US military power, the most effective fighting force in the history of man, has been unable to subdue the insurgency, sectarian violence, and foreign fighters, who are infiltrating the embattled nation. What is the cause behind this failure? As in Vietnam, the failure is not in the projection of military power. It is a failure in political leadership.
The Iraqi people are composed of sunni, shiite, and kurd sects. There has been a fair amount of animosity between these disparate groups. The only cohesion between these groups was the result of coercive, oppressive rule by Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime. Without central leadership Iraq reverts to tribal warfare.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was motivated by regime change – the dismantling of Saddam Hussein and the Baathist leadership. Unfortunately, the invasion did not include a plan for how to achieve an end to violence. A lesson was not learned from the victory in Japan, where Japan surrendered unconditionally. The Japanese leadership was allowed to decide for their nation to accept surrender, and the transition was honorable and without insurgency.
This is similar to the handling of the surrender of groups of soldiers in the battlefield. The enlisted soldiers are disarmed, but the leadership remains in place. The officers retain their sidearms, so that they can maintain control over their underlings.
It was a mistake to prematurely remove Saddam Hussein’s authority, so that no recognized Iraqi leadership existed to formally surrender. Perhaps, the Iraqi insurgency and the influx of foreign fighters would still have arisen, because of the fractured Iraqi society. But it would not have been because of a power vacuum, the one condition the US could have prevented.
