Fundamental failures led to current Iraq crisis

Inadequate force on the ground meant that our tactics were incompatible with the mission. Although we knew very well that political control depended on military control, we never committed enough troops to ensure success. From the beginning, we would enter areas, fight the enemy, and then withdraw to fight elsewhere. The bad guys would merely return to terrorize the people. Perhaps too late, we are finally beginning to make progress in some areas, but only because we are clearing the enemy and staying there.

You can’t fight a war on the cheap.

Lesson 4: Never give the enemy a break
If we didn’t know better, we would conclude that officials were going out of their way to do the wrong thing in Iraq. The initial attack was audacious, to be sure, but the overall plan was incomplete, betraying an astounding and unforgivable complacency and ignorance. Disbanding the Iraqi army was one foolish decision. Nearly four years later, we are still trying to reconstitute it, and in the interim we lost control of the security situation in many crucial areas. Playing catch-up is a tough game.

But perhaps the strongest evidence that the war was run by amateurs was the incomprehensible decision by Ambassador Paul Bremer to avoid disarming and disbanding the militias. Rather than neutralize our enemies, he gave them a pass. The results have been bloody sectarian violence and a mission teetering on the edge of failure.

Pictures and messages from U.S. troops overseas and their friends, family at home.

Perhaps just as regrettable, our poorly executed projection of power has produced one of the things we were trying to neutralize in the first place: Iran is now emboldened and more dangerous than it was four years ago.

The sad truth is that we didn’t have to make mistakes to learn these lessons. We know the principles of war and have used them with unqualified success in the past. We teach them to our young leaders and reinforce them in military schooling throughout their careers. But it doesn’t do any good if the very principles we teach our magnificent troops are ignored by our leaders.

Col. Jack Jacobs (U.S. Army, retired) is a military analyst for MSNBC.

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