ABSTRACT
In the first months of the occupation of Iraq, beginning in March 2003, the immediate burden of rebuilding and governance weighed heavily on the military forces of the United States (US)-led coalition. By June 2003, one month after US President George W. Bush declared major combat operations over, one might have expected the coalition’s civil administration structure to take the baton of governance from the military. At 1,000 in number, however, the civilian administrators were too few and struggling to operate, even in Baghdad. Unfortunately, the US military teams that assumed much of the responsibility for getting Iraq on its feet also were understaffed and, reportedly, unprepared. A senior Civil Affairs officer – a soldier specifically trained for civil-military aspects of stability operations – told the Washington Post, “We’ve been given a job that we haven’t prepared for, we haven’t trained for, that we weren’t ready for.”1 One hapless captain, a respiratory therapist from New Hampshire, attempting to get the electricity running in the town of Bani Sad and screening candidates for the new town council, complained, “What we’re doing now is never something we expected to do.”2 US military history and field manuals suggest otherwise.
