GOV 312 L - Test 2

050: Authorization of the Use Military Force (AMUF) of September 18, 2001

• The most consequential act at this stage was the passage by Congress on Sept. 18th of an open-ended authorization to use military force 

• Only one representative, Barbara Lee of California, voted against the measure which read ‘the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the US by such nations, organizations or persons 

• No expiration date and presidents would invoke it to attack alleged Al-Qaeda affiliates for decades to come 

• Only declaration of war from Congress for the invasion of Afghanistan that was to follow within weeks 

050: Operation Enduring Freedom

• Article 5, collective self-defense, was activated and NATO states moved to assist the US in its mission 

• Bush had issued an ultimatum to the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, to turn over bin Laden to the US or be overthrown 

• Omar proposed a compromise of trying bin Laden in Afghanistan or another Muslim country based on evidence of his guilt provided by the US 

  • The Bush Administration rejected it

  • Omar didn’t believe that the US was that serious about invading Afghanistan 

    • They weren’t following events on TV (they were banned for most parts of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate) 

•  Americans were ready to expend lives and money to catch bin Laden and topple his host government 

• Oct. 2001, the US with NATO support but without UNSC authorization launched an air and small land intervention that tipped the tide in Afghanistan civil war in favor of non-Taliban forces, the Northern Alliance, and forced the Taliban to retreat

• DID NOT SUCCEED IN CAPTURING OSAMA BIN LADEN OR AYMAN ZAWAHIRI

050-060: George W. Bush

• part of UNSC Resolution 1838

• Operation Enduring Freedom

• 9/11 Attacks

• 43rd president, 2001-2009

• Iraq Liberation Act

• Bush administration went to work convincing Americans that Saddam posed a fundamental threat to their safety and way of life 

• Operation Iraqi Freedom

• Bush Freedom Agenda

050: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky

• a renowned duo of psychologists whose groundbreaking collaboration revolutionized our understanding of human decision-making

  • prospect theory: explains how people make decisions when faced with risk and uncertainty

050: Warren Christopher

• (Secretary of State during Clinton’s first term)

• wanted a quick response with the 9/11 attacks

  • system 1

050: Sandy Berger

• Clinton’s National Security Advisor during his second term

• wanted to rationalize the 9/11 situation by learning how to prevent future attacks

  • system 2

050: Public Reaction to Sept. 11th Attacks

• The event succeeded in terrifying the strongest military power on the planet 

  • Longer lesson is that terrorism should be ignored, but the danger it poses should also not be inflated out of all proportion to its actual destructive ability

• Tangible stuff: the world did not change on Sept. 11th, even if people’s perceptions of the world changed 

  • Taking commercial airliners for travel was still safer than driving on highways 

  • The Al Qaeda was still a small organization with limited popular appeal in the Muslim world 

  • The US was still a superpower whose citizens enjoyed unmatched security at home and whose leaders still had little power at molding other countries to match their designs 

    • System 1 told us that all these things had changed

050: Extent of Al-Qaeda capabilities

• The 9/11 attacks were not an opening salvo in a devastating series of high casualty attacks against Americans in their home country - rather, they were the outer limit of Bin Laden and the al Qaeda’s capabilities, an exceptional effort to slip through numerous security and logistical obstacles

• In retrospect, it is owed as much to the luck of the hijackers as it did to their cleverness or devotion to their cause 

  • Example: two of the hijackers were being watched by the CIA, but they didn’t tell the FBI because they didn’t want arrests jeopardizing other intelligence operations they were carrying out 

  • They had numerous opportunities to catch them, but didn’t 

  • Evidence showed that they were a weak organization

• The event represented the peak because other attacks linked to bin Laden failed to inflict similar destruction and terror because they were stopped completely or partly disrupted or because the plots were comparably minor to begin with 

• Throughout the 1990s, the Al Qaeda talked a lot about liberating Muslim lands, but the group achieved little in the way of a strategic victory over the non-Muslim invaders that it reviled 

• Attempted to reorder global politics, but they had nothing like the level of mass support or military capabilities to shake the commitments of others

• Bin Laden also lacked a popular base + no modern army to speak of 

• The pinnacle of Al Qaeda’s murderous in the 1990s was loading up vehicles with explosives and getting them as close as possible to major buildings during daytime hours to increase the likelihood of heavy casualties

050: System 1 vs. System 2

• System 1

  • Gut reaction

  • In situations of danger, our brains have been adapted to use of this, so we can survive as species 

  • Most ingrained pathways 

  • 9/11 attacks activated system 1 in order to stir panic and generate concessions or changes in behavior from what the target population would otherwise be doing if the terrorist attacks had not taken place 

• System 2

  • The 9/11 attacks provoked system two, but it also activated system 1

  • ‘The brain’ 

050: UNSC Resolution of the 1368/2001

• This was not an authorization of war 

• Unanimous voting means that the other four veto-wielding states, China, Russia, the UK, and France voted with the US 

• The 10 non-permanent members (countries that were serving two-year terms and did not have a veto) they also voted with the US 

  • Included two Muslim-majority states, Bangladesh and Tunisia 

• The resolution was a solid recognition of the crime that had taken place against Americans 

• The preamble to the resolution also acknowledged ‘inherent right of individual or collective self defense that each UN member state enjoys in accordance with the United Nations Charter’ 

• Months later, after the Taliban government had fallen, the UNSC Resolution 1386 (12/20/01, 15-0-0) would authorize a peacekeeping force in Afghanistan) 

  • Bush administration got a stronger sign of potential military support from its closest European partners 

050: Article 5 of the NATO Charter

• ‘The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America, shall be considered an attack against them all. If such an armed attack occurs, each of them will assist the party or parties so attacked’

