Operation Iraq Freedom Case Study

The relationship between the United States and Iraq has been a rather complicated relationship. This relationship can be classified as a roller coaster ride that last through out history. The United States and Iraq relationship became rocky in 1958 when King Faisal was overthrown and Iraq signed with the Soviet Union. Because of the relationship that the United States had with the Soviet Union this made Iraq and the United States relationship a little questionable. In 1967 Iraq broke all ties with the United States when they decided to join ranks in the protest of the United States and Israeli strategic alliance. This decision that the Iraqi made once a country we were allies to a country we do not trust but we will deal with, a country

Franks, instead of developing his own problem statement or attempting to develop his own independent operational approach, simply relied on Rumsfeld’s “slices”, which though operationally useful, provided very little strategic value to guide his planners. (site) Without a proper operational approach, CENTCOM planned their invasion based on incorrect understanding of the Iraqi Operational Environment, this led Franks and his planners to accept bold assumptions about the quality, willingness and availability of Iraqi Police and Regular Army Forces during Phase IV of Cobra II. (site) A correct and current assessment of Iraq’s Operational Environment would have invalidated many of these assumptions. (site) These invalid assumptions allowed Rumsfeld

There’s many conflicts throughout mankind, but without the voices of the people, the world could not come to peace. The horrifying attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, New York City, United States, caused a huge outburst in American society. Many were saddened, heartbroken, and angry. However, that wasn’t the only attack. They attacked Pennsylvania, hitting the special trademark, known as the Pentagon. These attacks are what Americans call, the Act of Terrorism. On October 7, 2001, the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom. This operation was aimed towards taking down Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, where their location was in Afghanistan. This was an American fight against terrorism. Canadians had tried to support many of these

During The Gulf War the public and operational witnessed the debut of unfathomably complicated battle equipment, sleek new aircraft employing stealth. Arthur C. Clarke also described the Operation Desert Storm as the world’s first space war, as none of the accomplishments of America’s new look military would have been possible without support from space. Twelve years later Operation Iraqi Freedom proved that the central role of space power could no longer be denied. America’s military had made the transition from a space-supported to a fully space-enabled force, with astonishing results. Indeed, the military successfully exercised most of its current space power functions, including space lift, command and control, rapid battle damage assessment,

Looking back at this moment in my life, while being part of a military family; I have always looked up to those in my family that had served our great nation at one point in time. Now that I am a Veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I believe I had decided that I wanted to serve my country the day 9/11 happened. I was in sixth grade and eleven years old, anxiously waiting for Mrs. Lipe to finish her Science lecture, so our class could get to recess and run a mock outside. Suddenly, Mr. Dunn comes in with a terrified look on his face and says, “Turn on the TV,”. Mrs. Lipe turns on the TV and the whole class gazes at the television. Astounded by the news, I was mortified of what was going on and that people could commit such horrible acts to

Operation Desert Storm - The first major problem for the U.S. since the Cold War ended. The dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein ordered his army into Kuwait. This was significant because Kuwait was a major supplier of oil to us. They also posed a threat to Saudi Arabia, another major exporter of oil. If Saddam took over Saudi Arabia, Iraq would control 1/5 of the world's oil

While this story wasn’t a vacation; it was a six-month experience. Living and interacting, and understanding the culture of a foreign country is a task as most people who travel often can attest to. To realize that Afghanistan wasn’t always in the condition as it is in modern times, it was important to me in realizing that Afghanistan was a much different place prior to the conflicts taking hold during the 1970s and beyond. My unit was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom(OEF) at the beginning of 2010. Most people assume that military units immediately deploy to these countries. However, that is not the procedure at all and a lot of preparation is required. There is training that needs to be conducted,

On 17 July 1990 Saddam Hussain accused Kuwait of overproduction and oil theft from the Rumailia Oil Field, located in the Euphrates Valley of southern Iraq. Furthermore, as a result of the Iraq/Iran war, Saddam Hussain had incurred a great amount of debt for Iraq. After confirming from the US Ambassador to Iraqi Forces, that the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait was an “Arab matter” and had nothing to do with the United States, on 2 August 1990 Iraqi Forces invade Kuwait. In his frustration, Saddam Hussain dispatched 120,000 soldiers and 2,000 tanks to Kuwait (History.com, 2015). Due to the threat of a vital interest to the United States, specifically the oil produced in the Persian Gulf, with the permission of the King of Saudi Arabia,

