Preponderance in U.S. Foreign Policy by Graham Slater

Author:Graham Slater
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing

Chapter 5

The Iraq War FPDM Prisms and the Man Behind the Curtain

Part I. FPE

Criterion I. Degree of Fruition of Primary and Secondary Objectives

On March 21, 2003, the day after the invasion of Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld set forth the preliminary goals of the invasion, or what he termed “aims and objectives we have for the days ahead:”

Our goal is to defend the American people, and to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and to liberate the Iraqi people. Coalition military operations are focused on achieving several specific objectives: to end the regime of Saddam Hussein by striking with force on a scope and scale that makes clear to Iraqis that he and his regime are finished. Next, to identify, isolate and eventually eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, production capabilities, and distribution networks. Third, to search for, capture, and drive out terrorists who have found safe harbor in Iraq. Fourth, to collect such intelligence as we can find related to terrorist networks in Iraq and beyond. Fifth, to collect such intelligence as we can find related to the global network of illicit weapons of mass destruction activity. Sixth, to end sanctions and to immediately deliver humanitarian relief, food and medicine to the displaced and to the many needy Iraqi citizens. Seventh, to secure Iraq’s oil fields and resources, which belong to the Iraqi people, and which they will need to develop their country after decades of neglect by the Iraqi regime. And last, to help the Iraqi people create the conditions for a rapid transition to a representative self-government that is not a threat to its neighbors and is committed to ensuring the territorial integrity of that country.1

The following day, General Tommy Franks, commanding general of the invasion force, reiterated these objectives, promising, “This will be a campaign unlike any other in history, a campaign characterized by shock, by surprise, by flexibility, by the employment of precise munitions on a scale never before seen, and by the application of overwhelming force.”2 Use of the phrase “overwhelming force” was clearly intentional, given that Colin Powell and other military leaders had demanded just that as one of the lessons of the Vietnam War and a cornerstone of modern American war doctrine (never mind that overwhelming force was employed time and time again in Vietnam tactically in the air and on the ground with no corresponding strategic success). Of course, these were all tactical objectives, as the Defense Department is charged with carrying out military policy, not creating it. If “the army doesn’t make strategy,” the words and preferences of defense officials nevertheless do affect policy to a certain degree. Both the military and the intelligence community would become politically enmeshed in the Iraq War to a further extent than defined in their charters with respect to weapons of mass destruction (WMD), troop levels, and other matters. But in terms of establishing the war narrative, the Bush Administration set the tone, in concert with the authority of presidential administrations throughout modern American foreign policy.

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