How to Win a War

Reading Thomas Ricks’ hypnotic Fiasco (2006) removes all doubt that a pivotal moment in our millennium was that point in the Spring of 2003 after the fall of Baghdad when time stood still as the Iraqis waited to see how the Americans would consolidate their victory. And the message was—nothing. Not a thought, not an idea, not a clue of what to do, or how to do it, or indeed that there was anything that needed to be done.

As anyone can see today, this was a disaster from which so many other calamities followed. And completely avoidable: armies have been governing conquered cities as long as there have been armies. The Americans did it a hundred times in the wake of World War II.

It isn’t easy: the Chinese say you can conquer a country on horseback, but you can’t govern from there. But it can be done and for failure to do it, the price is high. The Americans appear not even to have grasped there was a problem.

There are all kinds of ways they might have learned. But here is one: in Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Anchor ed. 1991), T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) tells how he and his companions faced the problem of conquest in Damascus at the end of another war:

We passed to work. Our aim was an Arab Government, with foundations large and native enough to employ the enthusiasm and self-sacrifice of the rebellion, translated into terms of peace. We had to save some of the old prophetic personality upon a substructure to carry that ninety per cent of trhe population who had been too solid to rebel, and on whose solidity the new State must depend. …

Quickly [the Arab leaders] collected the nucleus of a staff, and plunged ahead as a team. History told us the steps were humdrum: appointments, offices, and departmental routine. First, the police. A commandant and assistants were chosen: districts allotted: provisional wages, indents, uniforms, responsibilities. The machine began to function. Then came a complaint of water-supply. The conduit was foul with dead men and animals. An inspectorate, with its labour corps, solved this. Emergency regulations were drafted.

The day was drawing in, the world was in the streets: riotous. We chose an engineer to superintend the power-house, charging him at all pains to illuminate the town that night. The resumption of street lighting would be our most signal proof of peace. It was done, and to its shining quietness much of the order of the first evening of victory belonged: though our new police were zealous, and the grave sheikhs of the many quarters helped their patrol.

Then sanitation. The streets were full of the debris of the broken army, derelict carts and cars, baggage, material, corpses. …

Next, a fire-brigade. The local engines had been smashed by the [retreating] Germans, and the Army storehouses still burned, endangering the town. Mechanics were cried for; and trained men, pressed into service, sent down to circumscribe the flames. Then the prisons. Warders and inmates had vanished from them together. … The citizens must be disarmed—or at least, dissuaded from carrying rifles. A proclamation was the treatment, followed up by good-humoured banter merging into police activity. This would effect our end without malice in three or four days.

Relief work. The destitute had been half-starved for days. A distribution of the damaged food from the Army storehouses was arranged. After that food must be provided for the general. The city might be starving in two days …

The routine feeding of the place needed the railway. Pointsmen, drivers, firemen, shopmen, traffic staff had to be found and re-engaged immediately. Then the telegraphs: the junior staff were available: directors must be found, and linesmen sent out to put the system into repair. The post could wait a day or two … The currency was horrible … .

Taken all in all, this was a busy evening.

So Lawrence, pp 649-51. You can get a used copy on Amazon for $7.50. The subtitle is “A Triumph.”