Our nation has been at war continuously since September 11, 2001. In response to the attacks on New York and Washington, the United States invaded Afghanistan to destroy the sanctuary from which Al Qaeda had planned and launched its assault.
Then something extraordinary happened.
While American forces were still fighting in Afghanistan, combat power, intelligence attention, and strategic focus were abruptly diverted to prepare for a second war - a presidential war of choice aimed at regime change in Iraq.
As those plans accelerated, I flew from Afghanistan to the headquarters of the 3rd US Army, United States Army Central to meet with the commander and the small circle of generals who would lead the ground invasion. I secured permission to embed with them and document the campaign from inside the command itself.
What followed had never been done in the history of broadcast journalism.
All general officers were wired with microphones. Our cameras moved freely inside the command center. The only restrictions were an embargo, OPSEC, Protect Tactics, Techniques, Procedures (TTP): nothing would air until Baghdad fell.
During the invasion of Iraq, Henry Schuster and I were the only television journalists embedded directly with the commanding general, Lieutenant General David McKiernan, and his senior General Officer staff as they executed Phase III of the war plan - the lightning campaign that drove American forces from Kuwait to Baghdad.
Today, April 1, 2003, we were twelve days into Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Whether we truly brought “freedom” to Iraq remains a subject of history’s debate. But we accomplished something that Iran could not achieve during eight brutal years of trench warfare in the 1980s.
We destroyed the regime of Saddam Hussein.
What we did not defeat was Iraq itself.
Instead, we dismantled the state structure that had held the country together and unintentionally created the conditions for Iraq to drift into the strategic orbit of its longtime rival, Iran. The resulting instability unleashed waves of displacement and migration that would eventually ripple across the Middle East and into Europe.
The deeper structural reality had been ignored.
For nearly a thousand years Iraq had been governed by a Sunni Arab minority - roughly twenty percent of the population - ruling over a Shia majority, with Kurdish regions in the north. Removing the Sunni-led state overnight did not simply change a government. It opened the door to historic retribution.
Some experts saw this coming.
Before the war began, a Top Secret memorandum circulated inside the Pentagon from the Director of Policy and Plans to the Secretary of Defense. I read it. The document laid out in stark detail why invading Iraq risked unraveling the country along sectarian lines. Its conclusion was blunt: don’t do it.
The warning was dismissed as fantasy by Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld.
If you were a serious Middle East expert in those months, you were not welcome in the policy circle driving the war. The architects of the invasion believed they had the problem under control.
History delivered a harsher verdict to those NEOCONS.
Out of the wreckage emerged the insurgency, the collapse of Iraqi state authority, and eventually the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The war would claim thousands of American lives, wound tens of thousands more, and tie the United States to two decades of grinding conflict.
Tactically, Phase III of the invasion was brilliant. Saddam’s army collapsed with stunning speed.
Baghdad Falls
Baghdad Falls
See the Documentary links, below.
Strategically, Phase IV - the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq - became a national nightmare whose consequences still echo across the Middle East and American foreign policy today - as a diaspora of refugees swarmed Europe.
But, on April 1, 2003, 23 year ago, we were 12 days into Operation Iraqi Freedom. It had entered a critical phase. Coalition forces had advanced deep into Iraq in less than two weeks, but they were now approaching the defensive belt protecting Baghdad. Iraqi regular forces had largely collapsed, yet the regime’s most loyal units – the Republican Guard – were preparing to defend the capital.
The Battle for Nasiriyah
One of the most intense battles of the invasion continued around the southern city of Nasiriyah, a key crossing point over the Euphrates River. U.S. Marine Corps units fought urban combat against Iraqi forces, including elements of the Iraqi Army and the paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam militia loyal to Saddam Hussein.
Nasiriyah was strategically important because it controlled bridges and highways feeding the coalition advance toward Baghdad. Fighting there had already resulted in casualties on both sides. Earlier in the battle, a U.S. Army convoy had taken a wrong turn into the city and was ambushed, resulting in several soldiers being killed and others captured, including Private First Class Jessica Lynch.
