Thanks-

First of all the Iraqis don't want a democracy. The idea of installing a democracy in Iraq is Bush's idea. I say the Iraqis don't want a democracy because they really don't seem to understand what a democracy is. Each faction wants the power for their own group, without sharing. Besides, I doubt that they teach democracy in many of the schools they went to.

Second of all, the US invaded Iraq. The Iraqis, while many of them may have hated Saddam and some wanted to see him leave, but the war was started by us, and not some home-grown rebellion.

Third of all.. (well I had a third point, but it was on one of my brain cells that went into hiding so it would survive when my head exploded while talking about this).

Anyway, it seems the Rand report's conclusions are based on countries with home-grown civil wars and insurgencies, not invasions by countries on the other side of the world. Maybe that was my third point. One conclusion of Rand (which was pointed out by Rudi) was that it would take a minimum of a five year commitment of forces to ensure an enduring transition to democracy. If the locals don't understand democracy and aren't asking for it, then when we shove it down their throats, we won't succeed in 5 years or even 10. I guess McCain has it right that we might e in Iraq for 100 years.

The more I look at the solution, the more I think Iraq should be separated into three nations- Shi'a, Suuni, Kurds. Of course Turkey won't go for an independent Kurd nation on their border, but Washington could exert pressure and I think the Kurds might agree to strict border limits and agree to not encourage the Turkish Kurds from breaking away to join them.

Also look at Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia modern countries with ethnic strife. Even though Yugoslvia was stable to hold the 1984 Winter Olympics, they broke up into how many countries? The same with Czechoslovakia. And let's not forget the former USSR and the break up into smaller nations…. Given recent conflicts, that we had a hand in, I can't believe anyone in their right mind would actually think that Iraq would welcome an invasion and be turned into a democracy at the behest of a country on the other side of the world.

Sometimes I think I should have taken Rumsfeld's job because I can make better decisions than he, and that's not even my background. The idiot.

Donald Rumsfeld is serving his second tenure as this nation’s Secretary of Defense. Under Gerald Ford, Rumsfeld became the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defense in 1975 and at the age of 43 he was the youngest to ever hold the position. He first went to Washington in 1957 during the Eisenhower administration as an Administrative Assistant to a Congressman. In 1962, Rumsfeld was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois and served four terms in that office. By the Nixon administration, Rumsfeld resigned his congressional position to serve as the Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity and as Counselor to the President from 1969 to 1972. In 1973, he left Washington for an ambassadorship to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium. When Ford assumed the office in 1974, he named Rumsfeld as his Chief of Staff and later as the Secretary of Defense. After working in the private sector and serving in a variety of public posts from 1977 to 2001, President George W. Bush offered him his second tenure as Secretary of Defense. Now it is the job of an older, wiser Donald Rumsfeld to make sure that our military is ready to fight for the abolition of the terrorist bin Laden and the destruction of the Taliban. He must aid in the designing of military operations and campaigns that will win the war on terrorism.

There is no quick route to nation-building. Five years seems the
minimum required to enforce an enduring transition to democracy.

2) The more troops, the better the results for both sides.

The highest levels of casualties have occurred in the operations with
the lowest levels of U.S. troops, suggesting an inverse ratio between
force levels and the level of risk. Germany, Japan, Bosnia, and Kosovo
had no postconflict combat deaths. The postconflict occupations in
Germany and Japan proved relatively risk-free because both Japan
and Germany were thoroughly defeated and because their governments
had agreed to unconditional surrender. The low numbers of
combat deaths also show that postconflict nation-building, when
undertaken with adequate numbers of troops, has triggered little violent
resistance. Only when the number of stabilization troops has
been low in comparison to the population have U.S. forces suffered
or inflicted significant casualties.

Seems W and Rummy didn't want to listen.

Shaun posted an article a couple of months ago about the failure of economic development in Afghanistan. In the article, the was apparent that the woman wanting to start up a oils/dyes/soap business kept having to sell the idea to a new boss every couple of months.

The manager of a Wal-Mart does not have to sell his bosses on the idea that a Wal-Mart Store is a good idea. The civil affairs guy in Afghanistan not only does but the civil affairs guy in Afghanistan has less than a year to make something happen before he moves on.

Look at the problems with military Acquisition and the ever changing requirements, the ever changing program managers, and the tinkering of Congress. Country Building is the same as Ship Building except in country building, the corporation has 100% turn over every year.

In the above cases the turn-over is in the leadership of the organization (in Italy it's more of a shuffle in the leadership than a change, if you pay attention you'll notice that its always the same people in office just in different positions) , not in the bureaucracy, the people running the day to day operations are still there doing their jobs and going about their business.

In Iraq, every time a US military unit leaves you lose the leadership and the bureaucracy and since there is no Iraqi Bureaucracy that can be trusted, you have to start from scratch all over again. Colonization when the locals don't want you there can be a bitch.

So – why shouldn't the military be able to make its infrastructure more resilient to such changes, or at least resilient enough to do these kinds of tasks? Is that being too naive?

Do you think that a chance in the White House will change the focus?

Tthe ideas of country building, government building, security force building, infrastructure building collapses in the face of constantly changing personnel. How can the U.S. rebuild anything when the people doing it change every couple of months.

A good example of the problems with constantly changing personnel is that when the Army headquarters moved from Camp Doha Kuwait into Iraq, that all of the computer/e-mail/information servers were left behind and the new headquarters with new people started with a clean slate.

There is only two real solutions:

1. Follow the Powell Doctrine of definable goals with a definable timeline.

2. Or follow the British example of when involved in a civil war, pick a side and make sure they win.

My point was that you didn't need a study from Rand to predict the outcome, anyone who has any knowledge of post WWII history could have predicted the outcome ( and that I would expect most politicians and generals to have that basic knowledge).

While digging around at Rand I found this news release which seems to be the report that was buried. While not titled”Rebuilding Iraq”, the subject matter and date of release seem to lean in the direction that this is the actual buried report.
News release: http://www.rand.org/news/press.03/07.28.html
Full report(in chapters): http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR17…

Don – you aren't reading very carefully. I specifically say in my post that the conclusions made by the report were identified before we ever went into Iraq.

There has been one insurrection that has been successfully put down since WWII that did not involve large scale mass slaughter, death squads and borderline genocide, that was Malaysia in the 50's and the only reason it was successfully put down was that the insurrectionists were predominantly Chinese in a Malay majority Country.

Once an insurrection stops being an ideological insurrection and becomes an Ethnic insurrection, it's over, the only way to end it is to commit Genocide.

Thanx for the heads up!

Rudi,

This is a NEW study, not the one you cite.

Army Buried Iraq War-Planning Report
Military.com | By Bryant Jordan | February 11, 2008

The Army buried a RAND Corporation study on plans for postwar Iraq after Army generals grew concerned over the report’s wide-ranging criticism of the White House, the Defense Department and government agencies, the New York Times is reporting.

Both secret and unclassified versions of “Rebuilding Iraq” were turned over to the Pentagon in mid-2005 after 18 months of research, according to the Times, which said the unclassified version was intended to further public debate on how to prepare for future conflicts.

The Army, however, would not release either version and also limited circulation of the secret study within the Pentagon. It’s official explanation was that the RAND study got into areas that did not directly involve the Army, the Times quoted one Pentagon official as saying.