Learning from Iraq
Identifying the lessons is only half the job.
April/May 2005
According to Robert Perito, coordinator of the Iraq Experience Project, there is a bright line to be drawn between lessons that are merely "identified" and lessons that are actually "learned."
Perito, who is working on a systematic analysis of the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA's) experience in Iraq, says that before lessons can be learned, they must first be recognized, integrated into training programs, and internalized by participants.
Unfortunately, he says, lessons from earlier attempts at post-conflict nation building too often have been ignored. "Large-scale breakdowns in public order should be anticipated in the aftermath of international interventions in conflicted states," says Perito. "We knew that from our experience in Panama and elsewhere. Unfortunately, we didn't plan for that possibility when we mounted our post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction efforts in Iraq."
The Iraq Experience Project is an ambitious attempt to catalog the lessons identified by American civilian officials and soldiers who served in the CPA in Iraq.
Interviews with returnees will become part of a database of experience for preparing training programs in the future. "The military makes it a practice to routinely debrief their officers," says Perito. "Civilian agencies do not, which means that they're always going in to these operations as if for the first time."
With funds from the $10 million Congress appropriated for the Institute's Iraq programming in November 2003, the Institute interviewed 113 Americans returning from tours of duty in Iraq. The interviews, conducted by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, focused on security, governance, and economic reconstruction.
"U.S. success in future missions depends on whether the U.S. government is prepared to move from lessons identified to lessons learned."
- Perito
Perito's group wrote three Special Reports based on the interviews, sponsored a workshop for returnees in January, and held a final, post-publication briefing in mid-April.
The January workshop featured keynote speaker Stephen Browning, the director of infrastructure for the CPA and winner of the Service to America Medal for Iraq reconstruction. Other speakers included Scott Carpenter, director of the governance group for the CPA, and David Gompert, senior advisor for national security and defense for the CPA. Outside speakers at the April briefing included Rick Barton, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Rajiv Chandrasekaran, former Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief; and Martin Hoffman, director of the Afghanistan Reachback Office at the Department of Defense.
"Ultimately," says Perito, "the most important lesson is that U.S. success in future missions depends on whether the U.S. government is prepared to move from lessons identified to lessons learned." And that can only come about, Perito warns, if the United States has the means and motivation to implement these lessons.
Chandrasekaran, the current "Journalist-in-Residence" at the International Reporting Project at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies, says, "The USIP has done stellar work in amassing a large collection of raw material from recently returned participants and in allowing them to speak openly about their experiences. This material—and the analysis that the Institute has conducted—will prove invaluable to scholars, journalists, practitioners, and historians for years to come."
The oral histories project, including many of the original interviews, is available online.
