The U.S. Army War College finally managed to publish that study of the Army in the Iraq War, which General Odierno had wanted to see before he retired. (See my previous post about that study.) It looks like exactly the bucket-of-cold-water he wanted it to be. Whether or not it will wake anyone up remains to be seen.
Here's Volume One, and here's Volume Two.
The bottom line is in CHAPTER 17, CONCLUSION: LESSONS OF THE IRAQ WAR, starting on page 639:
The Iraq War has the potential to be one of the most consequential conflicts in American history. It shattered a long-standing political tradition against preemptive wars. John Quincy Adams’s presumption that America should not go “abroad searching for monsters to destroy” was erased, at least temporarily. In the conflict’s immediate aftermath, the pendulum of American politics swung to the opposite pole with deep skepticism about foreign interventions.
In terms of geostrategic consequences, the war produced profound consequences. At the time of this project’s completion in 2018, an emboldened and expansionist Iran appears to be the only victor. Iraq, the traditional regional counterbalance for Iran, is at best emasculated, and at worst has key elements of its government acting as proxies for Iranian interests. With Iraq no longer a threat, Iran’s destabilizing influence has quickly spread to Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria, as well as other locations. As the conflict expanded beyond its original boundaries, the colonial creation that was the Iraqi-Syrian border was effectively erased. Bashar al-Assad, having misjudged his ability to control the Salafist foreign fighters that he gave safe haven for the better part of a decade, found himself threatened by the very forces that he had exploited to avert an American invasion―an invasion that in actuality was never forthcoming. Syria was plunged into a vicious civil war that devolved into a brutality only seen in the worst conflicts of the 20th century, resulting in a death toll that has topped half of a million, repeated use of chemical weapons, and the worst refugee crisis since World War II. Kurdistan evolved from a proto-state into a de-facto nation, a development that has created deep tensions with Turkey. The danger of a Sunni-Shi’a regional conflict, with potentially globally destabilizing effects, is now greater than at any time since the original schism. Zarqawi’s goal appears to be on the cusp of becoming reality.
The human and material cost of the conflict was staggering. Nearly 4,500 American military personnel lost their lives in the fighting, and another 32,000 were wounded―many of them grievously. More than 300 soldiers from other coalition nations also perished. Estimates on Iraqi casualties vary wildly, ranging from roughly 200,000 killed to more than a million. Monetary costs, for the United States only, are similarly hard to approximate due to the challenge in estimating future costs for veterans’ care and the interest on loans taken out to finance the war. There is no question that the war has been expensive, ranging even among the lower estimates from a cost of over 800 billion to nearly 2 trillion dollars.
At the same time, there are those who argue that the Iraq War, as well as the conflict in Afghanistan, represent historical aberrations with few germane lessons. Supporters of this position posit that conflicts involving COIN and nation-building sit far from the World War II style of traditional war” for which the Army typically has been held responsible. Such potentially existential conflicts are so much harder to prepare for, they argue, that investing time on COIN related tasks would be counterproductive, if not irresponsible. Adherents of the position that the Army should return to its “traditional” warfighting role also suggest that it is relatively easy to train “down” from high intensity conflict against other armies.
The authors of this study conclude that such positions are intellectually specious. Ironically, many of the same arguments were made before the invasion of Iraq and during the first few years of the war. As a result, precious lives and time were lost before the Army adapted to the character of the conflict and was able to regain the initiative. It is one of this study’s core premises that there are additional complexities in COIN that often do not exist in more conventional conflicts. Translating national political guidance into battles and campaigns that blend both traditional maneuver and deft political efforts that target the drivers of conflict is a complicated art. Leaders at all levels in COIN have to be able to integrate the fields of political science, culture, and regional history simultaneously with military strategy to achieve success. Long-term security force assistance, a staple of COIN, is difficult, dangerous, and frustrating. Peacebuilding, the process of nurturing reconciliation, building durable and tolerant institutions, and carrying out political and economic transformation are intensely challenging tasks. U.S. efforts toward this end in Iraq were inefficient, disjointed, and ultimately unsuccessful.
Given the consequences and the cost of the Iraq War, it is essential that the Army studies what went wrong and why. The Army must also capture the innovations and adaptations that produced tactical and operational successes. Above all, the United States must not repeat the errors of previous wars in assuming that the conflict was an anomaly with few useful lessons. This project was commissioned by the Army’s senior leadership in part because they believed the Army had spent the first few years of the Iraq War relearning the lessons of the Vietnam conflict. Hopefully, The U.S. Army in the Iraq War will help prevent that error from being repeated.
While the next war that the United States fights may be different from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would be risky to assume that it will be so different as to render the lessons of those conflicts moot. The character of warfare is changing, but even if we face peer or near-peer competitors in future conflicts, they are likely to employ a blend of conventional and irregular warfare—what is often called “hybrid warfare” or “operations in the gray zone.” The United States may not have the luxury of choosing the next war it fights. Our enemies are aware of the challenges we faced in Iraq and Afghanistan and will incorporate lessons that they have derived from these conflicts against us.
The failure of the United States to attain its strategic objectives in Iraq was not inevitable. It came as a byproduct of a long series of decisions—acts of commission and omission—made by well-trained and intelligent leaders making what seemed to be reasonable decisions. At one point, in the waning days of the Surge, the change of strategy and the sacrifices of many thousands of Americans and Iraqis had finally tipped the scales enough to put the military campaign on a path towards a measure of success. However, it was not to be, as the compounding effect of earlier mistakes, combined with a series of decisions focused on war termination, ultimately doomed the fragile venture.
It is for the efforts and immeasurable sacrifices of our Soldiers that this work is dedicated.
Above all, this history is meant to be a permanent record of their accomplishments and their willingness to give the last full measure of devotion for their own country and for the people of Iraq.
I'm struck by that sentence about the difficulty of "translating national political guidance into battles and campaigns ..." because I don't remember any coherent national political guidance ever being given. The War College is being too hard on its own institution. Maybe what we really need is a lessons learned study about the failures of the Washington DC foreign policy establishment.
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