During the latter half of the 20th century, U.S. military leaders and planners focused heavily on winning wars, and not so much on the peacekeeping or nation-building that comes afterwards. But national objectives can often be accomplished only after the fighting has ceased. With the winds of war swirling around Iraq, it is time to begin planning for the post-conflict reconstruction of that state. This monograph presents some historical insights from past occupations and peace operations, provides some additional analysis of the unique requirements involved in remaking Iraq, and, most importantly, develops a detailed list of potential tasks to help contemporary military commanders plan for post-conflict operations there. Most analysts and commentators focus on World War II for insights about occupying states and replacing regimes. Clearly, the American experience with occupations after major wars provides valuable insights about the importance of long and detailed planning for such missions, and about just how difficult demilitarization and democratization can be, even under the best of conditions. The world has changed a great deal since 1945, however. The experiences of the 1990s are generally more relevant to shape post-conflict operations in Iraq. They reveal past inadequacies in Army planning and preparation, and the difficulties in finding competent and resourced civilian agencies to assume responsibilities from the military. Recent experiences also show that even when the Army plans and performs well in a post-crisis environment, as it did in Haiti, strategic success is not guaranteed. That state quickly reverted back to chaos when military forces left. Iraq presents far from ideal conditions for achieving strategic goals. Saddam Hussein is the culmination of a violent political culture that is rooted in a tortured history. Ethnic, tribal, and religious schisms could produce civil war or fracture the state after Saddam is deposed. The Iraqi Army may be useful as a symbol of national unity, but it will take extensive reeducation and reorganization to operate in a more democratic state. Years of sanctions have debilitated the economy and created a society dependent on the UN Oil for Food Program. Rebuilding Iraq will require a considerable commitment of American resources, but the longer U.S. presence is maintained, the more likely violent resistance will develop. The monograph concludes by developing and describing a phased array of tasks that must be accomplished to create and sustain a viable state. The 135 tasks are organized into 21 categories, and rated as "essential," "critical," or "important" for the commander of coalition military forces. They are then projected across four phases of transition, Security, Stabilize, Build Institutions, and Handover/ Redeploy, to reflect which governmental, nongovernmental, and international organizations will be involved in execution during each phase. To reduce the amount of resentment about the occupation in Iraq and the surrounding region, it is essential that military forces handover responsibilities to civilian agencies as soon as practicable. They, in turn, should relinquish control fairly quickly to the Iraqis, though not until well-defined coalition measures of effectiveness have been achieved for each task. The U.S. Army has been organized and trained primarily to fight and win the nation's major wars. Nonetheless, the Service must prepare for victory in peace as well.

During the latter half of the 20th century, U.S. military leaders and planners focused heavily on winning wars, and not so much on the peacekeeping or nation-building that comes afterwards. But national objectives can often be accomplished only after the fighting has ceased. With the winds of war swirling around Iraq, it is time to begin planning for the post-conflict reconstruction of that state. This monograph presents some historical insights from past occupations and peace operations, provides some additional analysis of the unique requirements involved in remaking Iraq, and, most importantly, develops a detailed list of potential tasks to help contemporary military commanders plan for post-conflict operations there. Most analysts and commentators focus on World War II for insights about occupying states and replacing regimes. Clearly, the American experience with occupations after major wars provides valuable insights about the importance of long and detailed planning for such missions, and about just how difficult demilitarization and democratization can be, even under the best of conditions. The world has changed a great deal since 1945, however. The experiences of the 1990s are generally more relevant to shape post-conflict operations in Iraq. They reveal past inadequacies in Army planning and preparation, and the difficulties in finding competent and resourced civilian agencies to assume responsibilities from the military. Recent experiences also show that even when the Army plans and performs well in a post-crisis environment, as it did in Haiti, strategic success is not guaranteed. That state quickly reverted back to chaos when military forces left.

When President George W. Bush stood on the decks of the U.S.S. Lincoln in May 2003 and announced the victorious end to major combat operations in Iraq, he did so in front of a huge banner that proclaimed "Mission Accomplished." American forces had successfully removed the regime of Saddam Hussein with "rapid decisive operations"-and yet the United States was unprepared to effectively replace that regime. Gordon Rudd's excellent history reveals why in stark detail. Between the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the creation of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that May, the Allied forces struggled to plug the governance gap created by the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime. Plugging that gap became the job of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Cobbled together with staff from diverse federal agencies and military branches, ORHA was led by Jay Garner, a key figure in assisting Kurdish refugees following Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Garner and ORHA were given mere weeks to stabilize a nation that had come completely apart at the seams. Iraq's infrastructure was in such a shambles-thanks to years of poor maintenance, international sanctions, and massive looting-that the mission was doomed to fail from the start. Rudd, field historian for ORHA and CPA, offers a critical look at this impossible effort. He shows that, while military planning for the invasion of Iraq had been conducted for over a decade, planning for regime replacement was haphazard at best. The result was an unnecessarily large loss of lives, treasure, time, and American prestige, despite the inspired efforts of Garner and his staff. Based on nearly 300 interviews and time on the ground in Iraq, Rudd's account also provides an unsettling look at the awkward transition from ORHA to CPA, revealing how Ambassador Paul Bremer managed to make things even worse. Garner here emerges as both heroic and tragic, a charismatic leader of great enthusiasm who took on a task of grand proportions but was poorly served by those who chose him for the mission. As Rudd makes clear, the key lesson of this experience is that regime removal solves nothing without effective regime replacement. That lesson, learned the hard way, serves as a cautionary tale for our engagement in future foreign conflicts.

Ideal for general readers as well as professionals conducting extensive research, this informative book offers a collection of documents on the origins and conduct of the Iraq War. The Iraq War: A Documentary and Reference Guide gives readers the opportunity to investigate this costly and controversial conflict as professional researchers do—by looking closely at key samples of historical evidence. As readers will see, that evidence proves to be extraordinarily revealing about the drive to war, the course of the initial invasion, the counterinsurgency, the "surge," and the continuing difficulties in unifying and stabilizing the country. From relevant exchanges in the 2000 Bush/Gore debates to interviews with Saddam Hussein to the latest reorganization of the Coalition Provisional Authority, The Iraq War gives readers an insider's view of the conflict's key decisions and events. Each chapter brings together primary and secondary sources on an important phase of the war, with the author providing context, analysis, and insight from a historian's perspective. The book also provides a solid framework for working with the documentary record—a particularly difficult task in this case, as so many vital sources will remain classified and inaccessible for years to come.

The relative roles of U.S. ground and air power have shifted since the end of the Cold War. At the level of major operations and campaigns, the Air Force has proved capable of and committed to performing deep strike operations, which the Army long had believed the Air Force could not reliably accomplish. If air power can largely supplant Army systems in deep operations, the implications for both joint doctrine and service capabilities would be significant. To assess the shift of these roles, the author of this report analyzed post1Cold War conflicts in Iraq (1991), Bosnia (1995), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001), and Iraq (2003). Because joint doctrine frequently reflects a consensus view rather than a truly integrated joint perspective, the author recommends that joint doctrine 2 and the processes by which it is derived and promulgated 2 be overhauled. The author also recommends reform for the services beyond major operations and campaigns to ensure that the United States attains its strategic objectives. This revised edition includes updates and an index.