U.S. military still weighing Iraq lessons
Ten years after the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military is still weighing its lessons.
Those tanks that went roaring into Baghdad on the so-called "Thunder Run" were the epitome of American firepower. Commanded by then-Col. David Perkins, they tore through enemy fighters faster than they could react.
"The higher the rate of battle the better it is for us. In other words, the more chaos so to speak, that you can create, that gives us our ability to out command and control them," Perkins said.
But after sowing chaos, Perkins' mission suddenly changed to creating stability, a mission for which his armored brigade was ill suited both in equipment and training. Now a general, he wishes he'd asked more questions about what he was supposed to do after he got to Baghdad.
"The number of questions I would ask probably would be ten-fold," Perkins said. "We didn't understand the power grid, which in the end we probably spent more time dealing with the power grid than, we quickly dispatched with their tanks."
The transition from chaos to stability was just one of the failures of the Iraq war listed in a report titled "Decade of War," written for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Lt. Gen. George Flynn.
"What the report says -- and we're being brutally honest to make sure that we learn the right lessons -- is that we didn't manage those transitions as well as we should have," Flynn said.
Just as after Vietnam, politicians can vow never to fight another long and unpopular war against insurgents. But Perkins said that would be exactly the wrong lesson for the military to learn from Iraq.
"We can never be in a position to say, you know what, we don't do that anymore," Perkins said.
The great lesson of Iraq -- that the American military must be prepared both to sow chaos and create stability -- must be learned not just by those who fought there, but by all those who come after.
