Looking Back to Iraq

Military TImes-10 Years After The Invasion

This article is very well put together, in my opinion. One of the reasons I like this piece is because of its focus on reflecting on what happened 10 years ago in Iraq, not exploring was this war right or justified.

Looking back, all I remember about the initial fight for Bagdad was watching it on TV, thinking it was so cool that we were killin' the bad guys. I remember the new station had the coverage going 24/7 with bombs dropping in the night and tracer bullets flying through the air. Not knowing or even caring that this war would trickle out longer than expected. We did not realize the mess we were getting into.“Our mission was go in from the start and set the conditions for success, and then leave and turn things over to the Iraqis, the State Department and contractors, and try to get the military out very quickly,” said Blount, who retired in 2005. “It grew into more later, but that was not the intent initially.”

The US military expected heavy fighting with the Iraqi Republican Guard, tanks, air planes, and chemical weapons were expected too, however, none of these were seen. But most of the Iraqi Guard slipped into insurgency and insurgency warfare. The US military did not expect this at all. It seems the US Army and Marines were trained for heavy combat and intense fighting with the Iraqi, not counterinsurgency. Im mean what an adjustment soldiers and Marines had to make. Now, our soldiers were dealing with unconventional warfare, IED and suicide bombers. How do you adjust to this warfare almost immediately? We took Bagdad and the conventional warfare expedition was over it seems.“The whole purpose of the plan was regime change,” said Marine Brig. Gen. Paul Kennedy. Preventing an insurgency wasn’t the initial plan, however. U.S. forces were told to topple Saddam and prepare to go home. To combat the insurgency, then, the U.S. military had to change the way it fights wars to make its central mission protecting the Iraqi population. The Army would later codify some of the lessons learned in a 2008 field manual on “full spectrum operations,” which made clear that soldiers had to be ready to fight both conventional and irregular wars.

Again, I'm not writing this to express whether the war was right or wrong, its over and a part of history. My question is how did we get involved without knowing the war would drag on. That the war would turn into conventional forces vs. insurgence. Was it a lack of planning? Lack of leadership? Maybe its easier said than done now looking back. Also, what does this mean for our military now? It seems we that we will not be fighting conventional forces in the near future, but maybe i'm wrong. Look at the drug cartels in Latin America, Taliban in the Middle East and Asia, and rebel fighters in Africa. Warfare seems to be turning to guerrilla tactics, at least used towards the Unites State's forces. And how do you present ideas or alternative methods to solving the conflict with these groups? War is not black and white, there are many gray areas I believe that cannot be answered right away.