WI the US-led Coalition occupying Iraq tried to keep employing most of the Iraqi Army and Administration?

[raharris1973]

WI the US-led Coalition occupying Iraq tried to keep employing most of the Iraqi Army and Administration?

A big critique of the occupation was the decommissioning and laying off of the whole Army, and the de-Baathification process, which may have been a similar process of laying off civil administrators with Baath Party ties (which was probably a broad group because it was probably mandatory for lots of government jobs) and privileging Shia and Kurdish opposition parties.

What if, for stability's sake, the Coalition Provisional Authority/Bremer or the Pentagon if left in charge had tried to keep the Iraqi Army and Administration largely intact, setting Iraqi military members and administrators to work with US personnel and contractors on reconstruction work and an organized demobilization? Of course Saddam and his family would be removed. So would a regime 'inner circle' however defined, and regime members with the most infamous reputations. Perhaps everyone on the DoD's most-wanted deck of cards would be disqualified from power, but everybody else would have an opportunity for promotion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most-wanted_Iraqi_playing_cards. Or even just a subset of the deck of cards, maybe just the "face cards". Political prisoners would be released and political prisons would be shut down (except for now housing whatever former regime inner circle goes there, and any al-qaeda related terrorists who end up being found or old school guys from the 80s who end up being found like Abu Nidal or Abul Abbas). The opposition parties, ethnosectarian and non-ethnosectarian, would all be allowed to participate.

Would the US have found a broad, critical, or overwhelming mass of takers for this collaboration offer to the mid and working level of the Baathist Army, Administration, deep state? Or would a broad, critical, or overwhelming mass of those personnel have chosen to play violent resister or spoiler or insurgent, for reasons of pride, patriotism, self-interest, delusions/ambitions of negotiating or dictating a better deal? That is why I posed the question, what if the USA "tried", because proponents of this course of action and critics of the US 'mistake' in abolishing Iraqi state institutions seem to take it for granted that members of these institutions would have just accepted any deal offered by the US. I'm not sure that assumption is warranted. But maybe it would have been the best US bet in the circumstances the US had itself in by March-April 2003.

Anyway, how do you see the occupation, establishment of next Iraqi government, turnover of authority, any insurgent activity, and any US withdrawal or permanent relationship (involving basing or not) evolve with the US taking the approach described here? Does it make Iraq a notably quieter, less lethal place for US forces?
Does George W. Bush ride such quiet to deeper and longer political success? Does he squander the quiet in Iraq, by using that simply as a platform for launching an invasion of Iran or Syria in his second or remaining first term?

 

[Charles EP M.]

The older I get, the more I suspect you'd need to remove quite a few people* if you did want a democratic Iraq along the lines Bush wanted - and that's your problem, what Bush wanted to do requires force and sackings and running roughshod over vested interests (plus your Man on the Baghdad Omnibus will have his own views, and did, on what should happen). I think a US that leaves most people around is a US run by a different guy and with a different endgame in mind, i.e. it just wants the WMDs (ooops!) and Saddam out and a message to others, it's not going to remove the whole state. (Which wouldn't be stable after either but that's another thing)

* as you say, the screwup is loads of people were only party members to get ahead at work

 

[ChrisNuttall]

I think it would be politically impossible to use the named members of Saddam’s government in any real role, unless we have a senior Iraqi General who switches sides during the early stages of the invasion and brings most of his troops with him. Employing someone like Chemical Ali, or even Comical Ali, would be a political nightmare and they couldn’t offer anything like enough to make up for the headaches they’d bring.

The lower bureaucrats could be used, at least at the start, but the institutions they worked for had largely collapsed. They were also not particularly respected.

The troops, on the other hand, could have been recruited. I think it would be fairly simple to offer to hire anyone who walked into a US camp and signed up. However, it would have caused other problems. Iraqi troops were not trained to US standards and most US troops aren’t trained to serve as MPs/occupation forces (which caused a lot of problems in OTL), and I’m pretty sure there would have been a string of nasty incidents and suchlike that would be exploited by the CPA’s enemies. The Shia wanted to claim their demographic right – rule over Iraq, revenge on the Sunni – and they’d have resisted any attempt to use Sunni troops; the Sunni, of course, would feel the same way in reverse.

It might have been better to use the native troops to secure the borders, instead of patrolling the streets. That might have worked.

 

[Death's Companion]

I think the main purpose to employing the Iraqi army would be to stop its leadership and storemasters and a few of its more ideological people joining various terrorist organisations giving them structure and leadership during the critical early phase of the insurgency. It doesn't matter exactly what they are put to use doing, repairing war damage, extra bodies at checkpoints whatever just keeping them fed and paid will help a lot and allow opportunities for patronage and the like.

 

[raharris1973]

If one of your "more measured than OTL" purge plans is selected, when and how is this seeming ‘better’ to the American public than OTL? How is it affecting the Democratic primary and 2004 election? When is Saddam found? The embarrassment of finding no active WMD program or WMD stockpile is still there. Importantly, without a stressing insurgency blowing up in Iraq in ‘04 and 2nd term, what alternate foreign policy moves does Bush-Cheney make vs. Axis of Evil?

 

[Charles EP M.]

I'd assume there's still a insurgency, which would make it easier for Bush to glare at Iran if it's sending arms - "they started it", and a smaller insurgency is easier to claim is solely down to outside agitators. An actual war with Iran feels unlikely, since Bush didn't OTL and two of the main issues (Iran can fight back better than Iraq and you're far less likely to get allies joining) still apply even if more US troops are available.

Alternatively, America keeps/escalates focus in Afghanistan since it's already there

 

[raharris1973]

I'd assume there's still a insurgency, which would make it easier for Bush to glare at Iran if it's sending arms - "they started it", and a smaller insurgency is easier to claim is solely down to outside agitators. An actual war with Iran feels unlikely, since Bush didn't OTL and two of the main issues (Iran can fight back better than Iraq and you're far less likely to get allies joining) still apply even if more US troops are available.

Alternatively, America keeps/escalates focus in Afghanistan since it's already there

There is another neighbor of Iraq Bush could glare at and threaten, over a smaller insurgency, Syria. And in 2007 it was caught red-handed trying to developing the worst WMD, nuclear, with everybody learning after the Israeli raid destroyed their research reactor. Sure, the Bush-Cheney administration could treat it like OTL and quietly say ‘that settles that’. Or they could decide thereafter to launch a regime changing assault using Iraq as a base against the Assad regime, to make sure it never tries again. The Assad regime has the strikes against it of being an Iranian ally, an alleged sanctuary for Iraqi Sunni insurgents, funny business with that nuclear reactor, and being smaller and now edible than Iran.

US invaders could find themselves fighting Hizballah forces in addition to Syrian regime ones.

 

[History Learner]

I'd assume there's still a insurgency, which would make it easier for Bush to glare at Iran if it's sending arms - "they started it", and a smaller insurgency is easier to claim is solely down to outside agitators. An actual war with Iran feels unlikely, since Bush didn't OTL and two of the main issues (Iran can fight back better than Iraq and you're far less likely to get allies joining) still apply even if more US troops are available.

Alternatively, America keeps/escalates focus in Afghanistan since it's already there

That could be important, as 2003-2008 allowed the Taliban to revive and start to actively re-take territory until the surge in troop numbers in the early 2010s crippled them for about four years or so.