Cobra II

I finally finished reading Cobra II, by New York Times chief military correspondent Michael Gordon and retired Marin Corps Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor. This masterstroke, named as a sequel to Patton's breakout from Normandy to liberate France, showcases years of painstaking and thorough research. It presents, as the subtitle states, the "inside story of the invasion and occupation of Iraq." (Which is a bit of a misnomer because the story ends in summer 2003, barely into the American "occupation.")

It is a well-written book chock full of detail and support for assertions. The villains are clearly Don Rumsfeld, for demanding an absurdly low number of troops and pooh-poohing the post-war phase, and Tommy Franks, for fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the enemy and also neglecting the reconstruction period.

More generally, Gordon and Trainor marshal evidence that leads to five unassailable conclusions regarding major mistakes made by both civilian and military leadership in the run-up and conduct of the war and counterinsurgency:

1. Misreading the foe: Saddam had reorganized his armed forces, so this was not simply a continuation of the Persian Gulf War.

2. Overreliance on technology: The "revolution in military affairs" was and is an asset in many respects, but certainly not for operations that require mass rather than speed, such as gaining control of hostile territory after the toppling of Saddam.

3. Failing to adapt to battlefield developments: Troops on the ground realized early on that they were not being welcomed with flowers and parades, and that they were not fighting a conventional war; the top brass never seemed to get that and adjust plans accordingly.

4. The dysfunction of military structures: Rumsfeld stifled dissent and dissenters raised insufficient fuss; post-war changeover of command was haphazard and created instability.

5. Disdaining nation-building yet engaging in an operation that would obviously require it: George Bush's team, rightly or wrongly, looked down on the idea of "nation building" and was reluctant especially to think of the military performing such tasks. Whatever the merits of such a posture in abstract terms of international relations theory, with respect to the Iraq mission, it can only be characterized (ironically) as pre-9/11 thinking.

Regardless of your stance on the wisdom of the policy that took us to war, it is clear that we lost the initiative in the aftermath of force-on-force combat and allowed the insurgency to develop. This is why we now have a surge, clear and hold operations, and pressure to produce tangible results on a clock matching the pace of politics in the U.S., not Iraq. We now appear to be on the right track, but is it too late? (Both in terms of on-the-ground developments here and the nature of American politics heading into a presidential election year.)