By April 1, U.S. Marines were securing the remaining bridges and clearing resistance across the city, allowing supply lines and armored columns to continue moving north.
Coalition Forces Approach Baghdad
Further north, the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division had driven rapidly across central Iraq and was beginning to encounter organized resistance from elite Iraqi units. The Iraqi Republican Guard, particularly the Medina Division, had positioned tanks, artillery, and infantry south of Baghdad near Karbala and Hillah.
On April 1, American armored units, artillery, and coalition aircraft intensified strikes against these formations. The goal was to weaken the Republican Guard before the final push toward Baghdad.
The Rescue of Jessica Lynch
During the night of April 1, U.S. Special Operations forces carried out a high-risk rescue mission in Nasiriyah. American intelligence had determined that captured soldier Jessica Lynch was being held at a hospital in the city after being injured during the earlier ambush of her convoy.
The mission involved U.S. Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, and other Joint Special Operations Command elements. Helicopters inserted the rescue team under cover of darkness. The hospital was secured and Lynch was evacuated safely.
April Fools to Iraqi Guards
The operation became one of the most widely reported moments of the early war and was later examined in detail by journalists and military analysts.
Momentum in the War
By April 1, it had become clear that Iraqi conventional forces were unable to halt the coalition advance across southern Iraq. However, the most important battles were still ahead. Iraqi leadership expected the Republican Guard to mount a serious defense south of Baghdad.
Within days coalition forces would begin probing the outskirts of the capital. Less than two weeks later Baghdad would fall, symbolizing the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government.
But on April 1, the outcome was not yet fully determined. Coalition forces had reached the approaches to Baghdad, while Iraqi loyalist units prepared for what they hoped would be the decisive defense of the regime.
We Won the Battles, But Lost the War: What Did We Learn?
The strategic lesson that should have been learned from Iraq—but largely was not—is that destroying a regime is far easier than understanding the civilization that lies beneath it. The United States demonstrated extraordinary tactical brilliance in the opening weeks of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In less than three weeks, coalition forces shattered Saddam Hussein’s army and toppled a government that had ruled Iraq through fear and brutality for decades. But strategy is not measured by how quickly armies advance across maps.
Regime Collapse
Victory is measured by the political order that follows the guns.
By dismantling the Iraqi state without fully understanding the social and historical structure holding it together, Washington inadvertently opened the door for Iran to expand its influence across Iraq through religious networks, political parties, and militia forces cultivated for decades.
The battlefield victory of 2003 ultimately produced a geopolitical outcome few in Washington had intended: the strategic expansion of Iranian power across the heart of the Arab world.
What Should We Understand - About Iran Resilience - Today?
The United States again finds itself confronting Iran directly. Iran is not Iraq. It is a civilization-state with more than three thousand years of political memory, forged through invasion, empire, revolution, and war. When faced with what it perceives as an existential threat, Persian history suggests a pattern not of collapse but of consolidation.
Coalition Attacks Tehran
External pressure tends to unify Iranian society and strengthen the very factions outsiders hope to weaken. This is the enduring danger of the law of unintended consequences.
When policymakers fail to account for the historical identity, cultural resilience, and strategic patience of a nation like Iran, military success can produce political outcomes that run directly against the interests it was meant to secure.
The United States has already learned this lesson once in Iraq. The question now is whether it remembers it before history repeats itself on Kharg Island.
History’s warning from Iraq is clear: when strategy ignores culture, identity, and civilizational memory, military victory can become the opening act of a much larger strategic failure. Iran may prove whether Washington has learned that lesson—or whether it is about to relearn it the hard way.
INSIDE THE WAR ROOM - EMMY NOMINATED - WAR DOCUMENTARY
SEE MY LINKEDIN ACCOUNT FOR THE DOCUMENTARY LINKS. SUBSTACK WILL NOT ALLOW IT: Cut and paste URL Into Browser
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7445204267193438208/
Part 1
Password: iraq
Part 2
Password: iraq
Part 3
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