While I agree with Andrew Sullivan, I'm divided over his conclusions;
"In retrospect, I made three basic miscalculations in favoring the war to depose Saddam three years ago. I thought Saddam had stockpiles of WMDs the discovery of which would bolster support for the war after liberation; I believed we would have enough troops to keep the peace; and I thought the massive reconstruction funds would buy popular support for the occupation. Wrong on all three counts. Here's a story from the NYT today on the reconstruction of Najaf. Najaf is remarkably free from major violence, and yet the reconstruction is still a shambles, hobbled by poor oversight, corruption, delays, translation problems and general incompetence. Anyone who knows contractors of any kind knows some of this is part of the process. But you just have to read this story to see how widespread this mess is. Again: issue one for the Bush administration is government competence. They don't seem to have much. And in the end, with even the best policy in the world, competence matters. Iraq is particularly apposite here, because if there was ever a case in which we knew we had to get it right, this was it. And yet, they seem never at a loss for excuses for failure. Discouraging doesn't quite capture the essence of this. Maddening is more like it.
I think that a more historical perspecive will be required to adequately judge the liberation and reconstruction of Iraq. The total disconnect between the efficient planning for combat operations, and the bungled planning for post-war occupationa nd reconstrcution is glaring. For a while I attributed this to a institutional mind-set that feared being "too ready" to administer Iraq; hence feeding the meme that America planned all-along to annex Iraq and it's oil-fields. Now the results point-out that the war-plan did not include an after-action plan, a potentially fatal error in the post-Cold War era.
Somewhere between the White House, Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon they compromised on a very "light" occupation...and "light" on planning as-well. Out of fear of the "Arab Street", or of the international criticism, they opted for two weak-handed transitional phases; where they shoud have installed an American satrapy with a fixed mandate of 2-3 years, then a handover to sovereign civilian-rule. The three glaring planning errors, based on "policy", were; the disbandment of the Saddam-military apparatus; the failure to occupy and secure the ministries, museums, libraries and hospitals; and the subsequent failure to crush the looting rampages.
