The glaring omission here is the local actors , which should have been included not simply as equal partners , but also as directors of the mission and its intent . The missed lesson contained within the SIGIR final report is that the involvement of local populations , officials and power structures ( formal and informal alike ) is critical in the design and implantation of reconstruction efforts . When interviewed about failures in Iraq , American officials universally spoke of the confusion over authority and accountability . Iraqi officials universally said that nobody ever asked them about how to plan or implement post-war reconstruction . 34
Reconstruction is fundamentally an operational concern , not a policy concern , as it should essentially be the desires of the people who live in that area rather than U . S . preconceived notions that guide planning . Reconstruction does , however , exist within a strategic and policy framework — it ’ s not enough to understand what needs to be done operationally , we also must understand the ultimate long term objective . The subtlety here is that ORHA was founded under the direction of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy , Douglas Feith . This placed it within the ideologically-driven realm of the Bush administration , but under the leadership of an operational commander like General Garner , who was an experienced field commander without an ideological agenda . This difference in perspective created tension between an ideological approach and an operational one . Especially since the Bush administration appears to have had a goal , but not a strategy which could have served to moderate and check the ideological assumptions .
24