Armed Forces News

The U.S. should incorporate any lessons learned from the Iraq campaigns when planning any future military-operations timelines, the RAND Corporation stated in a Nov. 5 study. The Iraq experience, particularly the two-year drawdown there, should serve as a template for making any critical decisions to end large-scale operations – including the current one in Afghanistan, the report stated. “What made this transition different from previous wars was that it marked a fundamental reorientation of the U.S. relationship with Iraq,” said Richard R. Brennan Jr., the white paper’s lead author and a RAND senior political scientist. Iraq proved to be a textbook example of an operation that required significant changes while in progress, the report concluded. That is because virtually nothing transpired as planned, “mainly because most of the transition planning relied on assumptions and performance measures that proved overly optimistic,” according to the report. Post-conflict Iraq was a dangerous place, requiring changes in performance goals and modification of security requirements as well, the report stated. As such, future operations planners should not cave in to pressure to pull troops out too quickly and create a power vacuum. Even with the pitfalls, the study concluded, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad continues to foster a good bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Iraq.