Orders of Disorder: Who Disbanded Iraq's Army and De-Baathified Its Bureaucracy?

[Nevilledog]

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/iraq-united-states-orders-disorder

The history of Iraq was already being rewritten by L. Paul Bremer on his flight into Baghdad. It was May 2003, and Bremer, an experienced former ambassador and bureaucratic player—he’d served as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s chief of staff—was just weeks into his new role as presidential envoy to the freshly liberated country. After a flurry of briefings in Washington and a final Oval Office meeting with President George W. Bush, “Jerry,” as everyone called Bremer, had flown into Qatar and on to Kuwait and then Iraq. Bremer’s diplomatic career had taken him to most Middle Eastern capitals, but this was the first time he’d ever seen Baghdad. He had spent the previous two weeks trying to learn as much as he could about the country he would now rule.

Aboard the U.S. Air Force C-130, Bremer edited two draft documents he intended to issue when he arrived. One provided for “de-Baathification,” prohibiting senior officials from Saddam Hussein’s party from participating in the new Iraq. The other disbanded the Iraqi army and other security organs. Looking out the plane windows, Bremer and his deputy, Clay McManaway, saw fire after fire stretching toward the horizon. “Industrial-strength looting,” McManaway yelled over the churn of the propellers. “Lots of old scores to settle.”

In a way no one on the flight could have realized, these succinct observations would go a long way toward explaining the ultimate consequences of the documents in Bremer’s briefcase. Over the last 20 years, as the United States has reckoned with the human toll and costly legacy of its disastrous war of choice in the Middle East, those two infamous decisions of Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority—CPA Order 1, de-Baathifying the Iraqi state, and CPA Order 2, dissolving the Iraqi military—have been held up as some of the worst mistakes of the war. They are seen as sparks that would ignite the insurgency to come and set Iraq aflame for years, a period of disorder that would claim the lives of thousands of U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

And yet the orders that paved the way for all that chaos and bloodshed have remained shrouded in mystery. At the time, not even senior U.S. leaders such as CIA Director George Tenet and Secretary of State Colin Powell understood where they had come from or who had approved them. Two decades later, after piecing together memoirs from key participants, archival documents, and fresh interviews with a dozen former top U.S. officials, a more complete origin story is finally available.

*snip*

[gratuitous]

1. And some people call Korea the forgotten war

Recount some of the crap the Dubya administration spewed in 2002 and 2003, and you get message board responses ranging from "I'd forgotten all about that" to "That never happened, quit lying, libtard." Try reminding people that Secretary Rumsfeld claimed the invasion and conquest of Iraq wouldn't last even six months and cost less than a billion dollars, and you'll see.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

2. Of all the mistakes of the Iraq War and its aftermath

the biggest single mistake was the snap disbanding of Iraq's army and the associated "de-Ba'athification."

If there was any hope of avoiding sectarian violence, it rested on giving each of the three major communities in Iraq, the Shia, the Kurds, and the Sunni Arabs a stake in the balance of power.

The Shia had/have a majority that can and would offer political control under democratic voting. The Kurds had/have their own autonomous region and their own armed forces (the peshmerga), what the Sunni had was effective control of the army.

We removed one leg of the stool. That was an epic bunder.

The worst elements of Saddam's military would obviously needed purging, but keeping the army largely intact under better leadership would have provided security to the Sunni Arab community in Iraq. It was the only chance of avoiding the post-war bloodshed.

I remember the very moment I heard the news. I was shopping in a market. I remember thinking that this move guaranteed the sort of chaos that predictably followed.

This was a decision made by arrogant and ignorant individuals who had no understanding of internal Iraqi politics.

So stupid.

[Carlitos Brigante]

3. K&R! nt

[Tomconroy]

4. Great article. Thank you.