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C H A P T E R T H R E E The Invasion of Iraq and Compelled Adaptation Quod cito acquiritur cito perit. (What is quickly gained is quickly lost.) Introduction T he invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003. Within twenty-one days of the start of OIF, the army moved into the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. On May 1, 2003, President Bush announced the end of major combat operations from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln by recapitulating how victory in combat was achieved: ‘‘Operation Iraqi Freedom was carried out with a combination of precision and speed and boldness the enemy did not expect, and the world had not seen before. From distant bases or ships at sea, we sent planes and missiles that could destroy an enemy division, or strike a single bunker.’’1 He followed this by reaffirming the central proposition of the Bush Doctrine and the apparent success of military operations that supported this doctrine: ‘‘Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians.’’2 Capturing the capital city of an opponent’s country—through and by the defeat of the adversary’s battlefield forces—has long been a benchmark of achieving victory in conflict if surrender was not achieved beforehand. Certainly, this is what President Bush was referring to when he announced the end of major combat operations and made his ‘‘mission accomplished’’ declaration. In the classic sense, the achievement of military objectives in combat operations translates into success for the whole mission. This results from a historic propensity to delink military and political objectives, mistaking the completion of these objectives with achieving desired end-state conditions, and from bureaucratizing the concept of war.3 Through bureaucratization, objectives, conditions, and definitions become rigid if not codified. This results in the construction of concepts and perceptions that do not wither easily and defy translation when circumstances change. The structures, 57 58 Chapter Three institutions, and assumptions related to war persist even when a particular conflict morphs into something other than war. But as the characteristics of warfare change, so too do the requirements for achieving success.4 The assumption that the mission in Iraq had indeed been accomplished in early 2003 ignored a number of indications that the mission had only just begun and that the war, in terms of achieving strategic objectives, was far from over. First, as the Bush Doctrine required, Iraq had not been transformed into a stable and peaceful democracy. Second, Phase IV operations (stability, support, and reconstruction operations, or SSRO, collectively) had not yet begun in earnest, and security was only being maintained tenuously in the brief calm that followed the storm aptly named ‘‘Thunder Run.’’5 Third, the Cold War military model of transferring responsibility for Phase IV operations to a collective of host-country, US, UN, and international agencies was not realized as planned. Last, the army, partly because of inadequate resourcing for Phase IV operations (both in planning and in the structural potential for wide-scale execution) and partly because of inadequate training for stability operations, was unprepared for a follow-on mission that required unparalleled dexterity in the application of skills necessary in MOOTW.6 The enduring characteristics of previous decisions to make the army a highly conventional and combat-focused force even among its remaining unconventional elements combined with an assumption that this force was full-spectrum dominant put the army in a severely disadvantageous position.7 To be sure, the army carried out its combat mission in Iraq magnificently. But its capacity for adapting to full-spectrum operations in the face of significant mission change to support strategic objectives was dubious. Structurally, the army was not predisposed to conducting MOOTW or for participating in an interagency process requiring this capacity. Cognitively and culturally—because of the influence of structural conditions on the reception and interpretation of mutating operational conditions—the army was less than optimally prepared for refitting combat equipment and processes and for translating decades’ worth of training and indoctrination in combat into SSRO. The persistence of the post–Cold War army structure and its almost strictly combat-oriented focus would have a signi ficant effect on the organizations’ ability to adapt to the degree required to achieve strategic political objectives in postcombat Iraq. A Failed Transition...

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