• For the whole existence, Article 5 had never been invoked 

• Took the step, although at the time, the attack’s origin or whether it was foreign or domestic wasn’t confirmed yet 

• Oct. 2nd, NATO confirms the invocation of Article 5

050: Casualty aversion

• the reluctance or unwillingness of a nation, particularly its public and leadership, to accept military casualties, especially in prolonged or large-scale conflicts

• shifted American foreign policy away from a pre-existing casualty-averse approach, leading to large-scale military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq

050: the ‘pretty prudent’ public

• Helps explain where that baseline number comes from, whether it’s 70% or 50% or 60%

• Helps explains what other variables determine or shape the level of overall approval

  • These variables also relate to casualty aversion, but in a more general sense 

• Found that ordinary Americans, even when they didn’t have extensive knowledge about US foreign policy or even just what was going on in the news, these Americans tended to make inferences about the relative risk of a proposed military intervention 

  • the more risky the intervention sounded to them, the less likely they were to support it 

• Basic factors that shaped the level or risk

  • Foreign policy objective

    • Most popular kinds of intervention was the ones that addressed a security threat in which the US was acting to push back and restrain a hostile foreign power or foreign group 

    • Humanitarian and peacekeeping missions also tended to be favored 

    • The least popular type of mission were regime change or ‘internal policy chains’ 

      • Going into the government and rearranging it or overthrowing the government

  • Type of mission (what kinds of forces what be used)

    • Whether or not the US forces were being put on the ground in combat - on land 

    • The more the survey question described that the US service members would be on land, the less approval that intervention scenario elicited from the respondents 

    • The most popular were air interventions and at sea 

    • One exception has been special forces missions 

  • The most popular broadling would be those where the US is advancing the goal of foreign policy restraint through the application of air power without boots on the ground 

• Degree of cost benefit analysis in which the goal of the intervention mattered 

• More vital, pressing missions got more support than others that looked discretionary or ideological and less necessary 

050: the foreign policy disconnect

• Built on the decades of creative data collection that tries to track not only the attitudes of regular Americans, but also the views of the political and policy making elite (those with more access, more voice, and generally more influence in Washington DC) 

• Method involves sending surveys to business leaders, journalists, university professors, elected officials and members of think tanks, all whom have been shown to be more comfortable about sending US service members into combat missions overseas than ordinary Americans have been 

• By comparison, ordinary Americans tend to be focused on bread and butter issues at home, and they’re less worried about political stability in other countries thousands of miles away about imposing US preferences on those places

• Tends to show great commonality among ordinary, non-elite Democrats, Republics, and independents on matters of military intervention and national security 

• The sense of national fear and solidarity prompted a rare convergence of a lead in mass opinion on military intervention and a willingness to set aside concerns about casualties that had limited the use of force for decades

Which of the following statements explains why the Sunni Awakening was so successful?

A) ISIS made important financial contributions.

B) The U.N. supplied important military equipment.

C) The U.S. switched from imposing its own preferences to addressing the needs of the Sunni Arabs.

D) The U.S. adopted a more coercive approach towards the Sunnis

C) The U.S. switched from imposing its own preferences to addressing the needs of the Sunni Arabs.

Which of the following best describes the Sunni Awakening in Iraq?

A) An arrangement in which the U.N. supplied Iraq with medical and humanitarian aid.

B) An arrangement between Iraq and its allies to launch an attack against the U.S.

C) A partnership between Iraq and Europe to secure its territorial borders.

D) A change in alliances in which Sunni fighters in Iraq aligned themselves with American troops to fight against other Iraqi insurgents.

D) A change in alliances in which Sunni fighters in Iraq aligned themselves with American troops to fight against other Iraqi insurgents.

Which agreement guided the withdrawal of US forces in Iraq?

A) The Baghdad Stability Pact

B) The Agreement Iraqi Freedom

C) The Baghdad Reconciliation Accord

D) The US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)

D) The US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)

Army Captain Travis Patriquin wrote a manual on how to effectively fight insurgents in Iraq. Which of the following was the main point of that manual?

A) To effectively fight insurgents the U.S. needed the support of the United Nations Security Council.

B) To effectively fight insurgents the U.S. needed to use “enhanced interrogation.

C) To effectively fight insurgents the U.S. needed to win local support by protecting the population.

D) To effectively fight insurgents the U.S. needed to using overwhelming force in rural areas.

C) To effectively fight insurgents the U.S. needed to win local support by protecting the population.

What did the U.S. hope would be the long term outcome of its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan? 

A) The U.S. hoped it would lead to the decentralization of the Afghan government.

B) The U.S.'s only goal was to eliminate threats to its own security.

C) The U.S. hoped it would lead to the establishment of a highly centralized democratic government.

D) The U.S. hoped to turn the country into an American territory

C) The U.S. hoped it would lead to the establishment of a highly centralized democratic government.

Which minority group in Iraq was most affected by the de-Baathification policies? 

A) Sunnis

B) Yazidis

C) Kurds

D) Shias

A) Sunnis

What did the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Iraq authorize?

A) The establishment of a no-fly zone over Iraq

B) The deployment of UN peacekeepers to Iraq

C) The use of military force against Iraq

D) Economic sanctions against Iraq

C) The use of military force against Iraq

Which of the following figures was the leader of Afghanistan when Obama ordered the surge? 

A) Ashraf Ghani

B) Mohammed Omar

C) Hamid Karzai

D) Pervez Musharraf

C) Hamid Karzai

According to the Gordon reading, what was a major consequence of the U.S. invasion of Iraq aimed at toppling the government of Saddam Hussein?

A) The establishment of liberal democracy in Iraq.

B) The death of thousands and displacement of millions of Iraqis.

C) The permanent entrenchment of the rule of the IS Caliphate.

D) The return of the Baath Party to power.

