War College Professors Warn Against Iraq Pullout
Ronald Kessler
Thursday, March 8, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Dr. W. Andrew Terrill, a U.S. Army War College professor, is warning of a new danger in Iraq: leaving the region in the lurch.
A month before the Iraq invasion, he was one of two U.S. Army War College professors who laid out in remarkable detail every problem that has since arisen in Iraq and outlined exactly what post-invasion planning was needed to avert the current difficulties.
"We have to reach out to our allies," Terrill, MacArthur research professor of national security affairs, told NewsMax. "They have to understand that this war is not going to make us isolationist, to make us pull out of the Middle East, to make us forget about our friends. No matter how badly this war goes, we're in there for the long haul. We understand we have permanent interests there. And that needs to be conveyed to Israel and to Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and all of our allies."
The challenge, he said, is making sure that the problems in Iraq "do not sink the entire region."
In February 2003, Dr. Terrill and Dr. Conrad C. Crane wrote an 84-page monograph, "Reconstructing Scenario: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario." The paper encapsulated advice they had been giving the U.S. Central Command for months.
When they wrote the monograph, both men were at the War College's Strategic Studies Institute, where Terrill remains. Crane now is director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute. A Middle East expert, Terrill previously was an intelligence officer assigned to the Pentagon. Before that, he was a Middle East non-proliferation analyst at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
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Violent Political Culture
"Iraq presents far from ideal conditions for achieving strategic goals," the authors wrote back in February 2003. "Saddam Hussein is the culmination of a violent political culture that is rooted in a tortured history. Ethnic, tribal, and religious schisms could produce civil war or fracture the state after Saddam is deposed."
Should an unwelcome occupation continue for a prolonged time, a force "initially viewed as liberators can rapidly be relegated to the status of invaders," they said. "To reduce the amount of resentment about the occupation in Iraq and the surrounding region, it is essential that military forces hand over responsibilities to civilian agencies as soon as practicable."
An exit strategy, they wrote, will require "the establishment of political stability, which will be difficult to achieve, given Iraq's fragmented population, weak political institutions, and propensity for rule by violence." Moreover, they said, "U.S. forces may have to manage and adjudicate conflicts among Iraqis that they can barely comprehend."
To be successful in Iraq, the military must commit to "much detailed interagency planning, many forces, a multi-year military commitment, and a national commitment to nation building," Terrill and Conrad said.
"The U.S. Army has been organized and trained primarily to fight and win the nation's major wars. Nonetheless, the service must prepare for victory in peace as well," they said.
Parallels to Previous Wars
The paper, available online at the War College's Strategic Studies Institute, analyzed post-war efforts in previous conflicts going back to World War I.
"One of the most vexing problems for occupation authorities was how to dismantle the Nazi Party and its security apparatus, while retaining the skills of some members who performed important functions," the authors wrote about World War II.
In part, they said, this problem was solved by having all German adults fill out a detailed questionnaire about their associations. Heavy penalties were imposed for lying or failing to answer each question. A board of anti-Nazi Germans reviewed the answers and determined which Germans should be allowed to have their rights as citizens restored.
"A similar approach might work to demobilize and reintegrate members of the Baath Party and security forces in Iraq," the authors wrote in their paper before the Iraq invasion.
If the Iraq war were to progress rapidly with few civilian casualties, the occupation would "probably be characterized by an initial honeymoon period, during which the United States will reap the benefits of ridding the population of a brutal dictator," the professors predicted. "Nevertheless, most Iraqis and most other Arabs will probably assume that the United States intervened in Iraq for its own reasons and not to liberate the population. Long-term gratitude is unlikely, and suspicion of U.S. motives will increase as the occupation continues," they wrote.
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Facing the Challenges of Religious Factions
Religious forces will exacerbate those suspicions.
"Muslims have a formal religious duty not to submit to the authority of non-Muslim rulers such as found in the Judeo/Christian West," the authors said.
While they are not against free elections in Iraq, the professors warned that elections could further exacerbate tensions and were not a panacea for a troubled society.
"Ethnically based political parties generally increase divisions rather than mitigate them in highly fractious countries," they warned.
Establishment of a democracy or even some sort of rough pluralism in Iraq will be a "staggering challenge for any occupation force seeking to govern in the post-Saddam era," they said.
The authors foresaw the possibility of "considerable domestic pressure to limit the duration and extent of the U.S. occupation." The longer the occupation continues, they said, the more the Iraqi population will become impatient and "take violent measures to hasten the departure of U.S. forces."
At the same time, they said, a "premature withdrawal from Iraq could lead to instability and perhaps even civil war. By ousting the Saddam Hussein regime, the United States will have placed itself in the position where it will be held responsible by the world should anarchy and civil war develop in a post-Saddam era." Once the U.S. enters Iraq, it "will find itself unable to leave rapidly, despite the many pressures to do so."
