Post War Planning and Why its important

When going into Iraq, the United States made one critical error. No post-war planning. In terms of strategy, the great American military crushed the Iraqi military. Yes, we won the war. We decimated the Iraq army. Never again will they pose a threat to Kuwait or Israel. Iraq has lost its ability to wage war. But I didn’t say defend? The problem is that Iraq still has a large amount of weapons stockpiled. Hence, invading into Iraq will serve little more than tying down the military. Aside from the French, it is impossible to fight against a nation with a dedicated militia.

Now go back to World War 2. Why didn’t Germany and Japan continue fighting? They still had people. And I know that Japan at least, were willing to fight down to the very last citizen. The reason is that we occupied Japan for the time being, we built schools and hospitals. We built infrastructure. We offered the Japanese a better life than us being gone. Same goes with Germany. Why is Berlin such a modern city? Because when we were occupying Germany post-war, we built it.

Northern Iraq is relatively safe, because it is occupied mostly by the Kurds. Now, the Kurds haven’t exactly had the greatest time. They’ve been constantly attacked, gassed, bombed, attacked, gassed, bombed, you get the point. However, the American military offers them a better life. They aren’t being attacked. And look at what we have, the Kurds are now one of our strongest allies in the Iraqi region.

The major flaw in fighting in Iraq, is that we have not offered any of them a better life. Quite frankly, we’ve offered them a very convoluted wife. Between the Americans blowing up buildings and shops, the firefights between terrorists and Americans, the general Iraqi had one thing before the Americans came through. Stability. Maybe they had fear, but they were at least stable under Saddam’s rule. Democracy does not provide stability for a nation. Terrorist organizations are able to recruit in Iraq because people see the United States and someone who pretty much came in romping through everything that was important.

Instead of fighting terrorism, we really should be rebuilding infrastructure. We should be providing them food, water, and shelter. Even if terrorist organizations are not convinced, at the very least, there will be people who will give us information. If we give the Iraqi’s a better life, then we have won. This is something that should have been planned beforehand. We should have secured funding for this before the war. Admittedly this would have required much more manpower and non-military personnel, but this is war. And war is never cheap.