B) The death of thousands and displacement of millions of Iraqis.

According to Professor Brownlee’s lecture, what is nation-building?

A) The attempt by foreign states to create democratic and secure states

B) The attempt to liberate a territory controlled by a colonizing foreign power

C) The attempt to create a greater sense of national identity within one's own country by expelling all outside influences

D) The attempt to guide another country’s development through a combination of diplomacy and economic sanctions

A) The attempt by foreign states to create democratic and secure states

055: Pakistan government’s security priorities

• After the Bangladesh Liberation war, the Pakistani leaders would be more careful about mollifying or repressing any potential ethnic separatist movements

055: Islam in domestic policy in Pakistan

• In 1973, Pakistanis adopted a constitution that declared their country an Islamic Republic - world’s first 

• Made Islam a state religion, only Muslims could serve as prime minister and that ‘all existing laws should be brought into conformity with the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran and the teachings of the prophet known as the Sunnah

• Large portion of Pakistanis have supported implementing these and other provisions to the fullest possible extent 

• This created a political cleavage among Pakistanis and among Pakistani Muslim based on how traditional or conservative the resulting policy should be

055: Access, Basing, and Overflight Rights (ABO)

• Afghanistan is bordered on one side by Iran (not good)  

• North side, bordered by China (not good) 

• Central Asian former Soviet Republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (can enjoy some ABO with them)

055: Exclusion of Taliban from postwar governance

055: UNSC Resolution 1386

• Dec. 2001, the US got a resolution through the UNSC that authorized a peacekeeping mission, and this gave the imprimatur of international law to a long-term US led military occupation in Afghanistan

  • Created the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which would become the de facto internal police of Afghanistan in the Karzai era

055: General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq (Pakistan)

055: General Pervez Musaharraf (Pakistan)

• In 1958, a Pakistani general named Ayub Khan took charge and he established a military run regime that lasted until 1971 

• Two subsequent coups also overthrew elected civilian governments 

• 1977, General Mohammed Zia O’Hawk took charge and ruled until he died in an airplane crash in 1988

• In 1999, General Pervez Musharraf ousted the prime minster 

  • Stay in power until 2008

• Interested in maintaining close ties with the Taliban and he far preferred them to the alternative in the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance in Afghanistan 

• Brought Pakistan aboard the American alliance, at least for the time being

055: Two main Pakistani parties: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League (PML)

• In the most recent decades, the prime ministers have mostly come from two parties, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) 

  • The parties have different regional constituencies and somewhat different economic platforms 

  • Taken different stances on the question of Islam and politics

• PPP

  • Had been less aligned with traditional religious parties 

• PML

  • More aligned with traditional religious parties 

• Both 

  • The Pakistani generals who often serve as the ultimate arbiters of Pakistani policymaking, they were very willing to work with the Taliban for all of the worries about Pashunistan and strategic death 

055: Benazir Bhutto (PPP)

• - first female head of government in the Muslim world 

  • Briefly served after the Ziaul-Hak dictatorship and was back as prime minister in the mid-1990s when the Taliban took Kabul and announced their Islamic Emirate 

  • International standard bearer, she did not shun the Taliban over their patriarchal policies, instead she worked with Pakistani generals to help the Taliban solidify its powers and enable steady trade across Afghanistan 

  • Keen to develop commerce in Southern Afghanistan through Kandahar and on further west to Iran

055: Nawaz Sharif (PML)

• Successor under Bhutto

• 1999, had a falling out with his top generals and was ousted by the army chief himself had appointed, General Pervez Musharraf

055: Northern Alliance (also known as the ‘United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan,’ but hardly anyone calls them that)

Northern Alliance (ex-Mujahideen, former warlords)

055: Hamid Karzai (Afghanistan)

• Cosmopolitan Pashtun political who got well with US intelligence agencies and who had participated in rallying Pashtuns in Southern Afghanistan against the Taliban during the recent ground war 

• During the Bonn Conference, Karzai’s relative weakness actually made him more appealing as a consensus candidate 

• Afghan leaders from the Northern Alliance did not find him threatening 

• Foreign governments found him to be a pliable figure who would carry out their wishes from within Afghanistan’s new institutions 

• To get anything done, he had to depend on other Afghan leaders 

• From 2009-2014, he had an often tense relationship with the Obama administration 

055: International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)

• The UNSC Resolution 1386 created the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which would become the de facto internal police of Afghanistan in the Karzai era 

• Along with ISAF, the US and allied governments would deploy provincial reconstruction teams with the goal of helping Afghans improve infrastructure and service delivery - cleary example of mission creep, of diverging from the Powell-Weinberger Doctrine, but the full extent of this mission’s expansion would not become clear for years to come

055: Creation of India and Pakistan (1947)

• Pakistan and India gained independence from Great Britain in 1947

  • Partitioned into the much larger, more populous Hindu-majority state of India and the non-contiguous Muslim-majority state of Pakistan, which originally comprised two divisions separated by the width of India

  • Partition was a violent process involving ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, sorting themselves into two more homogenous confessional communities 

    • 1M killed and 15M forcibly displaced 

  • India’s economy is 3x more than Pakistan 

  • India’s population is 4x more than Pakistan

• India spends 7x as much annually on its military forces as Pakistan does

055: Bangladesh War of Independence (1971)

• Bangladesh Liberation War: resulted in the secession of East Pakistan into its own country, Bangladesh 

  • This war affected Pakistan’s leaders and would forever shape their policies 

  • The population of East Pakistan was overwhelmingly Bengali-speaking 

    • The central government over in West Pakistan didn’t grant them language rights and didn’t permit them to turn their demographic strength into political power in parliament

      • These grievances stirred a powerful secession movement, which West Pakistan tried to suppress only to face an Indian intervention on behalf of East Pakistan 

