Mistakes haunt U.S. efforts in Iraq

Three years after we invaded Iraq, President Bush is trying to rally the U.S. public around a war gone sour.
His pep talks are painful to watch because so many of Iraq's troubles are the consequence of U.S. actions. They stem from the administration's failure to produce, or conduct, a coherent strategy for the postwar. Bush officials are belatedly trying to rectify some of their worst errors, though they rarely admit they made any. "We have ... refined our approach as conditions changed" is the oblique phrase the White House uses to describe several 180-degree turns in Iraq policy.
I believe the time is right to review the key mistakes that helped land Iraq where it is today, and to name the officials who made them. After all, if you don't confront past errors, how can you rectify them -- or avoid making them again?
Let's start with Mistake Number One: an embrace of transformational theory over obvious reality. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had a theory about a new lean, mean, swiftly moving military. Generals who warned that postwar stability would require more troops were dismissed out of hand.
Former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz had a theory that postwar Iraq would resemble "post-liberation France." If you believe that Iraq is like France, and former Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi is a latter-day Charles de Gaulle, you should be writing fantasy novels, not overseeing military operations.
Wolfowitz is gone, but Rumsfeld remains. Do we know if reality trumps dreams in today's Department of Defense?
Mistake Number Two: the failure to establish order in Baghdad after taking the city. When massive looting followed the U.S. entry, Rumsfeld dismissed it as the untidiness of freedom. Every Iraqi I knew was on the phone asking me why the Americans didn't institute a curfew.
In several visits to Iraq during the last three years, I've been told by Iraqi officials that the unchecked looting gave the green light to would-be insurgents and Arab terrorists by indicating that Americans couldn't control Baghdad. Much early looting was organized by Baathists to create havoc, in hopes they would be welcomed back to power. That's still their strategy; Iraq is still suffering from this mistake.
Tensions over pensions
Mistake Number Three: abolishing the entire Iraqi army without severance or pensions. I was at the Baghdad news conference where occupation czar Paul Bremer announced this move and my jaw dropped -- tens of thousands of Iraqi officers with guns who had followed American orders not to fight were suddenly jobless. Many told me in interviews that they were furious; I'm sure some joined the insurgents.
I recently asked Bremer why he waited weeks to offer pensions, by which time many of these officers were beyond reconciliation. He said the Pentagon first had to check how many officers would be collecting benefits. Can bureaucratic pettiness be responsible for giving the insurgency such a leg up? Bremer made his move with full concurrence of the Pentagon civilian leadership.
Mistake Number Four: a misconceived plan for training Iraqi security forces. U.S. officials focused on police training for the first year because, as they told me, the police are the first line of defense in a "normal" country. But Iraq was hardly normal; it needed an army to fight the insurgency. Yet we didn't start serious training of an Iraqi army until June 2004.
Mistake Number Five: no Sunni strategy. Back in fall 2003, many Sunni tribal leaders were waiting to be wooed by U.S. officials. But there was no coherent Pentagon strategy to win hearts and minds (Rumsfeld was seriously uninterested in nation-building). Sunni leaders in restive Anbar province were often alienated by raids on their homes, dismissive treatment, and arrests of women. U.S. officials are now trying to persuade these same Sunni leaders to turn against the insurgents -- but now it is a far more difficult sell.
Mistake Number Six: a strange belief that once Saddam fell, Iraq would morph into a democracy. Wolfowitz confused Iraq with France; other U.S. officials made a comparison with Eastern Europe. None recognized that Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds would vote almost exclusively for their own religious and ethnic parties and have great difficulty sharing power. And Iraqi security forces were bound to split along the same lines as the people of Iraq.
Mistake Number Seven: a failure to understand that Iran would be a key power broker in Iraq, because a majority of Iraqis belonged to the same Shiite sect of Islam as Iranians, and needed Tehran as an ally against the Sunnis. The president couldn't call for Iran regime change and not expect Tehran to make trouble for America in Iraq.
In recent months, the administration has had to confront its mistakes: It is trying to pull together Iraqi politicians, retrain the Iraqi army, woo the Sunnis, and even talk to Tehran. Let's hope these policy revisions succeed, because otherwise we and the Iraqis will pay big-time.
But the Bush team's mistakes haunt U.S. efforts. And the odds of success are far slimmer than they might have been three years ago.
Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.