Iraq’s failure forced the Bush administration to shift from hard to soft power

Evidence

The Iraqi regime, depicted as posing an imminent grave biochemical threat to international security, conspiring with terrorists, and poised to unleash weapons of mass destruction if attacked, was speedily routed, proving to be an enemy of disorganized and rogue combatants rather than a mighty military machine. Geopolitical disputes arose over who should preside over and reap lucrative contracts for the nation’s reconstruction. With Saddam’s removal, the power vacuum in this deeply fissured, multireligious nation was quickly filled by exiles with political ambitions, ethnic separatists, and clerics jockeying for power to turn a pluralistic, secular country into an Islamic theocracy. The sociopolitical war presented more daunting challenges than did the military one. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2360 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

ISIS is partly of the United States’ own making. Many of its leaders are former officers in Saddam Hussein’s army and former members of his political party (Breslow, 2014). ISIS faced the Americans anew, not as insurgents fighting the occupier of yesteryear, but as an invited obstacle on the road toward creating its caliphate. Many cynical Sunnis remarked on the irony that the present military campaign was directed against “an organization that evolved from jihadist groups fighting American occupation” (Barnard & Kirkpatrick, 2014). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2483 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Iraq War’s failure forced a rhetorical shift from unilateral coercion to counterinsurgency — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 489; The Iraq War’s failure forced Bush to abandon regime-change plans and adopt counterinsurgency; The disorganized Iraqi threat the invasion cited turned into a daunting sociopolitical war — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2360 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The disorganized Iraqi threat the invasion cited turned into a daunting sociopolitical war #responds-to (1.00) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2360
• Iraqi resistance forced US strategy from conquest to counterinsurgency hearts-and-minds tactics #corroborates (1.00)
• US actions in Iraq helped create the very adversary ISIS later became. #complicates (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2483