An autopsy of the Iraq febacle: Policy failure or bridge too far?

Security Studies

Volumn 17, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 599-643

  Byman, Daniel ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 57549116633     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: 15561852     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636410802507974     Document Type: Article

References (223)

1. Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2005), 279.
2. For my own writing on these issues before and during the early occupation period, see Daniel Byman, "Constructing a Democratic Iraq: Challenges and Opportunities," International Security 28, no. 1 (Summer 2003): 47-78
3. and Daniel Byman, "Building the New Iraq: The Role of Intervening Forces," Survival 45, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 57-71. As these writings show, my own track record is mixed. On the one hand, in retrospect my writings had several deep problems. First, I assumed the initial forces would provide security more comprehensively and the remaining forces would then be quickly employed to prevent small disruptions from snowballing. This was not done, as I describe in this article. Second, I did not anticipate that the U.S. government and U.S. military more broadly did not plan for the occupation and would make several surprising blunders as a result. Third, and in part because of these two mistakes, I greatly underestimated the initial level of forces that would have to be deployed. Fourth, although I did not specify the level of de-Baathification, I did warn about the risks of not de-Baathifying significantly but did not spell out the immediate trade-off involved. Fifth, in the Survival essay, part of what I wrote emphasized Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction programs. Sixth, I overestimated the size of the Iraqi middle class. On the other hand, my diagnosis of the problems that a post-Saddam Iraq would face appears quite sound. In some detail, I note the possibility of problems such as widespread security fears, chauvinistic elites, poor political leadership, intervening neighboring states, and other issues that did plague a post-Saddam Iraq. I also noted (and emphasized) that the key to most of these problems was a strong U.S. commitment to provide security and that the United States should be prepared for a long (and often difficult and bloody) occupation. My work also stressed the role of Iraqis in taking the lead, internationalizing much of the reconstruction, and the possibility of a backlash if this is not done.
4. Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War (New York: Picador, 2006), 276.
5. Shadid, Night Draws Near, 342
6. and Michael Eisenstadt and Jeffrey White, "Assessing Iraq's Sunni Arab Insurgency," Military Review (May-June 2006): 33.
7. As quoted in Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning theWar, Losing the Peace (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 240.
8. See also James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, cochairs, The Iraq Study Group Report (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 15.
9. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 135, 175-79
10. and Eisenstadt and White, "Assessing Iraq's Sunni Arab Insurgency," 34.
11. Nir Rosen, In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq (New York: Free Press, 2006), 41.
12. Rosen, In the Belly of the Green Bird, 41, 141.
13. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 183.
14. Shadid, Night Draws Near, 291.
15. Rosen, In the Belly of the Green Bird, 42-48.
16. See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/images/sigacts-061000.jpg for information drawn from various U.S. government sources.
17. See also Hoffman, "Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq," 113.
18. Brookings Institution, "Iraq Index," 17 November 2003, accessed at http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index20031117.pdf
19. Eisenstadt and White, "Assessing Iraq's Sunni Arab Insurgency," 48. For other insurgent accomplishments, particularly with regard to perceptions of the United States and the Iraqi government,
20. see Carter Malkasian, "The Role of Perceptions and Political Reform in Counterinsurgency: The Case of Western Iraq, 2004-2005," Small Wars and Insurgencies 17, no. 3 (September 2006): 377.
21. Baker and Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report, 4.
22. Malkasian, "The Role of Perceptions and Political Reform in Counterinsurgency," 377.
23. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 138
24. Shadid, Night Draws Near, 199
25. and Joyce N. Wiley, The Islamic Movement of Iraqi Shias (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992), 48-63.
26. These networks had three components. The first consisted of a range of groups that went into exile, mostly to Iran, particularly SCIRI, which reentered Iraq when Saddam fell and brought with it perhaps ten thousand fighters. The second group, which had many links to SCIRI, consisted of the traditional religious hawza in Najaf in particular. Religious leaders such as Ayatollah Sistani were widely venerated for their learning and piety. A third group was linked to Ayatollah Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was executed by Saddam Hussein's regime in 1999. Al-Sadr had engaged in a widespread social mobilization effort and developed a populist message that resonated among poor Shia, in contrast to the hawza, which did not engage directly in mass mobilization. The Ayatollah's son, Muqtada al-Sadr, emerged almost immediately as a major force by tapping into his father's prestige and network. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 54-61
27. and Shadid, Night Draws Near, 202. For an excellent work on the question of Shia mobilization after Saddam's fall, see David Patel, "Ayatollahs on the Pareto Frontier: Islam, Identity, and Electoral Coordination in Iraq,v (unpublished paper, 2007).
