Sun Tzu’s prophesy—Not knowing ourselves.

Discord in the ranks.

The other half of Sun Tzu’s prophesy—not knowing ourselves, concerned Bremer and the distorted views of Rumsfeld—his immediate boss. Bremer held an exalted view of himself. His distorted view of the Iraqi people extended to him as well. He took pride in equating himself as another Douglas MacArthur, or General Lucius Clay, who’s roles seemed to him to parallel his own in occupying and rebuilding Japan and Germany following the Allies destruction of both. At the same time, Rumsfeld repeatedly underestimated force levels necessary to suppress the burgeoning, tumultuous insurgency that Bremer had stirred up. Bremer, and the rest of the world, soon discovered the significant differences between his job and that of his role models. 

While similarities existed between the Iraqi and Japanese occupations and reconstruction, the differences proved to be more critical. Bremer didn’t “let the sleeping dog of dormant, yet buried religious animosities lie.” What had been suppressed was fanned into a roaring inferno due his miscalculations concerning Sunnis and Shiites. 

He failed to heed Twain’s admonition concerning religion and politics: “I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.” In the case of the U.S., dividing church and state is foundational to running a democratic government. It didn’t work in Iraq, and may never, due to deeply imbedded religious roots. Given the declared goal of ISIS (to create a caliphate) it seems improbable that separating church and state is in the cards.

Bremer’s first order of business was to establish the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and under the direction of the Bush administration, he proceeded to carry the initial destruction onward to political/religious structure of the people. And this in turn eventually entailed banning all intellectual contributions stemming from the Ba’ath party (an arm of Sunnis in Bremer’s view) and dismantling the Iraqi Army, a force of roughly 400,000 soldiers, all of whom then had no means of earning a living. 

Three years later in 2007, there was a huge debate occurring in Washington concerning troop levels. At the time General Eric K. Shinseki concurred with General John Abizaid. Both believed more were needed. “First vilified, then marginalized by the Bush administration after those comments, General Shinseki retired and faded away, even as lawmakers, pundits and politicians increasingly cited his prescience.” The criticism was particularly vociferous coming from Rumsfeld, his deputy—Paul Wolfowitz, as well as politically inclined Pentagon leadership. The hard line resistance by Rumsfeld that more troops were needed proved both wrong yet accepted by the political administration.

In September of that year, a press release was submitted by Bremer as a New York Times op-ed. titled How I Didn’t Dismantle Iraq’s Army. Bremer said he didn’t make the decision on his own, and that the decision was reviewed by “top civilian and military members of the American government,” including Abizaid, who briefed officials in Washington, saying there were no more “organized Iraqi military units.” Bremer’s article went further into how the Coalition Provisional Authority considered two alternatives: 

(1) To recall the old army, or 
(2) Build a new army, 
“both to be vetted members of the old army—code for no Sunnis—and new recruits.”

According to Bremer, Abizaid preferred the second alternative, thus escaping personal condemnation by passing the buck to Abizaid. What Bremer excluded from his op-ed was what Abizaid also said: “I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.” History has proven both Abizaid and Shinseki right and the Bush political forces wrong. The intense wangling between the politicians and the generals typified Sun Tzu’s prophesy of not knowing ourselves.

Some have crucified Bremer for his individual errors, such as disbanding the army, refusing to employ skilled, mostly apolitical Iraqis (who were banned from holding positions in the newly formed government), and for alienating the Iraqi people into opposing religious factions. But these blunders, while significant, are not the reasons why most Iraqis hated the American occupation and supported violent resistance to it. The main grievance most Iraqis had with America was, and is, simply the occupation itself—an occupation that lingered on years after Bremer waved goodbye. To watch a Frontline video covering this debacle click here.

In the next and final post in this series, we’ll look at how we iced the cake of ISIS emergence and pounded the final nail into the casket of moderation by implicitly aligning ourselves with another Sunni enemy—the Shiites in Iran and those of the Syrian butcher Bashar Hafez al-Assad, President and General Secretary of Syria, and Regional Secretary of the Ba’ath Party in Syria—Saddam’s party, the very one we fought to destroy. MT was right about “...in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.”