Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

■"Army Historian Cites Lack of Postwar Plan: Major Calls Effort in Iraq 'Mediocre,'" by Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, 25 December 2004, p. A1.

In Pentagon briefings, when planners don't know how something is going to work out, they tend to put the "magic cloud" on the PowerPoint slide that signifies a sort of black-box experience where it all works out—we just can't describe it in advance. In economic planning, the equivalent is the "negative wedge," or the magical cost savings that will appear in the future. Why? Because we desperately need it, that's why!

There is a great bit that Mark Warren cut (yes, that evil man who is constantly strangling my "voice"!*) in the upcoming Esquire article where I talk about postwar occupation planning for another scenario and I describe it as "both PowerPoint slides!"

Of course, the reference is supposed to be a joke, but based on this Army major's official report, it seems it isn't. There basically was no written plan for "Phase IV," the Pentagon term for the second half, or the postconflict stabilization/occupation/rebuilding effort.

"There was no Phase IV plan" for occupying Iraq after the combat phase, writes Maj. Isaiah Wilson III, who served as an official historian of the campaign and later as a war planner in Iraq. While a variety of government offices had considered the possible situations that would follow a U.S. victory, Wilson writes, no one produced an actual document laying out a strategy to consolidate the victory after major combat operations ended.

"While there may have been 'plans' at the national level, and even within various agencies within the war zone, none of these 'plans' operationalized the problem beyond regime collapse"—that is, laid out how U.S. forces would be moved and structured, Wilson writes in an essay that has been delivered at several academic conferences but not published. "There was no adequate operational plan for stability operations and support operations."

This is stunning in the extreme. I have participated in several command post exercises in various military commands (particularly Pacific Command) and I find it amazingly hard to believe that the national leadership (Chairman of Joint Chiefs, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, President) let Central Command and Tommy Franks off the hook on that one. I am simply amazed. To me, that would have been the planning section that would have logically received the most attention and argument—especially from an Army that loathes nation-building and wants to ditch those situations as fast as possible.

As a result of the failure to produce a plan, Wilson asserts, the U.S. military lost the dominant position in Iraq in the summer of 2003 and has been scrambling to recover ever since. "In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, U.S. forces lost the momentum and the initiative . . . gained over an off-balanced enemy," he writes. The United States, its Army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since."

It was only in November 2003, seven months after the fall of Baghdad, that U.S. occupation authorities produced a formal "Phase IV" plan for stability operations, Wilson reports. Phase I covers preparation for combat, followed by initial operations, Phase II, and combat, Phase III. Post-combat operations are called Phase IV.

Many in the Army have blamed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon civilians for the unexpectedly difficult occupation of Iraq, but Wilson reserves his toughest criticism for Army commanders who, he concludes, failed to grasp the strategic situation in Iraq and so did not plan properly for victory. He concludes that those who planned the war suffered from "stunted learning and a reluctance to adapt."

Yeah, and that condition is called the Powell Doctrine Syndrome. Tommy Franks, consider giving back your Medal of Freedom.

* Don't worry, I'm just kidding. This is my way of getting Mark Warren to give me a call. He'll read the bit above, trust me, and phone me immediately to complain. And no, he won't bother reading this far down . . .