      • The intervention defeated the Pakistani military and created the new state of Bangladesh 

• After the war, the Pakistani leaders would be more careful about mollifying or repressing any potential ethnic separatist movements

055: Idea of Pashtunistan

• The Idea of a nation of Pashtuns, Pashtunistan, poses the prospect of a sort of second Bangladesh, this time on Pakistan’s western flank 

  • The Pakistani leaders have worked to prevent such a scenario by maintaining a measure of control and influence over Pashtuns on both sides of the border 

    • Inside Pakistan, this means suppressing any signs of mass political dissent 

    • The Pakistani government does not want to see leaders in Kabul being in league with Indian leaders in Delhi - do not want to feel flanked by India itself on one side and an Indian proxy on the other

055: Civilian-military relations

• Pakistani army has played a pivotal role in influencing civilian led governments 

  • Significant business holdings and economic influence within Pakistan - use this influence to command the support of a large number of wealthy and working class citizens in the civilian population 

    • During elections these partners and clients can serve as a kind of vote bank, a loyal constituency that the generals can instruct to vote for their preferred candidates among the civilian parties 

  • Military can also hold sway in the judicial system, applying pressure or incentives to get judges to pass rulings that go in their preferred direction 

• Another major influence on the leaders of Pakistan, military leaders and civilian leaders, is the country’s religious institutions and traditions 

055: Coups

• Coup: literal meaning is a grab

  • Example: grab for power 

  • Guideline of coup: when a small number of people take power, not just try to take over a government, but actually gain control over a government

    • Typically, the small number of people come from the armed forces because they have more resources than regular civilians

• Two subsequent coups also overthrew elected civilian governments 

• 1977, General Mohammed Zia O’Hawk took charge and ruled until he died in an airplane crash in 1988

• In 1999, General Pervez Musharraf ousted the prime minster 

  • Stay in power until 2008

• Pakistan experienced multiple coups

055: Revolutions

Revolution: a large number people take power

055: Basics of US-led invasion of Afghanistan

• Pakistani cooperation was essential to the intervention in Afghanistan at the start, and it became even more important over time

• Combination of overwhelming technological superiority from above gave the Northern Alliance, the former warlords of Afghanistan, as well as substantial portions of non-Northern Alliance, it gave these groups the ability to push the Taliban out and retake much of the territory that these groups had lost to the Taliban back in 1994-1996

055: Bonn Conference

• Under the new aegis of the United Nations, the United States convened a conference in Bonn, Germany, in Dec. 2001, to appoint an interim Afghan government that would pave the way for an Afghan constitutional assembly and elections 

  • Bonn conference was the first step toward an Afghan run self-determining government 

  • Showcased the global goodwill that the US enjoyed in the initial months after 9/11

  • The conference produced a set of cabinet members and a chairperson who were charged with running Afghanistan for the next 6 months 

  • During that phase, these same figures would lead a political process inside Afghanistan, laying out the rules for a permanent government 

    • Mostly men from the Northern Alliance 

    • The most powerful and influential ministries went to non-Pashtuns 

      • The switch of Pashtun dominance to lack of power made millions of Afghans worried and Musharraf’s government in Pakistan 

060: How oil fits in the rationale for attacking Iraq

• The Iraq War was mostly about oil 

• Alan Greenspan wrote “I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows. The Iraq War is largely about oil. I have never heard [Bush and Cheney] basically say ‘We’ve got to protect the oil supplies of the world,’ but that would have been my motive." - “if Saddam Hussein had been head of Iraq and there was no oil under those sands, our response to him would not have been as strong as it was in the first 1990-1991 Gulf War.”

• Evidence of the last 30 years, Saddam was very clearly giving evidence of moving towards controlling the Straits of Hormuz, where there are 17-19 million barrels a day passing through 

• Removing Saddam helped in ‘making certain that the existing system of oil markets continue to work, frankly, until we find other energy supplies, which ultimately we will” 

• Partially correct 

• Administration is saying no, no, it was not about oil 

• PROBLEM IS: WEALTH OF OIL OR WHATEVER SOURCE IN THE WRONG HANDS 

  • Oil matters because it makes governments rich, but the way oil matters depends on US relations with the government

  • No oil producer has the ability to shut down energy supplies to consuming nations, like the US and its allies, that are willing and able to pay market prices  

060: Axis of Evil concept

• Jan. 2002, Bush labeled Iraq part of an Axis of Evil 

  • Other two were North Korea and Iran 

• he believed that they were evil because they were posing a threat to the US and its allies through their sponsorship of terrorism and development of mass destruction

060: Authorization of Military Force (AMUF) against Iraq Resolution of 2002

• Congress granted Bush political support and legal authority to invade Iraq 

  • The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Iraq Resolution) passed both houses of Congress with large majorities on Oct. 10-11

  • 77 senators, including 29 Democrats, voting in favor to 23 against (21 Democrats and 1 Republican and 1 Independent) 

  • Not a technical declaration of war 

  • For Senate Democrats, it was a dramatic flip from their party’s votes 

  • Became a political liability for senators Hiliary Clinton, John Kerry, and Joe Biden 

    • Planning to run for president and were worried about the political repercussions of opposing a war that went well

    • Biden went a different direction (voting yeas)

060: Powell presentation at UNSC

• Plan was to amplify the threats to their loudest volume yet, including by citing secretly-obtained information that government professionals had themselves cast doubt on

• Al-Qaeda ties: Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi - a Libyan affiliated with Al-Qaeda who was picked up fleeing Afghanistan after Operation Enduring Freedom 

