The Foreign Service Journal, March 2004

religious authority, told me. “It’s that they protected nothing else. The Oil Ministry is not off by itself. It’s sur- rounded by other ministries, all of which the Americans allowed to be looted. So what else do you want us to think except that you want our oil?” … For its part, the Hawza could do little to protect the 17 out of 23 Iraqi ministries that were gutted by looters, or the National Library, or the National Museum (though sheiks repeatedly called on looters to return the stolen artifacts). But it was the Hawza, and not American forces, that protected many of Baghdad’s hospitals from looters — which Hawza leaders never fail to point out when asked whether they would concede that the United States is now doing a great deal of good in Iraq. The memory of this looting is like a bone in Iraq’s collective throat and has given rise to conspiracy theories about American motives and actions. … The Troops: Too Few, Too Constricted On Feb. 25, the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, warned Congress that postwar Iraq would require a commitment of “several hundred thousand” U.S. troops. Shinseki’s estimate was dismissed out of hand by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other civilian officials at the Pentagon. … Shinseki retired soon afterward. But Shinseki wasn’t the only official who thought there were going to be insufficient troops on the ground to police Iraq in the aftermath of the war. The lack of ade- quate personnel in the military’s plan, especially the mil- itary police needed for post-conflict work, was pointed out by both senior members of the uniformed military and by seasoned peacekeeping officials in the United Nations secretariat. Former Ambassador Carney, recalling his first days in Iraq with ORHA, puts it this way, with surprising bitter- ness: The U.S. military “simply did not understand or give enough priority to the transition from their military mission to our political military mission.” … The planning stages of the invasion itself were marked by detailed preparations and frequent rehearsals. Lt. Col. Scott Rutter is a highly decorated U.S. battalion commander whose unit, the Second Battalion, Seventh Infantry of the Third Infantry Division, helped take the Baghdad airport. He says that individual units rehearsed their own roles and the contingencies they might face over and over again. By contrast, the lack of postwar planning made the difficulties the United States faced almost inevitable. “We knew what the tactical end state was supposed to be at the end of the war, but we were never told what the end state, the goal was, for the post- war,” Rutter said. … Rutter’s view is confirmed by the “After Action” report of the Third Infantry Division, a document that is avail- able on an Army Web site but that has received little attention. … As the report’s authors note: “Higher head- quarters did not provide the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized) with a plan for Phase IV. As a result, Third Infantry Division transitioned into Phase IV in the absence of guidance.” … Without a plan, without meticulous rehearsal and without orders or, at the very least, guidance from higher up the chain of command, the military is all but para- lyzed. And in those crucial first postwar days in Baghdad, American forces (and not only those in the Third Infantry Division) behaved that way, as all around them Baghdad was ransacked and most of the categories of infrastruc- ture named in the report were destroyed or seriously damaged. Some military analysts go beyond the lack of Phase IV planning and more generally blame the Bush administra- tion’s insistence, upon coming into office, that it would no longer commit American armed forces to nation-building missions — a position symbolized by the decision [later reversed] to close the Peacekeeping Institute at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. … Neglecting ORHA In his congressional testimony before the war, Douglas Feith described Gen. Garner’s mission as head of ORHA as ’’integrating the work of the three substan- tive operations’’ necessary in postwar Iraq. These were humanitarian relief, reconstruction and civil administra- tion. Garner, Feith said, would ensure that the fledgling ORHA could “plug in smoothly” to the military’s com- mand structure on the ground in Iraq. But far from plug- ging in smoothly to Central Command, ORHA’s people found themselves at odds with the military virtually from the start. Timothy Carney has given the best and most damning account of this dialogue of the deaf between ORHA offi- cials and the U.S. military on the ground in Iraq in a sear- ing op-ed article in the Washington Post in late June. ... Carney stressed the low priority the military put on ORHA’s efforts. “Few in the military understood the F O C U S 26 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 4