
on Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Kevin Drum uses early/mid 2002 memos to prove—prove!—that the Bush administration didn't plan for the Iraq postwar phase...
Tonight I want to summarize what they say about the Bush administration's postwar plans:
David Manning Memo: "From what [Condoleezza Rice] said, Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions...what happens on the morning after?
....I think there is a real risk that the Administration underestimates the difficulties. They may agree that failure isn't an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it."
Straw Memo: "We have also to answer the big question — what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything."
Downing Street Memo: "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
The message from these memos is is pretty clear: the administration didn't have any postwar plans. They figured they'd invade, mop up, and then leave.
Of course, the memos were written in 2002, so normally we'd simply assume that serious planning was done at a later date. However, the evidence indicates that the Bush administration never took postwar planning seriously, and the Downing Street Memos provide yet another data point to back this up.
Now, I'm sympathetic to claims that the Bush administration planned poorly, over-optimistically or inadequately for the Iraq postwar phase. I'd agree with many of those claims. I'd especially agree that we made some poor assumptions about the degree of international assistance in the postwar phase.
But it's no wonder that early/mid 2002 memos didn't specify the plan, because the full plan didn't come together until early 2003. From a February, 2003 Statement by Douglas Feith:
I am pleased to have this opportunity to talk with you today about efforts underway in the Defense Department and the U.S. Government to plan for Iraq in the post-conflict period, should war become necessary.
If U.S. and other coalition forces take military action in Iraq, they will, after victory, have contributions to make to the country’s temporary administration and the welfare of the Iraqi people. It will be necessary to provide humanitarian relief, organize basic services and work to establish security for the liberated Iraqis.
There follows a lot of speechifying about the US responsibility to the Iraqi people, the importance of "economic and political reconstruction, working to put Iraq on a path to become a prosperous and free country", and the US "commitment to stay and a commitment to leave". More importantly, though, was this rough outline of The Plan:
To prepare for all this, the President directed on January 20 the creation of a post-war planning office. Although located within the Policy organization in the Department of Defense, this office is staffed by officials detailed from departments and agencies throughout the government. Its job is detailed planning and implementation. The intention is not to theorize but to do practical work – to prepare for action on the ground, if and when the time comes for such work. In the event of war, most of the people in the office will deploy to Iraq. We have named it the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance and we describe it as an “expeditionary” office.
The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance is charged with establishing links with the United Nations specialized agencies and with non-governmental organizations that will play a role in post-war Iraq. It will reach out also to the counterpart offices in the governments of coalition countries, and, in coordination with the President’s Special Envoy to the Free Iraqis, to the various Free Iraqi groups.
The immediate responsibility for administering post-war Iraq will fall upon the Commander of the U.S. Central Command, as the commander of the U.S. and coalition forces in the field. The purpose of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance is to develop the detailed plans that he and his subordinates will draw on in meeting these responsibilities.
Various parts of the government have done a great deal of work on aspects of post-war planning for months now. Several planning efforts are underway.
Feith went on to list various agencies and task groups, along with their responsibilities in the postwar planning. You can read the full statement here.
Was it adequate? Well, no. Many of our assumptions about international assistance did not obtain in reality. The Iraqis were more wary of us, the insurgents were more persistent, and the hidden caches of weapons far more widespread. All of which meant that our best plans didn't survive contact with the enemy.
Well, that's not a military cliche for nothing.
But that's the nature of war, and to suggest that the administration "never seriously considered what to do with Iraq after the war" and "just figured they'd install some kind of friendly government and then get out" is pretty clearly contradicted by the Feith Statement. The only "criminal neglect" (to borrow from Drum) is the critics apparent unawareness of the postwar plans that did exist. Call them bad plans if you like, but let's not pretend they weren't there at all.
UPDATE:
For all of the relevant, notable portions of the Downing Street and associated British Memos see this post, where they've been aggregated. Or see this post for comparative analysis of the charges being made.
UPDATE II:
Reader Al notes that the administration's longstanding failure to adequately defend themselves might also be considered "criminal neglect". That's true, and it's a point I've been making for a very long time, most recently when noting that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay actually havereceived the tribunals required by the Geneva Convention.
That's something you'd think the administration might have mentioned.
