Other wrong ingredients in baking the cake.

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.” MT

Mr. Twain’s unabashed bitter pill of honesty distinguishes between what comes naturally, and what can only be earned. To examine this distinction takes us to another perspective regarding ourselves and our enemies.

According to Sun Tzu (The Art of War),“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Concerning the war in Iraq, as it eventually turned out, the U.S. fell prey to knowing neither the enemy nor themselves. Following the “Mission Accomplished” speech by President George W. Bush in May 2003, it became increasingly clear that the only thing of significance that had been accomplished was defeating the Iraqi army and the destruction of their infrastructure. And then came the oops: “Oh,you mean we now need to deal with the population of Iraq?” This small matter seemed to be a surprise and it suddenly dawned on those asleep at the switch that we were experts at waging war and miserable at managing the ensuing chaos of the people we had defeated. The U.S. appeared to never consider the “what comes next.” 

Then “Along Came a Spider” to weave the web of reconstruction—or more aptly Bush’s man: Presidential Envoy to Iraq—Mr. Paul Bremer. From May 2003 until June 2004, Mr. Bremer served as head of state of the internationally recognized government of Iraq and by nearly all counts was the tip of the spear, launched by the Bush bunch that led increasingly to civil war in Iraq. Bremer’s preconceived biases concerning the Iraqi people vastly distorted knowledge of the enemy.

Despite these biases, prior to the invasion, the Iraqi population was more unified than Bremer and the Bush people imagined them to be. Time and again, Bremer revealed his bias, referring to “the formerly ruling Sunnis,” “rank-and-file Sunnis,” “the old Sunni regime,”and “responsible Sunnis.” This obsession with sects informed the U.S. approach to Iraq from day one of the occupation, but it was not how Iraqis saw themselves—at least not until Bremer stuck his finger in the hornet’s nest and created chaos to match his wrong headed perspectives. 

Iraqis were not primarily Sunnis or Shiites; they were Iraqis first, and their sectarian identities did not become polarized until Americans occupied their country, treating Sunnis as the bad guys and Shiites as the good guys. There were no blocs of Sunni Iraqis or Shiite Iraqis before the war, just like there was no Sunni Triangle or Shiite South until American politicians imposed (reflected by Bremer) ethnic and sectarian identities onto Iraq’s regions. Bremer was not alone in his blindness. John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, displayed the same dismal approach to Iraq as Bremer. Bolton claimed that most of the refugees were Sunnis, fleeing because “they feared that Shiites were going to exact retribution for the four or five decades of Ba’ath rule.”

In spite of how Iraqis saw themselves, Bremer pitted the Sunnis and Shiites against one another, and fueled the fires of the ISIS emergence. This should come as no surprise since Bremer knew nothing about Iraq and its culture, spoke no Arabic, had no prior experience in the Middle East, and took no action to educate himself on the critical matters that could have led the Iraqi people toward unification, away from civil war, and the rising tide of ISIS.

He, or more than likely his Washington handlers, held hardened perspectives that drove U.S. policies. In Bremer’s mind, the way to occupy Iraq was not to view it as a nation but as a group of minorities. So he pitted the minority that wasn’t benefiting from the system against the minority that was, and then expected them both to be grateful. Bremer ruled Iraq as if it were already undergoing a civil war, helping the Shiites by punishing the Sunnis. He didn’t see his job as managing the country; he saw it as managing a civil war. Due to his impacted resolve, Bremer, more than anyone, ending up causing one.

Many Iraqis saw the Americans as new colonists, intent on dividing and conquering Iraq. That was precisely Bremer’s approach. When he succumbed slightly to Iraqi demands for democracy and created the Interim Governing Council, its members were selected by sectarian and ethnic quotas. Even the Communist Party member of the council was chosen not because he was secular but because he was a Shiite.

However, according to Bremer, Iraqis hated their army at the time of the U.S. invasion. In fact, the army was the most nationalist institution in the country, one that predated the Ba’ath Party. In electing not to fight U.S. forces, the army was expecting to be recognized by the occupation—and indeed, until Bremer was installed, it appeared that many soldiers and officers were hoping to cooperate with the Americans.

His miscalculations of the enemy accounted for one half of Sun Tzu’s prophesy. In the following post, we’ll explore how the U.S. came to fulfill the second half of Sun Tzu’s prophesy—not knowing ourselves.