  1. Came from the renditions program that the CIA had been expanding under Bush’s orders during the first week after 9/11

  2. Al-Libi was captured by Pakistani forces while fleeing Afghanistan in Oct. 2001 

  3. He passed from the custody of the FBI to the CIA 

  4. Al-Libi’s Egyptian captors then threatened him with a long list of methods, which ‘would make him confess because 3000 individuals before him had all confessed’ 

  5. Al-Libi assembled a story built around names of actual Al-Qaeda operatives he had encountered - fibbed that two of them went to Iraq for training in chemical and biological weapons - warded off harsher interrogation methods - later retract earlier statements 

  6. Immediately doubted it was true, however bush officials would dredge up this in the rationale for invading Iraq 

• Nuclear Programs: Aluminum tubes 

  1. Exhaustively investigated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)  as well as the UN

  2. Bush and Powell claimed that some aluminum tubes had been found in Iraq were being used to enrich uranium and thereby help build a nuclear bomb 

  3. Broader claim that Saddam was hiding this program from inspectors 

  4. IAEA said ‘first, we have inspected all of those buildings and facilities that were identified, through satellite imagery, as having been modified or constructed over the past four years. IAEA inspectors have been able to gain ready access and to clarify the nature of the activities currently being conducted in these facilities. No prohibited nuclear activities have been identified during these inspections.”

• Bio Weapons: ‘Curveball’ (Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi) - an Iraqi defector in Germany 

  1. Came from an informant in Germany, an Iraqi exile, Rafid Ahmed, whom US intelligence had code named Curveball because his reputation for being unreliable (he made it ALL UP)

Powell was unsuccessful at getting approval for war from the UNSC

060: Operation Iraqi Freedom

• March 19th, in the US early morning, March 20th in Iraq and President Bush ordered offensive operations to commence Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched at 9:30 PM ET / 5:30 AM in Iraq 

  • The initial invasion and conquest looked like a success 

  • Massive bombardment from the air intended to cripple any Iraqi defenses 

  • Saddam’s army was already hamstrung thanks to a decade of sanctions, no fly zones and periodic airstrikes 

  • The US and British forces were not finding anywhere near the kind of war machine in Iraq that had conquered Kuwait in 1990 

  • The air campaign pulverized what little bit remained of Saddam’s arsenal, but on its own, it did not prompt the regime to surrender or collapse 

    • The final blow had to be combat by US army / marines on the ground 

  • Comprised 130K Americans and 45K British as well as much smaller contingents from other allies such as Australia and Poland 

  • By 3 weeks, Iraq’s capital and largest city were officially under the control of the US military

060: End of major combat operations in Iraq of May 1st, 2003

• 6 weeks, Bush aboard an aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego California saying that major combat operations in Iraq have ended in the battle of Iraq 

  • First 6 weeks of Operation Iraqi Freedom had 279 American deaths 

  • Bush’s speech talked about starting to turn Iraq into a democracy 

  • Democracy had not been a feature of the administration’s internal debate about invading Iraq or its public case for war

    • Part of the rationale for staying in Iraq beyond the overthrow of the regime 

060: George W. Bush

• In the first two years of the Bush administration, the president and his national security team sought to develop a policy that could push Saddam aside and turn Iraq into a cooperative American client

  • What changed is that he and his officials no longer thought regime change in Baghdad could wait 

• After his election, W Bush assembled one of the most experienced national security teams in living memory 

• Operation Iraqi Freedom

060: Condoleezza Rice

•  (National Security Advisor) 

  • Less inclined toward military options

060: Dick Cheney

• VP Dick Cheney had been secretary of defense under HW Bush 

  • One of the fiercest advocates for armed intervention when it suited US preferences 

  • Participated in high-level Republican campaigns to push the Democratic president toward more aggressive stances on national security and push him to increase defense spending

  • Particularly worried about Saddam obtaining nukes

060: Donald Rumsfeld

•  (secretary of defense) 

  • Private sector during the Bill Clinton years 

  • Participated in high-level Republican campaigns to push the Democratic president toward more aggressive stances on national security and push him to increase defense spending 

  • Saw security threats not only on the conventional battlefield, but in the heavens above 

• Americans expressed their unease about Iraq and lead to Bush to replace Rumsfeld with a new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

060: Colin Powell

• (secretary of state) 

  • Less inclined toward military options 

  • Given the guidelines for intervention

060: Robert Gates

•  (Secretary of Defense from Dec. 2006-2011) 

  • “I have a lot of respect for Mr. Greenspan. I know the same allegation was made about the Gulf War in 1991, and I just don’t believe it’s true. I think that it’s really about the stability in the Gulf. It’s about rogue regimes trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. It’s about aggressive dictators.” - belief on whether or not the war on Iraq was due to oil control

• Americans expressed their unease about Iraq and lead to Bush to replace Rumsfeld with a new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

060: Barack Obama

From 2009-2014, Karzai had an often tense relationship with the Obama administration

2002 Obama as State Senator of IL

060: Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi (Libya)

• Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi - a Libyan affiliated with Al-Qaeda who was picked up fleeing Afghanistan after Operation Enduring Freedom 

• Al-Libi was captured by Pakistani forces while fleeing Afghanistan in Oct. 2001 

• He passed from the custody of the FBI to the CIA 

• Al-Libi’s Egyptian captors then threatened him with a long list of methods, which ‘would make him confess because 3000 individuals before him had all confessed’ 

• Al-Libi assembled a story built around names of actual Al-Qaeda operatives he had encountered - fibbed that two of them went to Iraq for training in chemical and biological weapons - warded off harsher interrogation methods - later retract earlier statements 

• used as a source for a reason for the US to invade Iraq in order to capture Saddam

060: Mohamed ElBaradei (Egypt)

• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

  • efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way

060: Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janab, aka ‘Curveball’ (Iraq)

• Came from an informant in Germany, an Iraqi exile, Rafid Ahmed, whom US intelligence had code named Curveball because his reputation for being unreliable (he made it ALL UP) 

