Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [258]
My memo did not argue for or against military action in Iraq. That was not the intent. Indeed, at the end, I noted that “it is possible of course to prepare a similar illustrative list of all the potential problems that need to be considered if there is no regime change in Iraq.”5 I wrote the memo because I was uneasy that, as a government, we had not yet fully examined a broad enough spectrum of possibilities. Unfortunately, though the Department of Defense prepared for these contingencies in our areas of responsibility, there was never a systematic review of my list to the NSC.
To analyze what an American presence in postwar Iraq might look like, we needed to know with precision what the desired objective was—what were America’s goals. In March 2001, six months before 9/11, I had written a short paper titled “Guidelines When Considering Committing U.S. Forces” that summarized what I believed the commander in chief should consider before ordering combat operations.6 The memo was intended to help the administration establish a framework for when and how military force should be applied, and under what circumstances. I had seen over the years that there often was pressure on presidents to use military force without clearly achievable military objectives.
When it came to the administration’s goals in Iraq, my views were straightforward. They were to help the Iraqis put in place a government that did not threaten Iraq’s neighbors, did not support terrorism, was respectful to the diverse elements of Iraqi society, and did not proliferate weapons of mass destruction. Period. The aim was not to bestow on it an American-style democracy, a capitalist economy, or a world-class military force. If Iraqis wanted to adapt their government to reflect the liberal democratic traditions espoused by Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith, we could start them on their way and then wish them well.
As soon as we had set in motion a process, I thought it important that we reduce the American military role in reconstruction and increase assistance from the United Nations and other willing coalition countries. Any U.S. troops remaining in Iraq would focus on capturing and killing terrorists and left over supporters of the old regime that were still fighting.
I questioned the way earlier administrations had used the military in post-conflict activities. When we took office in 2001, more than twelve thousand forces remained in the Balkans performing tasks that might have been turned over to local security forces earlier.7 Throughout my tenure, I focused on reducing the American military presence in Bosnia and Kosovo and assigning security responsibilities to local security forces or international peacekeepers from countries more directly affected by potential instability in the area.*
I recognized the Yankee can-do attitude by which American forces took on tasks that locals would be better off doing themselves. I did not think resolving other countries’ internal political disputes, paving roads, erecting power lines, policing streets, building stock markets, and organizing democratic governmental bodies were missions for our men and women in uniform. Equally worrisome, locals could grow accustomed to the unnatural presence of foreign forces acting as their de facto government and making decisions for them. The risk was that these nations could become wards of the United States.
My experience in Lebanon during the Reagan administration also demonstrated the problem of dependency on U.S. forces in countries facing internal