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July 28, 2008

David Kilcullen: the decision to invade Iraq was "f***ing stupid"

Via the Small Wars blog, I learned about an interesting Washington Independent article on how

After nearly seven years of costly strategic ignorance in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a coming handbook written mostly by a former top aide to Gen. David H. Petraeus seeks to instruct senior civilian policy-makers about the complexities of counterinsurgency.

What stood out, though, is how David Kilcullen (the author of the handbook) assesses the decision to invade Iraq:

Asked for comment, the handbook's chief author, David Kilcullen, a former Australian Army officer who is now an adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, explained that it tells policy-makers to "think very, very carefully before intervening." More bluntly, Kilcullen, who helped Petraeus design his 2007 counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, called the decision to invade Iraq "stupid" -- in fact, he said "f***ing stupid" -- and suggested that if policy-makers apply the manual's lessons, similar wars can be avoided in the future.

"The biggest stupid idea," Kilcullen said, "was to invade Iraq in the first place."

Kilcullen explained that the handbook will not apply to future operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. "We try not to forge doctrine around an example," he said. Instead, it frames questions about supporting counterinsurgencies in partner or potential-partner countries through the prisms of national interest; graduated levels of commitment, and cost/benefit analysis. It offers numerous warnings about how arduous counterinsurgency is. In a paragraph about the "characteristics" of counterinsurgency, Kilcullen bolds the words "complex," "violent," "difficult," "controversial," "ambiguous," "long-duration" and "high-cost."

This is a significant acknowledgement, and it is important to remember such failures. I would follow Jacqueline Rose's argument in Why War?

“Hang on to failure…if you want to avoid going to war (Rose 1993, 37)

By hanging on to the memory of US-led failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, it may be possible for policymakers to avoid going to war - or at least avoid going to war in the same way - in future. The handbook itself also sounds very interesting:

"Counterinsurgency: A Guide for Policy-Makers" takes the lessons learned by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan and elevates them to the highest levels of national strategy...The handbook seeks to provide a framework for considering whether Washington should intervene in foreign countries' counterinsurgency operations, raising difficult questions about whether such nations deserve U.S. support; under what conditions that support should occur, and whether success is possible at acceptable cost. No systematic approach to strategic-level questions in counterinsurgency currently exists for senior U.S. government officials.[...]

The handbook instructs policy-makers about the necessity of using all elements of national power -- not just military force, but also diplomacy, development aid, the rule of law, academic disciplines and other specialties often considered peripheral to warfighting -- to triumph in counterinsurgency. Victory, as well, is defined as support for a foreign nation's ability to successfully govern, rather than a decisive U.S. military effort.

It sounds like this handbook covers a lot of important ground - I'll look forward to reading it.

Posted by jon_mendel at July 28, 2008 12:32 PM

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