Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the stories about the U.S.’s failure to “win the peace” in Iraq is that the PNAC proponents have been pushing for this war for many years. One might think that with a solid 5 years of time to plan and prepare (the PNAC first urged a second war with Iraq in 1998), and with over a decade of close observation, and decades of involvement with the country, that some of these issues could have been better anticipated.
US General Condemns Iraq Failures
By Ed Vulliamy
The Observer
Sunday 22 June 2003
One of the most experienced and respected figures in a generation of American warfare and peacekeeping yesterday accused the US administration of ‘failing to prepare for the consequences of victory’ in Iraq.
At the end of a week that saw a war of attrition develop against the US military, General William Nash told The Observer that the US had ‘lost its window of opportunity’ after felling Saddam Hussein’s regime and was embarking on a long-term expenditure of people and dollars for which it had not planned.
‘It is an endeavour which was not understood by the administration to begin with,’ he said.
Now retired, Nash served in the Vietnam war and in Operation Desert Storm (the first Gulf War) before becoming commander of US forces in Bosnia and then an acclaimed UN Civil Affairs administrator in Kosovo.
He is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, specialising in conflict prevention.
In one of the most outspoken critiques from a man of his standing, Nash said the US had ‘failed to understand the mindset and attitudes of the Iraqi people and the depth of hostility towards the US in much of the country’.
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