Poll: Would things in Iraq have turned out differently if . . .

the Bush administration had had a plan for the postwar period?

I think if things had been handled competently in the initial period of the occupation, it would have taken somewhat longer for things to deteriorate and for an insurgency to break out, but it still would have happened.

I just think that the situation is inherently unworkable.

election like one of the generals was planning to do. And once the election was held, pull out. But no, our idiot in chief wanted to make sure our oil companies had the oil, that the defense contractors got a ton of money, that we were going to be there forever, and that the modified seed people (just Monsanto I think) got to sell their seeds to the Iraqis forever. It was obvious from the beginning we were not leaving. Every incompetent fool they could find was given a high profile job. Experience was a detriment. * goal is to keep the country in a mess so he can say we won't leave.

On my first drive from Baghdad International Airport (When it was still marked "Saddam International Airport") I passed a large cleared area that Army engineers were surveying for what looked like permanent buildings. Seemed a little premature to me to be planning permanent structures (this was early June 2003), so I asked around a bit. Turns out it was to have been the headquarters command complex for a US air base to be built next to the civilian airport.

Oh, yeah. We had planned to stay.

I haven't gone back to check, but I suspect we're NOT working on those permanent bases anymore.

Yes -- If they had immediately partitioned into 3 countries..

But I had strong feels for 1 it was doomed from the start.

Both are good answers in IMHO..

Turkey wont be allowing a Kurdish nation for the forseeable future - it would destabilise Turkey and therefore the EU. Sunni areas would have ended up with little or no oil therefore little or no income - a situation bound to lead to civil war. Shiite areas would almost definetly if given a free vote, elect a non western friendly government which would never have been allowed by the US (even under a Dem government)

Iraq also isn't quite as neatly divided into Kurd/Sunni/Shia as people imagine, and minorities living in partitioned areas would likely face discrimination if not outright slaughter

The only thing holding Iraq together was Saddam's iron fist. The three main groups have always had their own agendas. Civil war there was inevitable once the regime was toppled. Any idiot could have seen this coming--any idiot except the Republican variety.

Fresh in the world's memory, how could anyone have thought that opportunists WOULDN'T start trying to tear the place apart so they could grab their part.

I have no answer.

for doing to Iraq what Saddam did to Kuwait, or Hitler did to Poland, or Japan did to China.

and started putting people to work immediately rebuilding their own country, they would likely have gotten the infrastructure up and running quickly. There is nothing like a steady paycheck to inspire hope for the future, and nothing like the 70% unemployment rate fostered by the neocons and their use of the country as an economic laboratory to inspire revolution.

This had a ghost of a chance, but nah, it was probably doomed from the beginning. The British and their arbitrary national borders that didn't respect ethnic and religious borders made any other outcome besides civil war unlikely.

The early infrastructure contracts administered by at least one large US firm (please note I'm NOT talking about KBR, a company for which a special circle in hell is reserved) DID go to Iraqi suppliers and contractors, who went out and hired their countrymen by the thousands. This was true in the roads and bridges sector, water sector, etc., etc. Well over 80% of the contracts (and hence the money) went to local businesses, with the other 20% being such things as security contractors, accommodations for expat managers, and equipment not available in-country (replacement machinery for power plants, for example). I'm being a bit oblique here, but suffice it to say I saw it happening

One can make the argument that the USA firms shouldn't have been there in the first place (owing to hideously high personnel costs for expats), that Iraqi firms should have been managing their own infrastructure repairs from the git-go, with the CPA providing ready funds and guidance. Unfortunately, the CPA was, let us say, *out of its depth* and quickly allied itself with locals who, let us say *didn't have the recovery of Iraq as their first priority.*

But a lot of the folks there were doing their best to make the thing work, and were heartbroken to see how fruitless it turned out to be. Myself, I was pretty sure it was not going to end happily before I got there, but I had drunk the "we broke it, we bought it" kool-aid.

my position in the least. There was 70% unemployment there that persisted for many months after the invastion and may even persist today, but our gummint aint fessin up. The problem was the main thrust was to have massive US corporations doing the work, importing labor and socking it to the taxpayers for the privilege, while leaving the Iraqis out in the cold, unemployed, poor, with huge amounts of time on their hands and an abundance of resentment.

Both the CPA and the corporations were using it as a feeding trough at the US taxpayer's expense.

There is no going back now and no way to salvage the situation. The best thing we can do for these people is get out of their way while they settle things among themselves (given the UN's reluctance to accede to Stupid's demand that they intervene) and eventually supply them with the equipment and materials they'll need to rebuild. We won't like whatever government presents itself. But we will owe them.

Plenty of corporations were at the feeding trough, and in more than one case, throwing their people into the fire while the corporate bosses sat at home watching the money roll in. And the fact that one company (actually many, but who's counting) operated differently doesn't change that picture -- although it does let me sleep at night.

Which is why I was leaning toward the "hopeless from the start" response when I set up the poll. I was in the streets with millions of my fellow human beings in the months leading up to the war, begging our government not to do this wicked, foolish thing.

But they did it anyway. While I think the protesters were pretty clear that the invasion should never have taken place, what did surprize us, I think (and now I'm projecting my own opinions at bit) was the mind-boggling incompetence with which the whole thing was carried out.

Could we have prevented the growth of the insurgency if we had not left all the ammo dumps around the country unsecured for months? Would it have mattered if we had prevented the looters and vandals from shredding what little social fabric was left in Iraq after 35 years of despotism. Would it have made any difference if we had kept the army together, and in their barracks rather than roaming the streets armed, insulted, broke, and bored?

Those were the questions I was asking.

but IMO (which is worth exactly two cents) the thing that would have worked the best was putting the Iraqis back to work as quickly and as completely as possible. Everything else you suggested might have slowed the insurgency down, but wouldn't have stopped it. Having the money roll in to the Iraqi people in the form of steady paychecks and some hope for a better future might have had a better chance. At least they'd have had far less leisure time in which to contemplate murder.

We'll never know, though. All we know is what did happen: corporations at the trough and Iraqis left to their own devices, which turned out to be improvised explosive devices.

I'm glad to know you were with the good guys. I know enough other good guys who went in with good intentions to know it wasn't all stupidly bungled, just the parts that had any connection with this corrupt administration.

America INVADED an innocent nation that had been doing NOTHING WHATSOEVER to anyone.

Nothing good comes out of that kind of evil.

I can't think of another idea that was so colossaly stupid.

Redstone

The Germans thought the war would be over in a matter of weeks, but they forgot to ask Father Winter.

People in the middle east have been fighting forever and will continue fighting until long after I'm dead.

WHERE'S OSAMA?
is the taliban DEFEATED, no, regrouping and afganistan is slipping into chaos. we should have promoted REAL democracy there first.

iWaq was just oedipal.

If we had swung through, grabbed Saddam and his top eschlon, and left behind one Iraqi military commander to oversee elections (honest elections, enforced by the fear of us coming back to get HIM), then been on our merry way within two weeks, yeah, it might have worked. You'd probably have still ended up with a civil war, though. Better to partition the country, and give one chunk to each group. Or better yet to have backed a native Iraqi force with US airpower, which might have enabled them to oust Saddam and keep the place together. I'd have to wargame it out a bit.

The short answer is yes, there are ways that it would have turned out differently. Even so, most of these would have turned out badly if you didn't have a real strategist involved. Pity that the National Security Council lacks one of those. Unfortunately, that would have required planning, which is something we know the Bushies aren't good at. The character of the war was pretty much set as soon as they went in, and they their efforts to dig themselves out of that hole just took them deeper.