28. See Shadid, Night Draws Near, 307. Moqtada al-Sadr initially gave an interview where he urged "I advise Americans to ally with the Shiites, not to oppose them." Shadid, Night Draws Near, 201. Another relative of Muqtada who Saddam killed had been denied asylum in Iran, whose leaders feared him as a rival and wanted to keep unrest boiling in Iraq.
29. Fouad Ajami, The Foreigners' Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq (New York: Free Press, 2006), 92.
30. Shadid, Night Draws Near, 209.
31. Rosen, In the Belly of the Green Bird, 65.
32. For crime data in the early days of the occupation, see The Brookings Institution, "Iraq Index: Tracking Security and Reconstruction in Post Saddam Iraq," 10 December 2003, accessed at http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index20031210.pdf.
33. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 144.
34. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., "How to Win in Iraq," Foreign Affairs 84, no. 5 (September/October 2005): 89.
35. Shadid, Night Draws Near, 322.
36. David M. Edelstein, Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2008), 10.
37. Edelstein, Occupational Hazards, 11-12.
38. Dobbins et al., The Beginner's Guide to Nation-Building, xx-xxi.
39. David Edelstein, "Occupational Hazards: Why Military Occupations Succeed or Fail," International Security 29, no. 1 (Summer 2004): 59-64.
40. Edelstein, "Occupational Hazards," 11.
41. See in particular James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003)
42. Paul Collier "Rebellion as a Quasi-Criminal Activity," Journal of Conflict Resolution 44 (2000): 839-53
43. and Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, "Greed and Grievance in Civil War," Oxford Economic Papers, vol. 56, 2004.
44. Barry Posen's arguments flesh out the security dilemma approach to ethnic conflict. Barry Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," Survival 35, no. 1 (Spring 1993).
45. See also David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, "Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict," International Security 21, no. 2 (Fall 1996)
46. and James D. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization 49, no. 3 (Summer 1995).
47. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 127-28.
48. Regis W. Matlak, "Inside Saddam's Grip," National Security Studies Quarterly (Spring 1999), electronic version.
49. Many scholars have written on this subject. Perhaps the most famous description of the relationship is Barrington Moore's "No bourgeoisie, no democracy." See Barrington Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Beacon Press, 1966), 418.
50. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 118-20, 179.
51. Shadid, Night Draws Near, 180
52. and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City (New York: Knopf, 2006), 20.
53. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 17.
54. Fouad Ajami, The Foreigners' Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq (New York: Free Press, 2006), 51.
55. For a review of many of these problems, see Nir Rosen, "Anatomy of a Civil War," Boston Review (November/December 2006), accessed at http://bostonreview.net/BR31.6/rosen.php.
56. Dr. Phebe Marr, "Where Is Iraq Headed?" testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, March 25, 2003. Saddam's regime produced an "official" guide to Iraq's tribes and distributed largesse accordingly. The only tribes listed in the register were those that supported Saddam's regime. International Crisis Group, "War in Iraq: Political Challenges After the Conflict," Middle East Report no. 11, March 25, 2003: 6, n. 22.
57. Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi'is of Iraq (Princeton University Press, 2003).
58. David Lawrence, "Iraqi Kurds Enjoy a De Facto State," Christian Science Monitor, 3 May 2000, 6.
59. See also Francis J. Ricciardone, "An American Diplomat's Perspectives on Kurds in the Global Arena," remarks made at American University, 17 April 2000. For a broader overview of the Kurds in northern Iraq,
60. see David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1996.).
61. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 132.
62. Ibid., 141.
63. Ibid., 153-54.
64. Rosen, In the Belly of the Green Bird, 57-59.
65. Jack L. Snyder and Robert Jervis, "Civil War and the Security Dilemma," in Barbara Walter and Jack Snyder, Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 19
66. and James D. Fearon, "Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict," in David A. Lake and Donald Rothschild, eds., The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998), 107-26.
67. For a review of many of these problems, see Byman, "Constructing a Democratic Iraq."
68. For more on this concept, see Fareed Zakaria, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracies," Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6. (November/December 1997): 22-43
69. and Marina Ottaway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semiauthoritarianism (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003).
70. See Chaim Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," Internation Security 20, no. 4 (Spring 1996): 137
71. and Stephen Van Evera, "Hypotheses on Nationalism and War," International Security 18, no. 4 (Spring 1994): 23-36.
72. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985),
73. See also Jack L. Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and National Conflict (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 316-20.
74. Federalism is traditionally defined as a political system where each level has one or more areas of supreme jurisdiction.
75. See Steve L. Solnick, "Federalism and State-building," in The Architecture of Democracy: Constitutional Design, Conflict Management, and Democracy, ed. Andrew Reynolds (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 174.
76. Byman, Keeping the Peace, 39.
77. See Abraham Ashkenasi, "Socio-Ethnic Conflict and Paramilitary Organization in the Near East," in Political Violence and Terror: Motifs and Motivations, ed. Peter H. Merkl (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 314.
78. Jack L. Snyder and Robert Jervis, "Civil War and the Security Dilemma," in Walter and Snyder, Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, 19.
79. Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, "Democratization and the Dangers of War, International Security 20, no. 1 (Summer 1995): 5.
80. Daniel C. Esty, Jack A. Goldstone, Ted Robert Gurr, Barbara Harff, Marc Levy, Geoffrey D. Dabelko, Pamela T. Surko, and Alan N. Unger, State Failure Task Force Report: Phase II Findings (McLean, VA: Science Applications International Corporation, 1998), 19-22.
81. See James D. Fearon, "Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes," American Political Science Review 88, no. 4 (September 1994): 577-92.
82. In essence, this is a "commitment problem" as outlined by James Fearon. He argues that unless a third party can guarantee an agreement, ethnic groups wonder whether they will be exploited in the future. Fearon, "Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict."
83. Roland Paris, for example, argues that outside peacemakers should first build the institutions necessary for democratization to flourish before they embark on elections and other more visible measures. Roland Paris, At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
84. A fourth problem is that the premise of the war was quickly exposed to be false: Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction or have significant ties to al Qaeda. Regardless of one's views on the validity of prewar intelligence assessments and policy judgments on issues like Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, the postwar discovery that neither of these premises were true changed the dynamics of the occupation. For many Americans, the stakes of the occupation changed dramatically. What had been a war to stop an aggressive dictator from gaining nuclear weapons and possibly passing them to terrorists became more difficult to justify. Humanitarianism and building democracy were the new buzzwords but, without the strategic foundation, may have lessened the costs many Americans were willing to pay.
85. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 7.
86. Paul Pillar, "The Right Stuff," The National Interest no. 91 (September/October 2007): 53-56.
87. Shadid, Night Draws Near, 206, 215.
88. Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life, 84. The CIA did assess, however, that the Iraqi policy and security services would eventually require restructuring if they were to become trusted by the Iraqi people.
89. Ajami, Foreigners' Gift, 109.
90. Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, "Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations," Military Review (November-December 2005): 4.
91. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 8.
92. See Report to the President of the United States, The Comission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction," 31 March 2005. For an excellent review of this and other Iraq intelligence reports,
93. see Robert Jervis, "Reports, Politics, and Intelligence Failures: The Case of Iraq," The Journal of Strategic Studies 29, no. 1 (February 2006): 3-52.
94. Also see Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), 57.
95. Colin Kahl, "In the Crossfire or the Crosshairs? Norms, Civilian Casualties, and U.S. Conduct in Iraq," International Security 32, no. 1 (Summer 2007): 7-46.
96. Shadid, Night Draws Near, 314.
97. Diamond, for example, criticizes the choice of the Pentagon as the lead agency for Iraq. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 281.
98. "AFSA net: Telling Our Story," 17 October 2007. Email version.
99. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 309.
100. "AFSA net: Telling Our Story," 17 October 2007. Email version.
101. As a RAND study found, "It is not the case that no one planned for a post-Saddam Iraq. On the contrary, many agencies and organizations within the U.S. government identified a range of postwar challenges in 2002 and early 2003, before major combat operations commenced, and suggested strategies for addressing them ⋯ Yet very few if any made it in to the serious planning process for OIF." Nora Bensahel et al., After Saddam: Prewar Planning and the Occupation of Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008), xvii.
102. See also James Fallow, "Blind into Baghdad," The Atlantic Monthly January/February 2004, 54.
103. Nora Bensahel et al., After Saddam, xix.
104. Ricks, Fiasco, 81; and Nora Bensahel et al., After Saddam, 41-52.
105. Anthony H. Cordesman, Iraq: Too Uncertain to Call (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 2003), 2.
106. Nora Bensahel et al., After Saddam, xviii.
107. Chandrasekara, Imperial Life (New York: Knopf, 2006), 37-42.
108. See the discussion in Gregory Hooker, Shaping the Plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2005), 9-12.
109. Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life, 52.
110. Edward Luce, "Lunch with the FT: John Bolton," Financial Times, 19 October 2007.
111. Brookings Institution, "Iraq Index," 17 November 2003, accessed at http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index20031117.pdf.
112. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 285
113. Fallows, "Blind into Baghdad," 65
114. and Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (Pantheon, 2006).
115. Vice President Richard Cheney, Meet the Press, 16 March 2003.
116. Ricks, Fiasco, 40.
117. James Dobbins, Seth G. Jones, Keith Crane, and Beth Cole DeGrasse, The Beginner's Guide to Nation-Building (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2007), xxvi.
118. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 284
119. and Fallows, "Blind into Baghdad," 64. In the 1990s, CENTCOM had done an exercise, dubbed "Desert Crossing," which offered some guidance on troop numbers and suggested that extremely large numbers were necessary. Accessed at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB207/index.htm.
120. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 289.
121. See Ken Adelman, "Cakewalk in Iraq," Washington Post, 13 February 2002, A27.
122. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife
123. and Colin Kahl, "COIN of the Realm," Foreign Affairs (November/December 2007).
124. Aylwin-Foster, "Changing the Army," 9.
125. Paul Yingling, "A Failure in Generalship," Armed Forces Journal, accessed at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/05/ 2635198.
126. Kahl, "COIN of the Realm."
127. For work on policing in general as a counterinsurgency instrument, see William Rosenau, "Little Soldiers:" Police, Policing, and Counterinsurgency," (unpublished paper, 2007). For specifics on Iraq, see Bruce Hoffman, "Testimony Before the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations, Committee on Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, 11 September 2006.
128. Edelstein, "Occupational Hazards," 72.
129. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 291
130. and Dobbins et al., The Beginner's Guide to Nation-Building, xxxv.
131. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 303.
132. Dobbins et al., The Beginner's Guide to Nation-Building, xiii.
133. Baker and Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report, 28-29.
134. Interview with L. Paul Bremer III, PBS Frontline, accessed at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/yeariniraq/interviews/ bremer.html.
135. Fallows, "Blind into Baghdad," 74
136. and Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life, 75.
137. For a defense of the disbandment decision, see L. Paul Bremer, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope (Threshhold Editions, 2006).
138. Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life, 71.
139. Rosen, In the Belly of the Green Bird, 142.
140. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 155-58.
141. Interview with Michael Ware, PBS Frontline, accessed at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/insurgency/interviews/ ware.html.
142. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 155.
143. For a similar argument, see Shadid, Night Draws Near, 181.
144. For a review of the Iraqi army during Saddam's regime, see Andrew Parasiliti and Sinan Antoon. "Friends in Need, Foes to Heed: The Iraqi Military in Politics," Middle East Policy 7, no. 4 (October 2000): 130-40.
145. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 146-50.
146. Interview with General Jay Garner, PBS Frontline, accessed at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/yeariniraq/interviews/ garner.html.
147. Malkasian, "The Role of Perceptions and Political Reform in Counterinsurgency," 372.
148. Baker and Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report, 21.
149. Interview with Anthony Cordesman, PBS Frontline, accessed at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/yeariniraq/interviews/ cordesman.html.
150. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 116.
151. As quoted in Fallows, "Blind into Baghdad," 63.
152. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 282-83
153. and Fallows, "Blind into Baghdad," 68. On the Future of Iraq Project, see materials available at the National Security Archive, accessed at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB163/index.htm.
154. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 140. The figure may be much harder, with the figure possibly being more than twice that high. As one official noted, "Fundamentally, the entire country was one big ammo dump." Adam Schreck, "Looted Weapons Stockpiles," Los Angeles Times, 23 March 2007, A4.
155. Shadid, Night Draws Near, 295.
156. As quoted in Shadid, Night Draws Near, 251. For the psychological effect of the looting on the U.S. image,
157. see also Diamond, Squandered Victory, 287.
158. Ricks, Fiasco, 152.
159. Bruce Hoffman, "Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq," RAND Occasional Paper, June 2004, 1-2.
160. Rosen, In the Belly of the Green Bird, 72. Kahl, "COIN of the Realm."
161. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 288.
162. Kahl, "COIN of the Realm."
163. As quoted in Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, "Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations," Military Review (November-December 2005): 3.
164. Shadid, Night Draws Near, 264-73
165. and Ricks, Fiasco, 185.
166. Dobbins et al., The Beginner's Guide to Nation-Building, xxiv.
167. Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life, 186.
