Margaret MacMillan on War on terror

“Moreover, the occupations lacked clear goals after the initial ones of toppling the Taliban or Saddam Hussein. The military found themselves taking on nation-building, something they were not trained for and for which they were not given clear directives. Before the invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003 there was only one meeting in Washington – that February, far too late to be helpful – when representatives from all the different departments involved, including State, Defense, Treasury and the CIA, came together to discuss the post-war situation. Although the State Department had spent a year preparing a massive study, the Defense Department and the White House made it clear that they had no interest in its findings and did not want leading US Iraq experts anywhere near the planning for what happened after victory. War, as the coalition was to discover in Iraq, takes on its own momentum and is often easier to start than to stop.”

“In 2002, as the United States moved towards war against Iraq, a final, huge war game tested American forces’ ability to defeat an unnamed Middle Eastern power. The American side had a clear advantage in advanced electronics, tanks, planes and warships. The general in command of the much weaker ‘enemy’ forces, however, rang rings around his opponents. He kept radio silence and used motorcycles to deliver messages and so made it difficult for his opponent’s electronic surveillance to follow his moves. He had fleets of suicide bombers in speedboats knock out, on paper, sixteen American warships. The Pentagon suspended the game part-way through and rewrote the rules. The warships were miraculously resurrected and the ‘enemy’ general was ordered to turn off his air defences and reveal the location of key units. He chose to quit in disgust. His demonstration of asymmetric war, where a weaker power can disrupt and challenge much stronger forces through unconventional means, was a warning of what was going to happen to coalition forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq, where they were battered by hit and run attacks by guerrillas who communicated through secure channels and who used cheap improvised explosive devices, often shells or other containers packed with explosives and pieces of metal such as ordinary nails which can be set off with cheap, readily available technology such as the remote controls for children’s toy cars or garage-door openers. Such devices have caused the majority of casualties for the occupying forces in both countries.”