Rappaport gives a good basic “lessons learned” commentary.
Die-hard supporters of Maximum Beloved War Leader Dubya of course object, but the basic lessons are pretty much agreed on by senior levels in the US military, by strategic analysts here and in foreign nations. The US had too few soldiers, had made no concrete plans for what to do AFTER Baghdad fell, and made a disastrous series of decisions in the 1st 16 months. Not just the Bremer decisions, but triumphant Neocon saber-rattling about how wonderful it would be for their Special Friend if America then took down it’s other two big enemies – Iran and Syria – right after we “finished” in Iraq.
This created the Sunnis with nothing to lose and committed almost to a man to defending Sunni neighborhoods & killing Americans in the Insurgency with Syria and other nations sympathetic to their co-religionists allowing Iraqis to muster men and material on their soil….which the Neocons had said was the next target.
And the complete breakdown of law and order allowed competing Shiite Militias to run wild and further tie Americans down and do some serious killing and maiming with Iranian training and EFPs, mortars, missiles. Which further neutralized US ability to have any credibility of attacking Iran for regime change. And also created a political stalemate as both Sunni and Shia were more interested in killing and dying to get power than in the US Army handing out soccer balls for girls in whatever schools were still functioning.
AQ was not a big factor in the basic post-invasion conflict. They were only opportunists sent in to make things worse and take potshots at foreign coalition troops wherever possible. Shiites killed or maimed more Americans and Sunnis than AQ did, and Sunnis killed and made casualties of lots more Americans than AQ. Then AQ overreached and not only alienated Shiites by bombing their sacred places and doing mass killings by bombs in marketplaces – they also became so brutal that the main killers of Americans – the Sunnis screwed by Bremer so much – offered to switch sides and kill AQ for US backing, money, and agreement to not go after Sunni killers of US “Heroes”.
(Iraqi Sunnis produced 70% of US casualties, Shiite Militias 20%, and foreign fighters, inc. AQ – only 10%.)
We were smart enough to agree to this.
Hence the Surge and the strategic defeat of AQI by Sunnis and a wised-up US military after the domestic purge of Neocons and those conservative radicals advocating a broad regional conflict.
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Emphasis – Our biggest advantage was that militarily we could not be defeated. We could have put it to Syria and Iran’s leaders that either they would close their frontier to infiltration into Iraq, or we would go in militarily, eliminate them, and leave the country with a demand to those now in power that they secure their frontier, or face again the same military juggernaut.
Our military’s ground forces were tapped out. We were very close to defeat by late 2005. We had lost almost all of Bush’s hapless “Coalition of the Willing” by 2005, and few remaining..Britain and a couple of small contingents from E European countries had decided to simply show the flag, then bunker down.
By 2004 both Iran and Syria had assessed the US was stuck in Iraq with no ability to affect events elsewhere except by mass bombing campaigns the rest of the world would oppose (except America’s Special Friend) that would do little but destroy some military capacity, kill lots of civilians, while leaving the ruling networks of the Syrian and Iranian regime in power, perhaps sans a few leaders…So it was safe to flip the bird at the US. Something the NORKs, Bolivia, Ecuador, Pakistan, Hugo Chavez and even “the Special Friend” with announcement 50,000 new Settlers were being established in E Jerusalem and West Bank did as well after late 2003…Even Russia and China rousted the US out of its oil and king-making machinations in Central Asia…then Russia pounded the crap out of Georgia as a hapless Bush Administration sputtered but could do nothing to stop it.
And the worst thing was that in 2002 the argument was made that our success in Afghanistan would be jeopardized by becoming overly involved in Iraq. Most of us believed that this was not a concern because Iraq would be a fast war and not tie up all our ground forces. But it effectively did and stripped manpower out of Afghanistan and we basically sat around looking for a few “high value” terrorist targets as the Taliban and elements of AQ rebuilt.
Now the Russian generals see what is happening and believe that the US and NATO are on the same track to losing as they were 25 years ago.
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Time will tell if one trillion spent, 42,000 casualties and the Afghanistan War looking to be lost or compromised with the Taliban returning to full or part-power over Afghanistan and Pashtun areas of Pakistan was worth establishing the 6th Islamic Democracy (after various iterations in Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh, Iran, and now Indonesia) and the 1st fragile Arab Islamist democracy – with Iran as at least as influential in processes happening and policies drafted in Iraq as the US is and was..
(Key among manifestations are the 2006 treaties allowing large movement of Iranians inside Iraq, and a mutual defense treaty that says the US may not use Iraqi air or soil as a staging ground for attacking Iran unless the US is attacked 1st..and never will the Zionists be allowed to attack Iran through Iraq without full Iraqi resistance…)