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF), provides an excellent case study to evaluate military campaign planning. OIF demonstrates the complexity of campaign planning, while providing relevant lessons for today’s planners and leaders. OIF was successful in achieving its tactical objective of capturing Baghdad. However, due to an insufficient understanding of the operational environment (OE) and a poorly defined problem, OIF’s initial operational approach failed to achieve strategic goals. Fortunately, through reassessment and reframing Secretary Gates and General Petraeus revised the operational approach, allowing the military to facilitate the transition to an inclusive Iraqi government. Planners and leaders must facilitate campaign planning by

The recent developments regarding the international fight against ISIS has reached an important milestone for the Canadian government, with Canadian CF-18 fighter jets dropping laser-guided bombs over Iraq for the first time as part of the ongoing combat mission against ISIS (CBC News, 2014). Stephen Harper’s plan to send more than 600 members of the Canadian military and six CF-18 fighter jets to help with the coalition fighting against ISIS was not a plan that was met without controversy. Canada’s mission in Iraq, Operation Impact, will see airstrikes against ISIS targets inside Iraq for a period of up to six months, with special operations personnel working with Kurdish forces in our effort to “advise and assist” (Janus, 2014) the latest

The recapturing of major population centers such Ramadi, Iraq in December or 2015, Mosul, Iraq in July 2017 and ISIS’ self-declared capital Raqqa, Syria in October 2017 has not ended the coalition’s efforts against ISIS. It has merely ended major military operations against urban centers and shifted the war back into counter-insurgency operations. The Undersecretary of Defense, Comptroller, David L. Norquist stated that the “war against ISIS is not over; and it’s not over in Syria. And although we are shifting our forces and the mission is changing, it’s also really important that we ensure that ISIS doesn’t rise again.”

Not just our own history but the history of other countries has shown that running military operations without planning properly can result in inconceivable losses. At the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference on November 14, 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower was quoted as stating: “I heard long ago in the Army: plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” The MDMP is a single, established, and proven analytical process (US Department of the Army, 1997). The process is crucial to our success not just because of the course of action (COA) developed out of it but more so because of what we learn out of the process along the way.

The main concern in Europe (and indeed the USA) would be ISIS’ ability to mount a chemical weapon attack on their soils. Such an attack, whilst perhaps not a mass-casualty scenario, would rock the receiving country to its very core and promote ISIS to the forefront of CBRN terrorism. The ensuing panic would have a destabilising effect on the target population, and would cause economic turmoil if it targeted a central business district. Whilst this would certainly not be easy, with such a wealth of potential CBRN materials in Europe, it is certainly within ISIS’ capability.

For the first eighteen days of March in the spring of 2002, coalition forces fought Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the Shah-i-Kot Valley. The operation was named Anaconda because the intent of the coalition forces was to surround and squeeze the Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Shah-i-Kot Valley into suppression and destroy them. Operation Anaconda was the most aggressive plan of Operation Enduring Freedom to that point, and ultimately, was a decisive coalition victory that resulted in fragmented enemy forces in the area for years. However, during Operation Anaconda, the Coalition Joint Task Force Commander and his staff made fundamental errors in the Joint Operation Planning Process (JOPP) through assumptions, command relations, and unity of command.

In this essay, I will discuss how the invasion of Iraq helped create a power vacuum in Iraq, and what the consequences of this power vacuum were. In order to answer this one needs to understand what power and a power vacuum is. Power is defined as one actor’s ability to influence other actors, and a power vacuum is when the previous government have lost control over a state and there is no central power or authority to replace them (Power (international relations), 2017). Thus, militia or insurgents will often rush in to take control over the state (Power vacuum, n.d). This essay will mostly focus on the invasion of Iraq, and briefly explained the invasion of Iraq was the invasion that began the Iraq War and it lasted from 20 March to 1 May 2003 (Torreon, 2017). Armed forces of the United States, the