Petraeus on the legacy of the Iraq invasion

A newsletter from POLITICO that unpacks essential global news, trends and decisions.

Mar 24, 2023 View in browser   By Daniel Lippman Welcome back to Global Insider’s Friday feature: The Conversation. Each week a POLITICO journalist will share an interview with a global thinker, politician, power player or personality. This week, POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman talks to retired Gen. David Petraeus about the lessons of the Iraq war. Follow Daniel on Twitter | Send ideas and insights to dlippman@politico.com The Conversation Gen. David Petraeus appears at a graduation ceremony for 700 Iraqi National Police cadets in Baghdad, Iraq, on Dec. 18, 2007. | Khalid Mohammed/AP Photo The year before the invasion of Iraq, David Petraeus was a one-star general in Bosnia before being selected to command the famed 101st Airborne Division late in the summer of 2002. The 101st would be part of the force that invaded Iraq 20 years ago this week. Less than two weeks into the invasion, Petraeus famously asked an embedded reporter, “Tell me how this ends?” He subsequently spent nearly four years in Iraq, most famously commanding the surge in 2007 and 2008 that prevented the country from descending into complete civil war, significantly reduced violence and brought a substantial measure of stability to the country.  Much of that success eroded in late 2011 and 2012 when the Iraqi prime minister took sectarian actions that undid much of what had been achieved. The country today is a rare democracy in the Middle East with free speech and a vibrant press but is hobbled by serious corruption, lack of adequate public services and sectarian militias, despite huge oil revenue. The war killed 4,600 American service members with around 300,000 Iraqis dying directly because of the war. After his service in Iraq, Petraeus led U.S. Central Command and commanded NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan before becoming the director of the CIA. He is now a partner at KKR and chair of the KKR Global Institute. (KKR, an investment firm, holds a significant stake in Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company.) He declined to directly answer whether the war was worth it, saying he would “leave that question to others” and that he had written too many letters of condolence to the parents of soldiers killed in Iraq. But he said that he “firmly believes that the vast majority of our young men and women in uniform, all volunteers at a time of war, served our nation truly admirably in Iraq.”   DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID.     When did you know the U.S. would invade Iraq and what did you think? I learned of the serious possibility of invading Iraq in the summer of 2002, while on the way home from a year in Bosnia. I was not surprised, as I’d heard rumors about discussions in Washington and had been involved in contingency planning for Iraq before deploying to Bosnia. I was asked to stop on the way home from Bosnia to V Corps headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany, as it would be the headquarters for the Army elements in the invasion. The subsequent seven months were filled with intensive planning and preparation, culminating with deployment to Kuwait in February 2003. Even after arrival in Kuwait, we still thought that Saddam Hussein, given memories of the Gulf War, would capitulate at the last moment, welcome U.N. inspectors and resolve the issues around weapons of mass destruction. We listened to the BBC World Service in the Kuwaiti desert every evening for word of Saddam backing down. That obviously did not transpire. How did you think it would play out? I was not certain. We’d been told that certain Iraqi elements might surrender, while the Republican Guards and paramilitary would fight. That generally proved true, and the Saddam Fedayeen proved particularly determined. But the fight to Baghdad unfolded very quickly. I had asked at the final meeting in Kuwait before the invasion, what would happen after we took Baghdad and toppled the regime, and I was told by the deputy head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance [the precursor to the Coalition Provisional Authority], “Just get us to Baghdad, Dave. We’ll take it from there.” The expectation was that once Baghdad was taken and Saddam and his regime were toppled, the rest of the government would largely remain in place and continue to provide local governance and control. It became increasingly evident, however, that this would not transpire, when, half-way to Baghdad and after a stiff fight, the 101st took Najaf, a city of some 500,000 with the holiest shrine in Shia Islam. After the fighting was over, the vast majority of local officials and police melted away. I remember calling Lt. Gen. William “Scott” Wallace, our corps commander, on the radio and telling him that I had good news and bad news. “The good news,” I reported, “is that we own Najaf. The bad news is that we own Najaf. What do you want us to do with it?” He suggested that I call ORHA back in Kuwait and ask for their assistance. I did, but nothing was forthcoming. What’s the legacy of the Iraq invasion?  Our experience in Iraq has carried a very cautionary tale. Iraq was very costly in terms of U.S., coalition and Iraqi lives, with those costs continuing to this day in the form of those still dealing with serious seen and unseen wounds and injuries. The post-Saddam Iraq obviously remains flawed in innumerable ways, though there have been achievements and some modestly encouraging developments. But U.S. credibility in the world and confidence in our institutions were damaged by the failure to find WMDs. And the reprehensible actions at Abu Ghraib — and the indelible images from that tragic episode — along with other mistakes along the way will haunt us for decades to come, despite all the good that we sought to do. The ultimate answer to your question, after 20 years and enormous cost, is that Iraq is still a work in progress, though one that has gotten a little bit more encouraging this year — and has, despite all the turmoil, political dysfunction, corruption, and other shortcomings — at least had five or so elections and generally peaceful, albeit drama-filled, transitions of power, even though the latest took a year. The fact that our lofty hopes for helping to establish democracy in the greater Middle East were not realized has had a chastening effect as well. That was also reinforced by experiences in other countries following the Arab Spring, of course. In fact, those episodes bring to mind something that I believe the late Princeton professor Bernard Lewis once said, along the lines of, “Democracy is strong medicine in the Middle East. It should be administered small doses at a time.”   LISTEN TO POLITICO'S ENERGY PODCAST: Check out our daily five-minute brief on the latest energy and environmental politics and policy news. Don't miss out on the must-know stories, candid insights, and analysis from POLITICO's energy team. Listen today.     War is a messy business. What was your biggest mistake? Well [laughing], I wish I’d not given an interview as a three-star in Iraq in the summer of 2004 that led to a photo of me on the cover of Newsweek, accompanied by a headline that asked, “Can this man save Iraq?” On a much more serious note, it took me (and all of us, frankly) too long to see how nefarious Shia elements were exerting undue influence in certain Iraqi security force elements beginning in mid-2005. We later learned that those elements were mistreating detainees and also abusing Iraqis in some Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad. We sought to remedy that in 2007 when I commanded the surge and, among other actions to deal with such influence, demanded that all three-star, two-star and one-star commanders (as well as some more junior commanders) in the Iraqi special police units were replaced before we would reconstitute those units. We did the same with other units that had such issues. How much did the focus on Iraq detract attention from winning in Afghanistan? We made many mistakes early on in Afghanistan, even before Iraq was seriously contemplated. But, then, in large measure due to the shift in focus and resources to Iraq, we failed even to get the inputs right in Afghanistan until late 2010, nine years after the invasion and elimination of the Al Qaeda sanctuary in which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The shift in attention to Iraq was the principal reason for that. As Admiral Mike Mullen used to observe, “In Iraq, we do what we must. In Afghanistan, we do what we can.” We will never know how Afghanistan might have turned out had we focused on it intensively in the first five years or so while the violence was still very low as the Taliban slowly regrouped in Pakistan, but the question should be asked. Thanks to editor Heidi Vogt and producer Andrew Howard. SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: D.C. Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook | Paris Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | EU Confidential | D.C. Influence | EU Influence | London Influence | Digital Bridge | Europe’s China Direct | U.S. China Watcher | Berlin Bulletin   Follow us

To change your alert settings, please log in at https://www.politico.com/_login?base=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com/settings This email was sent to rouf@idiot.cloudns.cc by: POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA Please click here and follow the steps to unsubscribe.