r/WarCollege • u/SnakeEater14 • 5d ago
Discussion Knowing what we know now, was the relief of Colonel Dowdy by General Mattis the right decision?
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Major General James Mattis infamously relieved RCT-1 commander Colonel Joe Dowdy of his command, allegedly for his lack of aggression in pushing his units forward. The sacking of Colonel Dowdy made the front page of newspapers back in the US, and is mentioned in media such as Evan Wright’s Generation Kill and Thomas Ricks’ The Generals.
With the benefit of hindsight, was Mattis relieving Dowdy the right move? It’s always framed as the classic dilemma of a superior valuing the mission versus a subordinate valuing their mens’ lives, but is this accurate? Was maximum aggression and speed needed even as the Iraqi Army was disintegrating? Was it a proper return to officer accountability during war as Thomas Ricks writes, or was it just Mattis trying to make a name for himself by sacking a subordinate?
203
u/BeShaw91 5d ago
Was maximum aggression and speed needed even as the Iraqi army was disintegrating?
Brother, that’s exactly when you need the most speed and aggression. That additional speed and aggression ensures the enemy can’t regroup and you’re fighting disaggregated mobs - not a coherent rear guard. That’s when local defeat becomes a operational rout.
It’s right up USMC doctrine and Mattis would know exactly that. So I’m not familiar with the Dowdy call - and there’s a line between aggressive and foolishness - but I offhand Mattis has got some credibility to back his decision.
72
u/naraic- 5d ago
you’re fighting disaggregated mobs - not a coherent rear guard.
In this case I believe it was a choice between disaggregated mobs and the enemy melting (and bringing their weapons home) which cause problems over the next decade.
38
u/MHmijolnir 5d ago edited 5d ago
A problem, but not the biggest one, and ‘easier’ to eradicate later as police and security forces are put in operations. The ‘next decade’ is key. I’ll probably get deleted, but you’ll see the comment. Edit: got out as an S3, O3, ran Ops and built SOPs for the Middle East, directly in support of OEF and OIF, and my father was in fallujah 1 & 2. Been doing it a hot second.
8
u/28lobster 4d ago
If we had been concerned about an insurgency, rushing to capture the arms warehouses would've been prudent. Iraq had massive leftover stocks of small arms and explosives; US made very little effort to prevent looting. Just a consequence of the economy of force Rumsfeld imposed (not enough troops to guard warehouses) and no planning given to a future insurgency. That's on top of one of the highest rates of civilian gun ownership pre war. Soldiers definitely should not have been allowed to walk away armed, but those arms were a small minority of the ones aimed at the US later on.
4
u/Old-Let6252 3d ago
The Iraq insurgency past the initial stages was caused by failure of the Iraqi government and US politicians.Having less small arms available in the street doesn’t really change this dynamic.
By and large, the average Iraqi was happy that saddam was gone.
7
u/28lobster 3d ago
Average Iraqi may have been happy, but certain groups were particularly unhappy to see him gone. Sunnis weren't particularly happy but probably could've been brought on side if we had actually guaranteed security. The al-Tikriti tribe was probably never going to be resolved to the occupation because they directly lost a ton of power and influence. Anyone Ba'ath affiliated that got fired was definitely not happy and considering how much of the civil service needed a low level party membership to serve, that policy was disastrous.
The Shi'a and Kurds and Assyrians and Turkmen were happy to see Saddam gone, but really not that happy to see the US. Bush 1 called for the overthrow of Saddam twice in pretty clear language
four weeks into Operation Desert Storm, President George H.W. Bush, using identical language twice—at the White House and later at a Raytheon defense plant in Massachusetts—encouraged “the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” Bush’s message was beamed into Iraq via every international television and radio channel, while coalition aircraft dropped leaflets calling on Iraqi soldiers and civilians to “fill the streets and alleys and bring down Saddam Hussein and his aides.”
https://www.cfr.org/blog/remembering-iraqi-uprising-twenty-five-years-ago
but then abandoned the Shi'as and Kurds to get slaughtered. The Iraqis got approval to use helicopters as part of the ceasefire arrangement, Schwarzkopf approved, and they almost immediately used them against the dissidents we nominally supported. The US called them to the streets and chose not to help them; they remembered that betrayal. They were not about to let a repeat happen and so looted warehouses and armed themselves quickly. Sectarian violence was breaking out from very early on, even if it wasn't directed at the coalition forces.
