In his article, What Went Wrong In Iraq, Larry Diamond explores the different problems that occurred during the George W. Bush administration form 2001 to 2009. Specifically, the blunders that happened during the occupation of Iraq by the United States in 2004 and how the country struggled to secure Iraq and rebuild their government. According to Diamond, the four most pressing problems of Iraq were: the endemic violence, shattered state, non functioning economy and a decimated society. The prospect of what would become Iraq as a country that was presented by the Bush administration in contrast to the reality of the current situation is very drastic. This is most probably due to certain miscalculations; many of them are known to the majority of the population. However, some errors particularly made during the earliest stage of the coalition occupation, took longer to generate real and clear consequences.
Diamond states that the first of these errors was the lack of maintaining order and a satisfactory level of security. Though he was advised on multiple occasions in deploying multiple troops in order to accomplished a state of security, the number of troops that President Bush sent didn't even reached one third of the optimal figure. Additionally, officers and soldiers in Iraq were not allowed to make formal complaints about the scarcity of manpower and equipment necessary to realize the operation. .
This security problem may also fall under the decision of some Pentagon officials who ignored the elaborate postwar planning made by the State Department, which addressed many of the issues they were encountering at the moment. Diamond considers that this action of the Pentagon occurred due to the fact that they thought Iraq would welcome the United States and its troops without any kind of hesitation or thought. These assumptions collapsed and the Bush administration continued to failed in sending more necessary troops.