060: L. Paul ‘Jerry’ Bremer

• May 9th, Bush announced that former foreign service officer and policy adviser L. Paul ‘Jerry’ Bremer’ III would be the White house presidential emissary to Baghdad 

  • In charge under the Defense Department of the US occupation, issuing edicts that were supposed to have power of law 

  • May 12th, Bremer arrived in Baghdad and assumed control of administering the country 

060: Economic and human costs of Iraq War

• Over $2T in direct military and related costs for the US

  • Put it in perspective, it is more than the US government spends on education (estimated average of $60B per year) over 30 years

• Human cost is also hard to calculate because hundreds of thousands of US service members did come home alive, but they incurred physical injuries or mental trauma that would require treatment and might still amount to a permanent disability 

• Deadliest war since Vietnam 

  • 5,500 US service members lost their lives in the Iraq War of 2003-2011

  • 95% of these deaths occurred after major combat operations were officially declared over May 1st, 2003 

• Number of Iraqi combatants who died reached into the tens of thousands, but the conservative, lower range estimate of the number of civilians who were killed in Iraq is around 155,380-173,688 people

060: Strait of Hormuz

• Narrow waterway

• 21 miles across

• ⅓ of world oil (and ¼ of global liquified natural gas passes through) 

• If for some reason this was blocked, nearby exporters like Kuwait could and would find ways around it

060: Inflation of Iraqi threat in public discourse

• Bush administration was extremely adamant on the invasion on Iraq in order to capture Saddam because of the belief that he was involved or did the 9/11 attacks

• went out of their way to convince the UNSC (failed) on why its urgent and necessary

• 2002, as soon as summer vacations ended, the Bush administration went to work convincing Americans that Saddam posed a fundamental threat to their safety and way of life 

060: Obama position on Iraq war in Oct. 2002

• “Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed by an anti-war rally, I stand before you who is not opposed to war at all circumstances, I don’t oppose all wars, what I am opposed to is a dumb war, based on not reason, but on passion, I am not opposed to wars. I am opposed to dumb wars.” 

• Went on saying that Saddam was a bad character, but not a security threat 

• Did not have much impact on the bush administration’s plans

060: Public support for and opposition to war with Iraq

Public opinion on the Iraq War was complex and fluctuated significantly. While there was initial strong support for the war, particularly in the period leading up to the invasion, public sentiment shifted considerably over time, with a growing number of Americans ultimately viewing the war as a mistake

• Those Americans who were against the war had plenty of compatriots in other countries 

  • On Feb. 15th, 2003, 6-10 million anti-war demonstrators participated in rallies against the invasion 

  • In over 600 cities around the world, with the largest protests taking place in the Southern European countries of Italy and Spain

060: Basics of US-led invasion of Iraq

• March 19, 2003: stated goals of removing Saddam from power and dismantling Iraq’s alleged weapons from mass destruction programs

060: Differences between start of Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and Operation Iraqi Freedom

• Different footing 

• In Afghanistan, the former Mujahideen had driven the Taliban back and they had some political authority over communities on the ground in Afghanistan 

  • Positions to take seats in government and run a transitional administration 

  • After all, they had been the official government of Afghanistan already 1990-1996

• In Iraq, the US didn’t have a pre-existing local partner for running Baghdad or Central Iraq or Southern Iraq 

  • In the North, the community of Iraqi Kurds were largely autonomous already and they wanted to remain that way 

  • Wasn’t much of a question about how to administer Iraqi Kurdistan 

  • Challenge was the rest of Iraq, which mostly was populated by Arabs who either belonged to the country’s Sunni minority or Shia majority 

  • No bond style conference to bring different factions together 

  • US would rule Iraq directly through an American appointee and his hand picked Iraqi partners

065: Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Orders 1 and 2

• Order 1: the ‘de-Baathification’ of Iraqi society 

  • Stripped 20K senior party leaders from their government posts and positions of authority and responsibility in Iraqi society 

  • 1% of the parties estimated 2 million members, banned from taking public sector jobs 

  • Considerable, but uncounted number of Baathists who occupied top level of management in public institutions (hospitals, schools, ministries) under a kind of administrative probation 

    • Their status would be reviewed and those determined to be full members of the Baath would be fired 

• Order 2: dissolving the Iraqi Army (which was an estimated of 700K strong, although most of them were Shia conscripts) 

  • Eradicated entities of repression, including the conventional military and paramilitary units, and clandestine security agencies 

  • The affected population included an estimated 300K Sunni Arab soldiers and officers, including 11K generals 

065: Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)

• Attached to the Attorney General’s office and provides legal advice to the president 

  The thrust of the OLC’s legal advice was to 

1. Abrogate or nullify international constraints 

2. Ensure domestic US law would not limit the administration's actions 

3. Place large amounts of activities outside the bounds of US formal legal authority, such as by putting it at America’s military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or outsourcing activities to allied countries, such as Egypt 

• Legal interpretations have drawn criticism, and on several occasions, policies they generated have been overturned by the Supreme Court

065: Basics of the ‘Bybee memo’

• Bybee memo: defined torture as activities resulting in ‘death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function.’

065: Key detention centers at Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib

• unofficial detention sites also called black sites

• Bagram Prison in Afghanistan 

  • Former Soviet base used immediately after defeat of Taliban in fall 2001 to begin housing ‘enemy combatants’ 

  • 300 detainees by May 2004

  • 600 in Dec. 2007

  • The facility was transferred to the Afghan government’s control in 2013 

• Guantanamo Bay Prison, Cuba

  • Has held 779 detainees; 38 detainees remained in March 2022

  • August 2003, the commander was reassigned to Iraq where he was given the task of improving information gathering 

  • This job led him to incorporate the military police at Abu Ghraib prison into the interrogation process, which was led by military intelligence 

• Abu Ghraib

  • A former prison run by Saddam that was repurposed by the US military 

  • Held 7K detainees by early 2004 

  • Major General Antonio Taguba led an investigation and issued a report 

    • Noted numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees 

    • ‘One or two Al-Qaeda prisoners at Abu Ghraib, most of the detainees had nothing to do with the insurgency.’