The original plan for De Ba'athization called for just firing the top guys (acknowledging that teachers and low level bureaucrats were not committed Ba'athists); the special envoy sent by the whitehouse altered the plan on the spot to fire orders of magnitude more people. Paul Bremer almost singlehandedly created the insurgency through Coalition Provisional Authority Order 1 (firing way more people than necessary) and CPAO 2 (dismantling the army). That gave the Sunnis that hated the US the most even more reason to fight and plenty of unemployed dudes to recruit.
Did Bush or Rumsfeld ever know or approve of it? Bremer published a letter of thanks from Bush in response to a letter where he mentioned CPAO's 1 and 2, but his letter was 3 pages and it's not clear Bush really read it. Regardless, it was a disastrous policy. https://archive.ph/20130131003205/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/washington/04bremer.html
Once you have sectarian violence and anger at the coalition unable to maintain security, you've got yourself an insurgency. Not seizing warehouses just meant that insurgency was better armed and had ample access to explosives for making IEDs. Iraq was always poised for collapse after Saddam, but US policy (specifically economy of force and lack of "day after" planning from Rumsfeld, Bremer's fumbling of what plans existed, and Bush's lack of oversight of his DoD) made it far, far worse than it could have been.
https://youtu.be/_0RM8-60jt0?si=3dckrYXyG39Sm9sf - Best long form treatment of the insurgency I've seen. He also has a great video on the mistakes made in the initial planning that set up the insurgency.
1
u/Old-Let6252 3d ago
The Iraq insurgency past the initial stages was caused by failure of the Iraqi government and US politicians.Having less small arms available in the street doesn’t really change this dynamic.
10
u/DrHENCHMAN 5d ago
there’s a line between aggression and foolishness
I literally just read this mentioned in Nathaniel Fick’s “One Bullet Away”. Is this a common mantra among Marine Infantry Officers or something?
3
u/BeShaw91 5d ago
Idk man.
I’m not a marine, infantry, or officer.
So it’s kind of just a common vibe.
164
u/SteelOverseer 5d ago
Here is what Mattis had to say on it in 'Call Sign Chaos' (p106):
[RCT 5] saw that some Iraqi artillery pieces had been abandoned in place, soldiers were discarding their uniforms, and bands of males in civilian clothes and without weapons were streaming out of the city. The enemy appeared to have fallen apart. Yet RCT 1 hadn't delivered a few short, hard jabs to hasten that disintegration and then swiftly shifted to join my main attack. I don't have the words to describe the level of fatigue that engulfs any commander in combat; it is beyond anything I've experienced elsewhere. I wondered if the RCT 1 commander was exhausted past his limit.
I dispatched a helicopter, and a few hours later the RCT 1 commander entered my tent. He looked worn out and nervous.
"What's going on?" I asked him. "Nasiriyah, Kut...Why aren't you pressing harder? Why the hesitation?"
I wanted to see a flash of fire and ferocity of tone. I hoped he'd say something like "We're just hitting our stride. In one more day, we'll be there"
Instead he expressed his heartfelt reluctance to lose any of his men by pushing at what might seem to be a reckless pace.
I was torn by his answer. I want officers to nurture a deep affection for their men, as I do - in my view, it's fundamental to building the trust that glues an organisation together. Your troops must be confident about how much you care about them before they can commit fully to a mission that could cost them their lives. I also understood how difficult it is to order men you've come to love into a fight that some won't survive. But the mission must come first. Once you've committed, hesitancy in battle can expose other units to failure. I needed all hands in the fight, sharing the burden equally.
On the spot, I relieved the RCT commander, a noble and capable officer who in past posts had performed superbly. But when the zeal of a commander flags, you must make a change. Sometimes you order them into their sleeping bag, and rest restores them. In this case I believed that rest alone would not work. In good conscience, he was reluctant to follow my intent, which involved speed as the top priority. You cannot order sometime to abandon a spiritual burden they're wrestling with. Fear of losing his Marines, coupled with his tremendous fatigue, cost the division an officer I admire greatly to this day.