"The only "criminal neglect" (to borrow from Drum) is the critics apparent unawareness of the postwar plans that did exist."
Is that criminal neglect? I’m about as big a war supporter as there is, and I had no idea about these plans. So why would anyone who really doesn’t listen to the Administration much know anything about them?
If there is any criminal neglect here, it is the Administration’s nonexistent defense of its own actions.
So the President directed the creation of the planing office January 20, just three months before the invasion? Obviously that was far too late to do an adequate job.
You should check out James Fellows’ articles in the Atlantic Monthly last year on the planning process. What happened was the State Department was given the project a year earlier, and did a good job. However, a few months before the invasion Rumsfeld persuaded Bush to turn the task over to the D of D, which threw away all of State’s planning, and lacked the expertise, number of personel, and time needed for the job. As a result, we went in grossly unprepared.
I think the invasion was a good idea, as is Bush’s war on terrorism and Middle East democracy initiative. However, I think the administration made terrible mistakes in planning for the occupation.
I agree with Al, the Bush admin has the worst public diplomacy I have ever seen. That said, I’d like to pose some questions to Mr. Drum and friends:
1) Could things have gone better if the Turks had let us bring the hammer down on the Sunni triangle from the north, as all the plans envisioned?
2) Could things have gone better if Kofi Annan had not bugged out after the first suiside bomb against the UN, especially after he refused to let the US guard his compound?
3) Could things have gone better if our "friends" in Europe not only opposed our decision, but did everything within their power, short of picking up weapons, to make sure as many American boys would die as possible in this action?
4) How many people would have predicted the bottomless supply of suicide bombers that the fanatics have been able to put on the road?
5) How many of the above four questions might have been altered if we had a loyal opposition in this country, rather than a gang that has done everything in their power to belittle and hamstring our efforts?
If there is any criminal neglect here, it is the Administration’s nonexistent defense of its own actions.
Good point. I’ve added that to the post.
So the President directed the creation of the planing office January 20, just three months before the invasion? Obviously that was far too late to do an adequate job.
That was simply the Office. As was noted by Feith just a few grafs later, various "parts of the government have done a great deal of work on aspects of post-war planning for months now. Several planning efforts are underway." So the planning predated 1/20 by quite awhile.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all this hadn’t been mentioned ad nauseum in press conferences and statements, but had been quietly buried by a press less interested in informing the public than in promoting their own agenda.
As an example, the Abu Ghraib allegations and the investigation were mentioned in press conferences MONTHS before the 60 Minutes story, but that didn’t stop much of the press from playing the story—even to this day—as if there was an attempt at a cover-up.
Y’know, when people start bitching about the Bush administration’s failures of public diplomacy and public relations it irritates me vastly.
It has been established _at least_ since July of 2000 that the media in general, and the major media (NYT, CBS, etc.) especially, WILL NOT CARRY George Bush’s words. They’ll soundbyte, excerpt, paraphrase, and generally misrepresent what he says in order to come up with something insulting and/or discrediting, but quote in context or otherwise correctly represent? Never.
That being the case, Bush’s strategy seems like the only way to go: never say anything except at a major public speech, where there are enough witnesses to make mischaracterization more difficult. But there aren’t enough major speeches to make it possible to present things in detail, so a lot of stuff never gets out.
In this case, had the plans been made public as they were being made it would now be a matter of fact, to be mentioned in passing while making other points like the plastic turkey and the 100,000 dead civilians, that Bush intended to conquer and annex Iraq, giving over the complete management responsibility to Halliburton corp. and its corporate allies. And they would have quotes to prove it. Better no info before the public at all than that kind of distortion.
A lot of dopes here. One read this plan, noted the date, and cloncluded there were no earlier, later, or concurrent plans. This suggests a pretty limited vision to me!
Should the Admin have trotted out a better defense? Consider this: The enemy would only move on to other topics. Give them more rope on this one... drain their energies in a place where you know you can handle it. Its called strategery.
Let me know when you guys make it to the big time.
I think it was in the famous $87 Billion bill that I saw a list of what some of the reconstruction money was to be used for. The list alone gave proof that planning had been done. Zip codes? You think someone just added that to the list to be cute?
