from: [Eric LC]
to: [Amos Yadlin], [Graham Allison]
date: Apr 19, 2022, 5:02 PM
subject: Misleading and offensive to equate Ukraine and US to Saddamists and Putin
Professor Allison and Major General Yadlin,
I clarify the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ by organizing the primary source authorities, i.e., the set of controlling law, policy, and precedent and determinative facts that define OIF's justification, to lay a proper foundation and correct for the prevalent conjecture, distorted context, and misinformation that have obfuscated the Iraq issue.
With that, I am writing you to criticize the misleading analogy in your 24MAR22 National Interest article, Piercing the Fog of War: What Is Really Happening in Ukraine?, in which you inaptly equate the American-led international law enforcement of the Gulf War ceasefire terms in Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) to Putin's unlawful invasion of Ukraine that recalls Saddam's invasion of Kuwait that compelled the Gulf War and its ceasefire terms.
Your analogy causes you in turn to offensively equate Ukraine's defenders to Saddamists.
Before I state my criticism, I recommend you read national security analyst Brian Dunn's criticism of your analogy at So We're to Forget Actual History to Criticize Putin?. I learned of your article from Brian's post.
Allison, Yadlin:
Some around Putin appear to have been as delusional about a quick, easy victory as U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld was in 2003 when he imagined that U.S. forces would be greeted as “liberators” in Iraq and American troops would be home for Thanksgiving.
... So before joining in the celebrations of Russia’s failure, we remind ourselves that on day forty-two of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush stood under a banner declaring “mission accomplished” and announced the end of major combat operations. In fact, combat continued for another 3,153 days during which more than 150,000 people died.
... So before joining in the celebrations of Russia’s failure, we remind ourselves that on day forty-two of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush stood under a banner declaring “mission accomplished” and announced the end of major combat operations. In fact, combat continued for another 3,153 days during which more than 150,000 people died.
To clarify "the end of major combat operations", see the OIF FAQ answer to "Was the invasion of Iraq perceived to be a nation-building effort".
As Brian points out, your analogy omits the basic distinction between major combat and peace operations. Both of you should already know that major combat and peace operations, while they both include force, involve different practical approaches, temporal expectancies, and legal characters.
President Bush's 01MAY03 speech that "announced the end of major combat operations" in fact properly marked the conclusion of the major combat operations against the finally noncompliant Saddam regime and the beginning of the subsequent peace operations with -- in defense of -- post-Saddam Iraq per Public Laws 105-338 and 107-243 pursuant UNSCRs 678, 1483, 1511, etc..
As Brian also points out, the distinction between major combat and peace operations shows that Secretary Rumsfeld was not "delusional" about the OIF major combat operations.
That the OIF peace operations "continued for another 3,153 days" beyond the President's 01MAY03 speech was not unusual. Rather, the time span was unusual for its severe brevity in the contemporary context of the American-led peace operations with Germany, Japan, Kosovo, Afghanistan, etc., which shows that just the opening stage of building a nation in order to secure the peace even in relatively straightforward conducive conditions should normally and reasonably be expected to require a decade.
Apart from the standard expectation that the military members, including the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln, who served in the major combat operations would be relieved upon their "mission accomplished", did the Bush administration flout modern history by expecting all "American troops would be home for Thanksgiving"?
No. Consistent with contemporary American-led peace operations, the law and policy record shows the expectation of indefinite conditions-based peace operations with post-Saddam Iraq.
The US mandate to "support Iraq's transition to democracy by providing immediate and substantial humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people ... once the Saddam Hussein regime is removed from power in Iraq" (P.L. 105-338) was ingrained in the standing law and policy pursuant UNSCR 688 that the Bush administration inherited from the HW Bush and Clinton administrations. Congress and the President further reiterated the US mandate to support post-Saddam Iraq in the 2002 AUMF and Bush's policy statements.
In accordance with the standing law and policy, US agencies including Secretary Rumsfeld's department planned extensively for the anticipated peace operations with Iraq.
As Congress "expected" in the 2002 AUMF, the President ordered the start of the OIF peace operations when the Saddam regime was deposed after Iraq breached its "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441). At the same time, the UN Security Council mandated the OIF peace operations under "unified command" (UNSCR 1511) per the overall UNSCR 660-series mandate to restore peace and security with Iraq, which combined with the standing US mandate to enforce the UNSCR 660 series, including UNSCR 688, in general and conduct peace operations with post-Saddam Iraq in particular.
The American-led coalition did suffer more casualties during the peace operations that defended Iraq against the Saddamist terrorist insurgency than it did during the major combat operations that unseated the noncompliant Saddam regime. Nevertheless, the upended expectation of the comparative cost and difficulty between OIF's major combat and peace operations doesn't change that the different characters of the sequential stages were properly conceived by the Bush administration.
The upended expectation of the comparative cost and difficulty between OIF's major combat and peace operations leads to my second point: Your analogy implicitly equates the defense of Ukraine to the terrorist insurgency that attacked post-Saddam Iraq, which is misleading and grossly offensive to the Gulf War ceasefire enforcers and Ukraine's defenders.
Allison, Yadlin:
One key variable is the number of Russian combat deaths, which appear to be approaching the number of Americans lost in the eight years of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
... In fact, combat continued for another 3,153 days during which more than 150,000 people died.
... As the United States discovered in Afghanistan and Iraq, occupying the capital city and changing the government is the easy chapter in the campaign. Dealing with a resistance movement is complex, costly, and can take years. It is not clear to what extent Russian cruelty and brutality will be effective in suppressing the resistance, even if it is supported by neighboring NATO members. Given the development of Ukrainian national identity in recent years and its success in rising up to defy Putin’s aggression in the past month of combat, it is unlikely that such a puppet regime could gain enough support of the Ukrainian people to suppress an insurgency. Russian forces would thus likely remain in Ukraine.