065: Bush ‘Freedom Agenda’

• The idea of turning Arab dictatorships into Arab democracies 

• Liked to compare Iraq to post-WWII Japan and dismissed criticisms that Iraq was in a completely different situation 

• Provided a public rationale for the US to stay in Iraq even when it was proven Saddam had not been working with Al-Qaeda / stockpiling lethal weapons 

065: L. Paul ‘Jerry’ Bremer

• Under Bremer’s watch, Iraq took the first steps toward forming a post-Saddam government 

• 13 months in Baghdad is notable for his first actions and the fallout he created over the rest of his time as head of the coalition provisional authority (CPA)

• Orders 1 and 2

065: Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)

• Abu Musad al-Zarqawi, Jordanian-born Muslim militant who was running his own organization before Iraq was invaded 

• Entered Iraq, started planning attacks, 2004, merged his group with Al-Qaeda 

• Goal was to establish an Islamic government in Iraq  

• Grow during Bremer’s years 

065: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Jordan)

• Abu Musad al-Zarqawi, Jordanian-born Muslim militant who was running his own organization before Iraq was invaded - merged his group with the Al-Qaeda in Iraq

• He was killed by a US airstrike on June 7th, 2006

• Tended to be behind most of the mass casualty attacks on civilians as well as videotaped executions of civilians 

• 95% of the members were Iraqi

065: David Kay

• Former head of US inspections in Iraq, David Kay declared that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq and that pre-war intelligence on that matter was almost completely wrong

  • His findings demolished the main security argument for the war 

  • The reason Saddam had not announced to the world that he had no serious nuclear arms was because he didn’t want Iran to know - he was afraid of Iran

065:Jay Bybee

• 2001-2003, the OLC was headed by a lawyer named Jay Bybee

  • Produced a series of memoranda, known as the Torture Memos that described what the authors thought were legally justifiable actions by US personnel during the War on Terror

  • Bybee memo: defined torture as activities resulting in ‘death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function.’

065: Major General Antonio Taguba

• Major General Antonio Taguba led an investigation in Abu Ghraib and issued a report 

  • Noted numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees 

  • ‘One or two Al-Qaeda prisoners at Abu Ghraib, most of the detainees had nothing to do with the insurgency.’

065: Nouri al-Maliki (Iraq)

• The Main Shia-led party, the National Iraqi Alliance settled on was Nouri al-Maliki - hold office through the rest of the US occupation and three years beyond that point

• Shia chauvinist (favored and prejudiced for Shias)

• Resist any incorporation of the Sunni Arab population into the government and into the armed forces 

• His exclusionary stance aggravated the existing insurgency, and it would contribute to reigniting Iraq’s civil war in future years

065: The Problem of post-authoritarianism

• The problem is the situation they find themselves in 

  • Situations of post-dictatorship, when the rules of the game and the structure of daily life are suddenly open to radical revision 

  • This openness and flux that made Iraq such volatile and dangerous place to live, as soon as Saddam was no longer in charge  

• Some of the strongest advocates of invading Iraq had very rosy images in their heads about what would follow the downfall of Saddam 

  • In their perspective, liberalism and capitalism had triumphed - no alternative - if you knock down a dictatorship, the foundation for the next government will have to be democracy and freedom 

  • Such thinking lacks the attachments, such as religion, identity or ethnic background

065: ethnocracy

• ethnocracy is a type of political structure in which the state apparatus is controlled by a dominant ethnic group (or groups)

• This standard feature of authoritarianism is compounded by an ethnic and religious component that makes it easy to identify who is ruling and who is subjugated 

• Makes it difficult to bring equality between those two groups when the regime is opened up

065: Iraqi insurgency

• These Sunnis took up arms to fight against the American occupiers and the Shia leaders who were expected to take power in any future election 

  • Suicide cars and truck bombings and homemade mines, known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) 

• Such attacks continued and took the form of an organized insurgency 

  • An armed revolt against a foreign authority (CPA) against Iraqis at large 

  • Comprised of former Baathists who sought to bring Saddam back to power or wanted to advance their own political agenda 

  • Not really religious and didn’t promote the establishment of an Islamic emirate

065: Absence of alleged weapons of mass destruction stockpiles in Iraq

• multiple investigations led to the conclusion of the lack of mass destruction stockpiles in Iraq

• the Bush administration kept reinforcing the idea that there was in order to fulfill their desires to invade Iraq and get revenge on the 9/11 attacks, regardless if their ‘sources’ were accurate

065: 2005 elections in Iraq

• The Main Shia-led party, the National Iraqi Alliance got 41% of the votes and nearly half of the seats 

  • After they partnered with the main Kurdish party, they had a solid majority, which meant they could form a government and choose the prime minister

  • chose al-Maliki as prime minister

065: al-Askari shrine mosque bombing (in Samarra, Iraq)

• The insurgency against American occupation and Shia hegemony landed its most provocative blow, when Sunni militants bombed the Al-Askari Shrine mosque in Samarra, Iraq on Feb. 22nd, 2006

  • Killed 100 worshippers and bystanders 

  • Destroyed mosque’s iconic golden dome 

  • Triggered a wave of anti-Sunni reprisal attacks

  • Americans expressed their unease about Iraq and lead to Bush to replace Rumsfeld with a new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

070: Rebuilding of post-war Germany and Japan

• no insurgency

• fewer than 1% of the Third Reich agents (400K) were fired

• 72% of major figures received full amnesty within three years

• General Douglas MacArthur ‘exercise your powers… though the Emperor of Japan or the Japanese government.’