In particular, the authors warned that Shiite Arabs could turn to terrorism and that suicide bombers would pose a threat.
"The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious," the authors said. "Rehabilitating Iraq will consequently be an important challenge that threatens to consume large amounts of resources without guaranteed results."
How to Stabilize a Post-War Iraq
The authors devoted 36 pages to spelling out how Iraq could be stabilized after the invasion. They included tables listing which government agencies should be assigned responsibility for carrying out 135 post-war tasks. Those tasks included maintaining art and cultural institutions, protecting religious sites and access, training police, disarming the populace and securing weapons, repairing railroads, collecting garbage, dismantling the Baath Party, providing job training programs, restoring and maintaining gas systems, establishing employment services, and providing care for the aged and for the poor.
As described in a Feb. 28 NewsMax article, "Gen. Petraeus to Outline Progress in Iraq," David H. Petraeus, the new commander in Iraq, gave the Senate Armed Services Committee a devastating, little-noticed analysis of what went wrong in Iraq.
"We obviously had inadequate plans, concepts, organizations, resources, and policies for the conduct of Phase IV [stability and reconstruction] operations; consequently, we were slow to move into Phase IV operations," Petraeus said on Jan. 23 in an 11,269-word response to written questions from the committee.
Petraeus said the underlying problem in Iraq was that the national elections, expected to unify the country behind a legitimate Iraqi government, did the opposite.
"The elections hardened sectarian positions as Iraqis voted largely based on ethnic and sectarian group identity," Petraeus said.
Terrill said that while he and Crane were able to convey their views to the Army well before the war, no one above the Army level at the Pentagon or the White House asked for their thoughts, either before or after the war. However, after it came out, they sent copies of the study to a number of offices within the executive and legislative branches.
In effect, Terrill and Crane are the Warren Buffetts of post-war strategy. While the Iraq Study Group consulted Terrill, neither he nor Crane has been invited by anyone close to President Bush or Defense Secretary Robert Gates to share their views. When Gates was a member of the Iraq Study Group, he did ask Terrill questions and seemed interested in his work, Terrill said.
The media have paid scant attention as well. Fewer than two dozen publications have referred to the report, all after the Iraq war began.
Terrill declined to criticize former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for the lack of planning.
"I don't want to start criticizing specific individuals," he said. "That's not real useful to me. I hate to say, ‘I told you so.' I hate to say, ‘Oh, you guys should have just followed my plan and everything would have been perfect.' I just don't think that's the way to be a team player with the government. But we presented in our study, obviously, an idea that this was going to be a very, very difficult challenge that would require massive amounts of resources, and I guess not everybody felt that way at the time."
Post-War Planning Warnings
A former CIA official who was involved in the planning for the war said that, while the buck stops with the president, his National Security Council should have heeded warnings about the need for post-war planning. He said those warnings came not only from the U.S. Army War College but also from the CIA and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Given their prescience about Iraq, the question naturally arises: Why hasn't the White House detailed Terrill and Crane to the National Security Council so they can help shape policy and advise President Bush?
The problem now is that disaffection with the Iraq war is leading to isolationism that poses a danger to the U.S., Terrill said.
"The Middle East is a very, very complex place," said Terrill. "I've been going there back and forth for 30 years. Right now, what I'm concerned about is that many pro-Western Arabs fear that the U.S. may reduce its involvement in their region just as a new wave of battle-hardened jihadists emerge from the turmoil of the Iraq war," he said. "If U.S. leaders even briefly conclude that the Middle East was safer without us than with us, this would be a problem. We need to let them know that we will not abandon them, even temporarily. We have to continue to reach out to allies and supporters and make good and certain that we have a say in the future of the Middle East."
If the U.S. becomes less involved in the region, Terrill pointed out, pro-Western Arabs in the leaderships of Jordan, the Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Arab states could become less influential, Terrill said.
"If friendly Arab governments believe that the U.S. will become increasingly isolationist in the aftermath of setbacks in Iraq, then they may feel a lot more pressure to accommodate Iranian — and maybe even Chinese — priorities. They may want to seek to avoid antagonizing radical groups."
Terrill said some Middle East allies may consider relaxing efforts to control money laundering They may also impose leaner prison sentences on terrorists who do not directly threaten their own regime.
"Many of our allies share intelligence of considerable value, as well as overflight rights, port visits, and support in joint military exercises," Terrill said. "Kuwait has provided our troops with free and then reduced rate gasoline. Qatar has an Israeli trade mission and Jordan and Egypt have diplomatic ties with Israel. These relationships could be of value in efforts to move forward in the peace process at some point." But, Terrill said, "They will be undermined if the U.S. pursues an isolationist policy."
Ronald Kessler is Chief Washington Correspondent of NewsMax.com. Get his dispatches FREE sent you via e-mail – Click Here Now.
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