... In fact, combat continued for another 3,153 days during which more than 150,000 people died.
... As the United States discovered in Afghanistan and Iraq, occupying the capital city and changing the government is the easy chapter in the campaign. Dealing with a resistance movement is complex, costly, and can take years. It is not clear to what extent Russian cruelty and brutality will be effective in suppressing the resistance, even if it is supported by neighboring NATO members. Given the development of Ukrainian national identity in recent years and its success in rising up to defy Putin’s aggression in the past month of combat, it is unlikely that such a puppet regime could gain enough support of the Ukrainian people to suppress an insurgency. Russian forces would thus likely remain in Ukraine.
Your inappropriate use of the Americans and Iraqis "lost in the eight years" of OIF's peace operations as the reference point for your prognostication of Putin's invasion of Ukraine implicitly places Ukraine's defenders in the shoes of Saddamists and the OIF international law enforcement in the shoes of Putin's unlawful invasion of Ukraine.
Yet the high number of Russian casualties in short order in contrast to the relatively low number of American casualties in all of OIF points to the fundamental difference between the Ukrainian view of Putin's invasion and the Iraqi view of the OIF enforcement of the Gulf War ceasefire terms, including the UNSCR 688 humanitarian mandates, that were purpose-designed to fulfill "the need to be assured of Iraq's peaceful intentions [and] ... to secure peace and security in the area" (UNSCR 687).
By the same token, the high number of Iraqi casualties during OIF was not due to "support of the [Iraqi] people" or "combat" per se. The root cause of the Iraqi casualties was the Saddamists who converted the radical sectarian terrorist, genocidal Saddam regime's expertise and zeal for mass murder of Iraqis to the radical sectarian terrorist Saddamist insurgency that primarily targeted the Iraqi people rather than Iraq's allied defenders.
Excerpt from my 15JAN22 Critique of the Iraq-related portions of Miller Center's revised "George W. Bush: Foreign Affairs":
Based on what "The international community later learned", the "Sectarian violence [that] racked the country" and "chaos with increasing instability and violence" were caused by Saddam's "government", not by toppling the Saddam regime.If Putin eventually seizes Ukraine like Saddam seized Kuwait, would Ukraine's defenders mount an insurgency against a Russian "puppet regime"? Based on their defense of Ukraine so far, I believe they would.
"The international community later learned" that the Saddam regime converted from secular Baath to radical sectarian Islamist.
See Professor Amatzia Baram's From Militant Secularism to Islamism: The Iraqi Ba’th Regime 1968-2003 and Kyle Orton's The Islamic State Was Coming Without the Invasion of Iraq.
"The international community later learned", as I commented above, Saddam's terrorism was significantly worse than it was estimated before OIF, including its "considerable operational overlap" (IPP) with al Qaeda. To identify the root cause of the "chaos with increasing instability and violence from suicide attacks, car bombs, kidnappings, and beheadings", note that IPP found "The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq".
"The international community later learned" that Saddam's rule by “systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law by the Government of Iraq, resulting in an all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror” (UN Commission on Human Rights, 19APR02) -- already assessed as genocidal by outside observers -- was actually "far worse" (UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq, 18MAR04) than had been believed outside of Iraq.
Even expert Iraqi expats like Professor Kanan Makiya, who advised the US planning for post-war Iraq, talk about their shock at the extreme corruption of Iraqi society that had been inflicted by Saddam, degrading the nation far from Iraq of the 1970s and 1980s.
In short, the "Sectarian violence [that] racked the country" and "chaos with increasing instability and violence" were not caused by "the United States toppled the government" or "power vacuum left by the dismantling of the Iraqi army". Rather, based on what "The international community later learned" about the Saddam regime's governance, they were caused by Saddam's extreme corruption of Iraqi society, exploited by Saddamists who smoothly converted their radical sectarian terrorist rule of Iraq and "regional and global terrorism" (IPP) to their radical sectarian terrorist insurgency against Iraq.
However, contrary to your inapt analogy, I do not expect Ukraine's defenders would ever target the Ukrainian people like the Saddamists who methodically targeted the Iraqi people consistent with the Saddam regime's “systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law by the Government of Iraq, resulting in an all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror” (UNCHR).
I also do not expect the "Russian forces [that] would thus likely remain in Ukraine" practicing "Russian cruelty and brutality" would duplicate for Ukraine the international mandate of the American-led "multinational force under unified command to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq, including for the purpose of ensuring necessary conditions for the implementation of the timetable and programme as well as to contribute to the security of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, the Governing Council of Iraq and other institutions of the Iraqi interim administration, and key humanitarian and economic infrastructure" (UNSCR 1511).
From Operation Desert Shield through Operation Iraqi Freedom, resolute principled international leadership by the United States and likeminded nations, the United Kingdom chief among them, proved necessary for international law enforcement to bring Iraq into compliance with the paradigmatic UNSCR 660 series, Gulf War ceasefire mandates.
As President Clinton forewarned, the American leadership that was required to resolve the noncompliant Saddam problem is needed to counteract international "rogue" malfeasors like Putin who would follow in Saddam's "footsteps".
Unfortunately, your article's false equivalence between the OIF international law enforcement and Putin's unlawful Saddam-like invasion of Ukraine undermines the essential solution to the problem. Therefore, I encourage you to convey to the public your apology and correction of your misleading and offensive analogy equating Operation Iraqi Freedom to Putin's invasion of Ukraine and Ukraine's defenders to Saddamists.
If you have questions about my work, please ask.
Related: Critique of Matt Latimer's "The Don Rumsfeld the Obituaries Won’t Write About".