Getting Out Right by James Fallows

The Atlantic Online | April 2005 | Getting Out Right | James Fallows
"The two common themes are a lack of foresight and a lack of insight—that is, a failure to ask "What happens next?" and a failure to wonder "How will this look through Iraqi eyes?" Aside from ensuring that enough soldiers were on hand to seal borders and impose order once Baghdad fell, the United States could have managed the occupation differently. It could have prepared itself better for the inevitable Iraqi resentment of a foreign force. It could have stockpiled spare parts for Iraq's battered electrical system, in order to restore lost power quickly and pre-empt complaints that daily life in Baghdad was less convenient than it had been under Saddam Hussein. It could have viewed the prospect of looting as a dire threat to Iraq's recovery, and told its commanders that they must fill the power vacuum Saddam's overthrow would create. (The American indifference to postwar looting is still, two years later, the biggest unexplained failure of Iraq policy.) It could have found ways to get income to the families of the Iraqi soldiers it made jobless.

"To a striking degree, the people who warned in real time about the consequences of these and similar decisions were not academics or antiwar bloggers but military officers, both active and retired. What is the gist of their advice now?"