http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54816-2004Jan4.html Foresight Was 20/20
By Jackson Diehl
Monday, January 5, 2004; Page A17
The Bush administration has been hammered for failing to anticipate or plan for the many problems of postwar Iraq or to set aside the money to pay for them. Its spokesmen insist, as they did before the war, that there was no way of knowing in advance what challenges might come up and what it might take to meet them.
Yet, looking back at what Washington's foreign policy community expected from an intervention in Iraq, it's striking how much of the trouble the U.S. mission now faces was accurately and publicly predicted.
It's not that these predictions weren't heard inside the administration; some were echoed by the State Department's own postwar Iraq project. But the small group of Pentagon civilians who monopolized control over the occupation chose to ignore the expert opinion -- they were more swayed by Iraqi exiles, who insisted the country could be rapidly transformed if only existing institutions, such as the army, were completely dismantled. L. Paul Bremer, who took charge of the Coalition Provisional Authority in June, confessed that until his appointment he had been absorbed by his private-sector career and hadn't read most of the Iraq studies.
It's not too late to listen to some of the advice. The most serious problems foreseen by the experts have not yet materialized but may do so this year. One is the drive of the Kurdish leadership to acquire more territory and autonomy than the rest of Iraq can tolerate, which could touch off a civil war or foreign intervention. Another is the danger that an Iraqi provisional government will be created too quickly, causing it to be perceived as a U.S. puppet. Summing up the Washington Institute's collection of papers, Patrick Clawson observed that Iraq's history suggests that its first governments will be subject to serial violent challenges, and that pro-Western leaders won't survive unless they are defended by American troops.
Almost all the studies recommended that the United States try to avoid the political trouble it now has by handing control over Iraq, or at least its political transition, to the United Nations, and by exercising its influence indirectly. At the same time, they warned against a speedy departure. "While moving the process along as quickly as possible, the United States must not be limited by self-imposed timelines but rather should adopt an objectives-based approach," said Djerejian and Wisner. The administration ignored that first piece of advice, to its great cost. If it is to avoid disaster in 2004, it had best remember the second.
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