• ‘The process… turned in the direction of wholesale exemptions and then in wholesale exonerations

• Purged fewer than 1% of the Japanese Empire’s civil servants

• allowing those in power to stay in power

070: Marshall Plan

• The high watermark of US nation building was what MacArthur accomplished in Japan and what this man, George Marshall, accomplished in West Germany 

  • President Bush who chose to invoke Marshall’s legacy and pledge to replicate Marshall’s unique achievements in the totally different context in Afghanistan

• to aid in the economic recovery of nations after World War II and secure US geopolitical influence over Western Europe.

070: Taliban’s approach to women’s rights

The Taliban imposed a very strict traditional interpretation of Islam

• At the same time, women are within a sexual division of labor, economically productive. Indeed indispensable members of the household, although it generally takes place in the home, women’s work extends far beyond childcare and cooking. It included elements of food processing, performed by industries and more developed countries, as well as vital crafts such as carpet weaving and felt making. In poor agricultural families, women may also work in the fields.

070: Changing situation for Afghan women during American war

• when Americans invaded Afghanistan, they viewed their patriarchal system as a means to change it, while not actually looking at the root cause of the issue - removing the Taliban provided women more power, but the engrained perspectives within the community lead to limited progress

070: General Douglas MacArthur

• When occupation began, MacArthur, ranking Japanese officers, and Hirohito himself argued that the emperor should not be charged with war crimes and should retain the throne he had held since 1926

• Not only did SCAP and MacArthur exempt Hirohito from any postwar punishment, they worked to ensure that the emperor’s role would be effaced from the official narrative about culpability for the invasions and the warfare that had killed an estimated 10M civilians in China and Southeast Asia since 1931

• Disarmed Japan, granted the emperor ceremonial powers, and elevated the country’s legislature, known as the Diet, to be the pinnacle of government 

• US sponsored legislative elections then produced a parliament dominated by the same conservative parties that had held sway before the US occupation 

070: Emperor Hirohito (Japan)

• the emperor should not be charged with war crimes and should retain the throne he had held since 1926

• Exempt Hirohito from any postwar punishment, they worked to ensure that the emperor’s role would be effaced from the official narrative about culpability for the invasions and the warfare that had killed an estimated 10M civilians in China and Southeast Asia since 1931

070: George C. Marshall

• Marshall Plan

• President Bush who chose to invoke Marshall’s legacy and pledge to replicate Marshall’s unique achievements in the totally different context in Afghanistan

070: Nadira Kharoti (Afghanistan)

• Lady in the documentary talking about her desires on wanting to have political footing in Afghanistan and working hard to serve her community 

• Teacher and has 7 children, husband is unemployed and her entire family supports her endeavors

070: Nation-building

• The first definition: ‘The attempt by foreign states to create democratic and secure states.’

• The second definition: ‘foreign intervention in a state to prevent civil unrest or to promote a form of government.’

• Bush administration saw Afghanistan and Iraq as a country engulfed in conflict and presented a danger to their neighbors and countries way beyond their borders 

  • Wanted to claim success in nation building with these countries 

• Greatest success stories of nation building are West Germany and Japan after WWII 

070: Ingredients for success in nation-building

1. National unity 

   1. Germany and Japan have been around as states for quite some time 

   2. Gone through civil conflict and international conflict 

   3. Both had a sense of national identity 

2. Strategic defeat 

   1. The US and the Allied forces faced the coherent national governments and militaries of Germany and Japan and defeated those governments and militaries 

   2. The entire country, under a coherent unified government, surrendering to its international adversaries 

   3. Putting their countries, their societies, at the mercy of soldiers they’d just been fighting 

3. Political rehabilitation 

   1. Depended on the officials who had run the enemy regimes of WWII 

   2. ‘Preventing civil unrest or promoting a form of government’ is to put your defeated enemies back in charge of their country

070: ‘colonial feminism’

Weaponizing gender inequality and bringing it up as an excuse to colonize and don’t actually do anything that would benefit / change the patriarchal system

075: Examples of coercion and compromise

• Coercion 

  • Becomes less attractive

  • Hostage crisis of 1979-1981

  • In the Lebanon peacekeeping mission of 1982-1984

  • Escalation of conflict between the US and Libya from 1986

  • Indictment of Lockerbie bombers in 1991 

  • Somalia intervention of 1992-1994 

  • Desert storm 

  • April 2003 shooting in Fallujah

  • February 2004 CPA sends US Marines into Fallujah

  • Nov. 7th-Dec. 23, 2004: Siege of Fallujah

• Compromise 

  • More appealing 

  • 2003-2011

  • Operation Iraqi Freedom in Afghanistan 

  • Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan

  • Rest of 2003 staying outside of Fallujah

  • April 2004: Bremer suspends offensive operations - security delegated to Fallujans

  • US forces withdraw and the battle lines shift to Ramadi

075: Policies in Sunni-Majority city of Fallujah

• April 2004, during the initial invasion, interactions between US service members and residents of Fallujah showed the problem with coercive approaches 

• Show the resistance and costs that the people of Fallujah could impose on the Americans and the benefits for everyone’s safety of finding compromises 

• 2004-2006: Fallujah showed how an aggressive approach could worsen America’s problems in Iraq, while exercising restraint and local-level diplomacy could advance America’s stated goal of quelling the civil war and helping all Iraqis find a better life than what they had under Saddam 

• Showed limits of offensive combat operations - demonstrated the benefits that could follow a temperate approach that ceded control to the same Iraqis that US troops had tried to subdue through force