168. As quoted in Ricks, Fiasco, 204.
169. Edelstein finds that "Credible guarantees of independent, indigenous rule reduce the likelihood of costly resistance from the occupied population and may minimize domestic opposition to the occupation, and thereby make a long and successful occupation possible." Edelstein, "Occupational Hazards," 65.
170. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 291.
171. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 300. This switch from a rapid transfer to delaying elections was not the end of U.S. vacillation. Because the interim governments were seen as unrepresentative and weak, demands for democracy grew quickly, leading to criticism and pressure from the White House to speed up the effort. In the end, the CPA rushed elections.
172. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 295.
173. Ricks, Fiasco, 210.
174. Bensahel, "What Went Wrong with Iraqi Reconstruction," 461.
175. Ibid., 470.
176. On the necessity of civil-military coordination under unified leadership, see Bruce Hoffman and Jennifer Morrison Taw, A Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Insurgency (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1992), 6-30. For this problem in Iraq,
177. see F. J. Bing West, "American Military Performance in Iraq," Military Review (September-October 2006): 3.
178. Bensahel, "What Went Wrong with Iraqi Reconstruction," 465.
179. See Coalition Provisional Authority, Vision for Iraq, 11 July 2003.
180. For an analysis of such problems, see Snyder, From Voting to Violence.
181. Joe Klein, "Saddam's Revenge," Time, 18 September 2005.
182. Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life, 110-16.
183. Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life, 105.
184. For example, Andrew Natsios, the head of USAID, suggested in April 2003 that the total cost of reconstruction for the U.S. taxpayer would only be $1.7 billion. ABC News Nightline, "Project Iraq," 23 April 2003. Text of interview accessed at http://www.fas.org/sgp/temp/ natsios042303.html.
185. Shadid, Night Draws Near, 177.
186. Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life, 16.
187. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 102
188. and Diamond, Squandered Victory, 289.
189. Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life, 91.
190. Ibid., 118.
191. Ricks, Fiasco, 124-42.
192. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 179.
193. Bruce Hoffman, "Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29 (2006): 110.
194. Rosen, In the Belly of the Green Bird, 67.
195. James Dobbins et al., The Beginner's Guide to Nation-Building, iii. The authors further note that six of the seven interventions were in Muslim societies. See ibid., xviii.
196. Ricks, Fiasco, 159-64.
197. Fallows, "Blind into Baghdad," 57.
198. James T. Quinlivan argues that coup proofing depends in part on countering organization and dissatisfaction at the most senior ranks. See "Coup-proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East," International Security 24, no. 2 (Fall 1999): 131-65.
199. Nakash, The Shi'is of Iraq.
200. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 177.
201. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 297.
202. Fallows, "Blind into Baghdad," 58.
203. Ibid., 58.
204. Pillar, "The Right Stuff," 53-56.
205. General Eric K. Shinseki, Chief of Staff United States Army, speaking on the Posture of the United States Army, on 25 February 2003 to the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 108th Cong., 1st sess.
206. Diamond, Squandered Victory, 286.
207. Fallows, "Blind into Baghdad," 58.
208. Ricks, Fiasco, 66.
209. Ricks, Fiasco, 169.
210. One RAND study argues that peace, not democracy, should be "the prime objective of any nationbuilding operation." Dobbins et al., The Beginner's Guide to Nation-Building, xxiii.
211. Dobbins et al., The Beginner's Guide to Nation-Building, xxxiv.
212. James Dobbins, "Who Lost Iraq?" Foreign Affairs 86, no. 5 (September/October 2007): 63.
213. Fallows, "Blind into Baghdad," 56.
214. For a review of this approach in U.S. doctrine, see The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
215. See Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray, "Saddam's Delusions: A View from the Inside," Foreign Affairs (May/June 2006).
216. For more on the distinction between insurgents and proto-insurgents, see Daniel Byman, "Understanding Proto-Insurgencies," Journal of Strategic Studies 31, no. 2 (April 2008): 165-200.
217. Edelstein, "Occupational Hazards," 71.
218. West, "American Military Performance in Iraq," 4.
219. Baker and Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report, 28-29.
220. International Crisis Group, "Iran in Iraq: How Much Influence?" 21 March 2005, 24.
221. Barbara Slavin, Bosom Friends, Bitter Enemies (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2007), 175-208.
222. Daniel Byman, "Allies in the War on Terrorism," Journal of Strategic Studies 29, no. 5 (October 2006): 781.0
223. John Mueller, "The Iraq Syndrome," Foreign Affairs (November/December 2005).