The End of Iraq

The end of Iraq

Peter W. Galbraith

"President Bush doesn't lack for critics when it comes to his Iraq policies, but the smartest and most devastating of these is Peter W. Galbraith."

—David Brooks, "Divided They Stand," The New York Times, August 25, 2005

From The End of Iraq, By Peter W. Galbraith

The Bush Administration's grand ambitions for Iraq were undone by arrogance, ignorance, and political cowardice. In not preparing for the collapse of law and order, the Administration ignored the warnings of experts and of Iraqis and seemed to assume that Iraq's police and bureaucrats would report for work the day after Saddam fell. This coincided with its unwillingness to take the politically difficult decision to deploy sufficient troops, and to give those it did send responsibility for maintaining law and order.

While attempting a breathtakingly bold effort at nation-building, the Administration relied on the judgments of inexperienced and unqualified staff instead of those who actually knew something about the country. I have asked Iraq's elected political leaders where they thought the United States went wrong. All gave the same answer: when the United States became an occupier instead of a liberator, in short, when the Bush Ad¬ministration decided it was more capable of determining Iraq's future than the peoples of the country itself.