Ric, I understand where you are coming from, but I think your proposed solution is simply wrong. If the media doesn’t carry the Administration’s defense of its conduct in the war, the answer is not to say "screw it" and stop giving the defense. Rather, the answer is to try harder.
Again, you are not going to find a bigger war (and Bush) supporter than me. But the Administration’s public explanations of its actions in the war have been thoroughly pathetic.
Al, I understand your frustration. In 2000 I watched in horror as Rove and Co. just totally botched the campaign and I assumed a big loss was in the making. I was wrong. I’ve come to trust the President’s instincts on this stuff. If it works well enough to get him re-elected with an approval rating of less than 50% I think he’s doing all he can. What he could really use are some Republican allies.
I’ve got an idea on what to do about this problem but I’m unsure of where to take it. The Republicans in the Senate and the House of Reps. need to divide Iraq and Afghanistan into sections and report weekly to the media on what is going right, what is getting built, who is being arrested and killed, and how losses don’t automatically mean defeat. Obviously you would give the triangle and Baghdad to the leadership (Sadr City to McCain) as they would be most motivated to get the story right. Tie them into the State Department and Defense through their usual channels and give the soldiers on the ground in their designated areas a dedicated e-mail adress of the rep. or Sen. reporting on their area and they could write letters telling their stories of things they’ve accomplished. A Senator would never give up the chance to brag on our Marines and soldiers. They would be well informed and they could talk about their area with ease and confidence. That would definitely boost morale in the U.S. and would contribute to the public being more informed generally. They could do interviews with local papers all over their districts and when they go home could do interviews with local news shows. I just don’t know who to take that idea to.
I would agree that the administrations public releations are aweful but I also believe that this President has attempted a simple approach to be President. If you look only at what he says and what he does you will find a 95+ percent correlation. Bush has tried to bring dignity back to the Presidency by simply doing what he says therefore you can read all the crap written about his evil intentions, motive etc. but if you re-read his speaches and press conferences you will see a very principled man who takes his job very seriously who has historical perspective and who hopes that the press will somehow become sane and actually report what he says rather than what they believe he meant. Is that not what we should ask of a nonbiased press?
Better no info before the public at all than that kind of distortion.
Oh, yea. Let us all just ignore what Washington is doing. We can most certainly trust them with power.
Forget about the whole “blame the media first” nonsense (reminds of the “blame America first” crowd), the fact that people blindly follow ANYONE is just plain scary. There are plenty of Media outlets for Bush to get his words (er…attempts at words) out there undistorted. Undistorted? LoL, as if Bush needs any help muddling his message.
You mischaracterize Drum’s point. He explicitly acknowledges that planning was likely to come after the 2002 memo dates, then says: "the evidence indicates that the Bush administration never took postwar planning seriously." He’s saying that the plan wasn’t serious, which is very different than saying that there was NO plan. Presumably, our actual plan was based on Dick Cheney’s prediction (appraently by way of Ahmad Chalabi) that we were going to be greeted as liberators. That’s pretty much the definition of "bad planning."
Since you admit that you are "sympathetic to claims that the Bush administration planned poorly, over-optimistically or inadequately for the Iraq postwar phase," what exactly is your complaint with the Drum piece?
He’s saying that the plan wasn’t serious, which is very different than saying that there was NO plan.
The cited item looks to me like a "serious" plan.
Since you admit that you are "sympathetic to claims that the Bush administration planned poorly, over-optimistically or inadequately for the Iraq postwar phase," what exactly is your complaint with the Drum piece?
It explicitly promulgates the idea that we went in with no real thought to what would happen after the fall of Baghdad, which is quite simply false. The fact that we met difficulties is not an indicator of bad planning. It only indicates that we met an enemy. "No plans withstands contact with the enemy", you know.
Unfortunately, as with the Drum piece, there’s just never any real acknowledgement that there was planning. Instead of saying "I disagree with this aspect of the plan", critics pretend that we didn’t plan at all.
And since the military does extensive planning—even when we’re not at war—for these kind of things, I find it hard to believe that the President just told the military "hey, don’t sweat the postwar stuff". That’s what they do all the time.
Finally, though I didn’t mention it in the post, I object to Kevin’s characterization of a couple statements. When Franks just (esentially) "shrugged his shoulders", he wasn’t indicating that there wasn’t a plan...he was indicating that the plan depended on the conditions that obtained after the fall of Baghdad. The article to which he links was rather explicit about that.
