3 Takeaways 20 years after the invasion of Iraq

Two decades ago, US air and ground forces invaded Iraq in what then-President George W. Bush called an effort to disarm the country, liberate its people and “save the world from a grave threat.”

late at night Oval Office Address On March 19, 2003, Bush did not address his administration’s claim that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. That argument — which was based on flimsy or otherwise flawed intelligence — was laid out weeks ago by Secretary of State Colin Powell at a UN Security Council meeting.

Bush described the massive airstrikes in Iraq as “the opening step of a broad and decisive campaign” and vowed that “we will accept no result but victory.”

However, Bush’s warning that the campaign “could be longer and more difficult than some predicted” proved prescient. America has lost something in eight years 4,600 US service members, and killed at least 270,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians. While the invasion succeeded in toppling Saddam, it ultimately failed to uncover any secret stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Although estimates differ, a Brown University estimates The cost of the combat phase of the war puts it at about $2 trillion.

Ryan Crocker, who was then the US ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait and Syria and held senior diplomatic posts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, first saw Bush’s televised address announcing the start of the war. At the return airport to Washington, DC

“I was thinking, ‘Here we go,'” he recalls. But it was a feeling of fear, not excitement. Crocker wondered, “God knows where we’re going.”

Peter Mansour, a colonel attending the US Army War College at the time, was worried about his future, knowing he would soon be in command of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, which would see action in Iraq.

“I was very interested in the aftermath of the attack and what happened next,” says Mansour, now a professor of military history at Ohio State University. “I didn’t expect the Iraqi army to be able to resist for more than a few weeks.”

Meanwhile, Marcin Alshamri, an 11-year-old Iraqi American who grew up in Minneapolis, Minn., when the attack happened, said, “It made me cry to see the planes and the bombing where my grandparents lived.” Alshamri, now a Middle East policy expert at the Brookings Institution, said at the time the prospect of toppling Saddam seemed “unrealistic.”

Crocker, Mansour and Alshamri recently shared their thoughts with NPR on the lessons learned from America’s longest conflict — the war in Iraq. Here are their observations:

Wars cannot be predicted. They’re chaotic—and more expensive than anyone might imagine

American optimism for a quick and relatively bloodless outcome in Iraq was evident even before the invasion.

In the months leading up to the 2003 attack, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a Radio call-in program, predicted that the coming battle would “last five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly won’t last much longer than that.” Bush, in which he is dubbed “Mission Accomplished.” speech On May 1, 2003, it was announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

Rumsfeld’s prediction would prove disappointingly optimistic. In the days and weeks after Baghdad fell, a growing insurgency took root and U.S. forces came under repeated fire from enemy militias.

Mansour says that the Bush administration “had an idea of ​​a certain plan that didn’t pan out.”

“They basically planned for a best-case scenario, where the Iraqi people would cooperate with the occupation, that Iraqi units would be available to help secure the country after the conflict, and that the international community would help rebuild Iraq,” he said. “All three of those assumptions were wrong.”

Although many Iraqis were glad to see Saddam gone, “there was a significant minority who benefited from his rule. And they weren’t going to go quietly into the night,” says Mansour.

It was not only the Iraqi army but also the government bureaucrats who made Saddam his living.

A few months later the US decision to disband the Iraqi army – thus leaving 400,000 disaffected and combat-trained Iraqi men with no income – proved to be a turning point in the conflict. It helped fuel the insurgency and is credited by some historians with helping give birth to the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group.

“The Iraq conflict brought thousands, if not tens of thousands, of jihadist terrorists into the country,” says Mansour. “It also created a battlefield in Iraq where a civil war could break out.”

“There was no preconceived notion of it,” he says. “But the fallout from ousting Saddam’s regime enabled it.”

Alshamari called the Bush administration’s approach to the Iraq invasion “disgraceful.”

“There is no history of short, successful interventions that have resulted in successful regime change. So the arrogance to think this could happen was astonishing,” she says.

Instead of weeks or months of conflict, as Bush cabinet officials and advisers had hoped, it resulted in years of occupation inherited by President Barack Obama’s administration. the word “swamp” – largely unused after the Vietnam War – was dusted off to describe the situation in Iraq.

Crocker says the potential for a long career should have been seen earlier. “Overthrowing someone’s government and taking over a country is going to set in motion consequences, not just third and fourth order. They’re 30th and 40th order — beyond the ability to predict or plan.”

“In Iraq, we paid for it in blood and money,” says the former ambassador. “Someone tell me when we decide that it was worth those 4,500 lives, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of lives that the Iraqis lost.”

If you set an area to “resize”, you don’t like the shape it’s made of

Key figures in the Bush administration believed regime change would make Iraq a US ally in the region and provide a pro-US bulwark against neighboring Iran, while reducing the threat of terrorism at home. Alshamri calls that notion “wishful thinking,” at least with regard to Iran.

Instead, she says, Tehran may have been the biggest beneficiary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Iran and Iraq fought a brutal eight-year conflict in the 1980s and were still bitter enemies at the start of the US invasion. Today, the Iraqi army is fine Half its pre-attack size. and SSome analysts argue The Iraq war has made it very difficult for the international community to respond to Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Instead of containing Tehran, the attack by its neighbor and rival only “created a power vacuum that Iran filled,” says Mansour.

This is a view shared by Crocker. “We basically left opponents with more patience and more commitment,” he says. “It will, of course, be al-Qaeda in the west and Iran and its affiliated militias in the east.”

The Islamic State also exploited sectarian tensions after the attacks to entrench itself in both Iraq and Syria, prompting the U.S. to send troops back into Iraq three years after it first withdrew from the country.

Not all outcomes are bad

Despite the heavy losses and other consequences of the US invasion, Alshamri, Mansour and Crocker agree that Iraq is a fundamentally freer country today than it was before 2003.

Yes, there is Corrupt corruption, Unemployment, poverty and total dependence on oil as a source of wealth, says Alshamri. On the other hand, Iraq has elections “that are not completely free and fair but are actually much better than people think.”

Despite this, attacks on activists and journalists are not uncommon. Recently street protests have been forcefully quashed by the authorities. Two years ago, Iraq’s prime minister escaped an assassination attempt allegedly by an Iranian-backed militia group.

Despite these problems, Iraq remains united. It’s a democracy of peaceful transitions of power — things that wouldn’t exist without American intervention, Mansoor says.

Meanwhile, Crocker pointed to a recent visit to Iraq, where he recently met with a group of university graduates. What was Iraq’s biggest problem? he asked.

“Corruption,” was the reply. “And it starts at the top, including the PM.”

“I noted that they said this at the Prime Minister’s Guest House,” he says.