Also, Kevin wrote that "senior military planners in Baghdad said cheerily that they figured they could draw down American troop levels to 30,000 by fall". Well, no. The article explicitly stated that they thought they could do that IF certain conditions obtained. They didn’t. That’s not a failure of the plan. That’s a new condition to be accounted for.
"The fact that we met difficulties is not an indicator of bad planning. It only indicates that we met an enemy. ’No plans withstands contact with the enemy", you know.’"
I keep hearing this statement over and over. Of course difficulties don’t per se indicate a bad plan. What I see as Drum’s point, and the point of critics of the post-war plan (including me), is that the difficulties we encountered were both foreseeable and actually foreseen by many people who tried to warn the administration. A plan which does not take account of difficulties which are very likely to occur, which does not even have a workable contingency for dealing with those difficulties, is a Very bad plan.
How hard was it to foresee the likelihood of a guerilla insurgency by members of the deposed power structure, when we did not disarm them and they do not have the military capability of waging an overt war?
How hard was it to see that employing an invasion force with too few soldiers to both fight the battle and guard the known weapons dumps would result in many munitions falling into the hands of insurgents?
How hard was it to foresee the infiltration of foreign jihadists over a largely unguarded border with countries whose residents would obviously be unhappy with an American occupation of a neighboring country?
How hard was it to foresee that any insurgency would likely target the oil supply, electrical supply, and those Iraqis who were cooperating with the americans?
If you are so convinced of the seriousness of planning for the post-war phase, what do you think the planning took into account? What was the planning based on? Why did the administration consistently undervalue opinions that warned of a likely insurgency and consistently overvalue opinions that all would go pretty well among an Iraqi populace that would welcome us as liberators who freed them from Saddam?
This isn’t an academic debate for me. Real Americans really lost their lives and limbs because of the failure to foresee this. Those Americans were in no position to formulate post-war plans, and counted on their leaders to do that for them.
The short answer is that we did foresee those things, but underestimated 1) the duration of the insurgency, 2) the widespread prevelance of weapons caches and 3) the tentative nature of the Iraqi people. The third, I think, was the most notable one, because it allowed the first to become a problem. Well, who can blame them? They’ve been screwed—including by us—so they were waiting it out and letting us do the work.
Unfortunately, that affected some of our basic assumptions.
As regards troop strength: I’m still not convinced that "more troops" would be a good solution; "more troops" might just equal "more targets", and there’s the ever-present problem of too much. Our problem was not in insufficient troop levels—though, I think we should have had more to secure weapons caches—but with insufficient;y belligerent responses to the insurgency.
But that’s a judgement call. Where do you draw the line between talking softly and carrying a big stick? Do you leave Falluja for Iraqis to handle, or do you raze the thing?
I think we guessed wrong in some areas—and I think Generals can honestly disagree about the propriety of various measures—but that doesn’t mean we didn’t prepare "seriously".
"The short answer is that we did foresee those things, but underestimated 1) the duration of the insurgency, 2) the widespread prevelance of weapons caches and 3) the tentative nature of the Iraqi people."
I agree that we underestimated 1 and 3 (except for the term "tentative"; seems to me that "ambivalent" is closer to the fact), but we knew about most of the weapons caches and still left them unguarded.
On 1 & 3, we certainly did significantly underestimate them, AND our plan did not have a contingency built in so we could adjust if our original estimate was off. I can’t explain that in any acceptable way when good, experienced people were bringing those possibilities to the attention of the decision makers.
On whether more troops now is the answer, I have no idea. Given the circumstances that exist now, more troops might very well make for more carnage. That very dilemma is one of the worst things about the bad planning: it put us in a position where more troops may fan the flames and existing troops may be inadequate to extinguish the flames.
It’s a mistake for either side (we all, unfortunately, seem to be on some kind of "side") to get hung up on semantics like whether "seriously" is the right word, to the point that we overlook the fact that the planning was bad. My sympathies lie with the Americans who are exposed to that danger every day in Iraq, not with the government and military officials who put them in that position.
What happened to the days when people in high positions felt compelled to apologize and resign when their failures got people killed and put their country in greater danger?
