The Emerging "Neocon" Alibi on Iraq
I'm surprised it's taken this long, but the "neocon" architects of the Iraq disaster seemed to have agreed on an alibi and it is---drum roll--the "stab in the back."
Last week was the Post's story of Douglas Feith's forthcoming book; today the Times includes an essay by one of the movement's other ideologues-in-chief, Richard Perle, which lays it at the feet of, "Secretary of State Colin Powell; the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice; and the director of central intelligence, George Tenet."
This whole process is both nauseating--it sickens me that people like Perle and Feith without the slightest shred of honor or integrity shape our nation's policy--and almost humorous as both spin like dervishes to absolve the people who most shaped the decision: the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of Defense.
Feith's "stab in the back" theory has evolved. I heard him give a talk at AEI a few years ago where he trial ballooned the idea of blaming the military. I guess once he figured that wouldn't fly, he had to settle on the State Department and CIA. Anything, of course, but placing the responsibility where it belongs--on his desk, that of the Deputy SECDEF, the SECDEF, the VP, and POTUS.
No echo this side of the Atlantic
Rewriting history this side of the Atlantic has yet to appear, largely as Gordon Brown's government is trying to ignore Tony Blair's leadership. Few I think here will be brave enough to publically say "We were right to invade". Many of the politicians involved have left the limelight.
The impact of how intelligence is used to persaude the public may have a longer shelf life; many commentators here say the legacy of the Iraq invasion means the public will remain sceptical, if not hostile to intelligence.
Side issues, like the mysterious death or suicide of Dr David Kelly, a government scientist deeply involved in disarming Iraq, who spoke out of turn to the BBC, arouse some attention and a book on the subject is in it's fourth impression (since late 2007).
davidbfpo
Actually, it started before that. However, his 1968
date isn't that far off the mark for our involvement specifically in Iraq. Hitchens engages in his usual hyperbole and provocative style but he's not totally out to lunch in that article
One can argue that Iraq was not well planned or even a good plan -- but one should have an alternative proposal for what was to be done about the steadily increasing probes from the Middle East from 1979 through 2001 other than continue to accept them with almost no reaction. Thus far, I've seen no one offer such an alternative other than 'diplomacy' and some feel-good efforts which, given the long memories and propensity for feuds in the ME would have been highly unlikely to confer even minimal success..
One can go back to the FDR and Ibn Saud conference on the return trip from Yalta and wish the US had done many things in the ME differently over the next 30 years. Not much point in that, we did what we did and the seizure of the Tehran Embassy resulted and our totally ineffectual response to that started the ball rolling. I submit diplomacy would not have stopped it. Nor will Iraq -- but Iraq did short circuit their efforts and it will have a deterrent effect provided we don't get stuck on stupid. That's far better than doing what we did from 1979 until 2001.
While no fan of Wolfotwits, Feith et.al. and while agreeing with most above on the stupidity of the Neocon ideas (and their current CYA effort -- which is pathetic but was to be expected), I've never been totally convinced that Bush adopted the Neocon mantras -- I think he realized on a gut level that it was impossible to seal the borders of the US and that something more than diplomacy was required. He simply followed some (not all) of the Neocon ideas because they made more sense than most of the alternatives. IOW, no one had a better plan.
And, five years later, I still haven't read or heard of one...
Will there be knives? I like knives...
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Originally Posted by
J Wolfsberger
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It would be nice to lock leftist, anti war types and "Neocons" in a room. The next day we could shoot the survivors. ;)
I'll even donate a few. Voila, no survivors.... :D
Doing nothing is always an option.
Whether it's advisable or not when you're being stalked by a Pride of Lions is another question.
Turning the other cheek is, to steal a phrase from Marc, a Post Modernists preferred methodology. Works generally okay with most westerners. Not so much with folks from the ME who are definitely not into post modernism...
Response should be tailored to sources not dreams.
Again you miss the point. However, that's what
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Originally Posted by
Ski
Jackals or wild dogs is a better desciption for Al Qaeda. Not for the Baathists in Iraq. They were mosquitos - kept at bay with a nice fresh dose of DDT every so often.
you're supposed to do; concentrate on Iraq and miss the rest of the ME. Part of the strategery, I think. Seems to be working. Your mosquito advice was adhered to by three former Presidents-- you see where that got us...
Iraq is just the most visible aspect of the multi pronged strategy, Afghanistan is another -- and totally separate LOO (to use the buzz-acronym) -- while the real effort is closing off the money supply and infiltrating the operating entities (nothing classified in that, been touted in open sources here and there). The Baathists were not an issue. Saddam was not an issue. Iraq's oil was not an issue. Iraq was not an issue. The issue was destabilizing the Islamist terror base throughout the ME. Iraq just happened to be the geo location thereof because it's smack dab in the middle of the AO.
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Agree that Iraq was not strong, but was relatively stable, much more so than what we are seeing today. Unloved dictators are dime a dozen in the world, it does not mean we are invading their countries however...
The dictator wan't a big issue but the fact the he was unloved by many made him a better target than some others. That and the fact that an attack there was likely to be minimally disruptive to world oil supply. Not ours; the world's -- we really want China and India to have all the oil they want.
Nor was Iraq's stability an issue. Isn't really one today in broad terms other than as that stability affects our ability to do what we wish. Callous but that's life in the real world.
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...I suspect our political beliefs are different and that's good.
Perhaps. Though the issue to me is not political and, domestically, I'm pretty much apolitical and don't like or trust either party or ANY politician. I am a complete pragmatist, I've spent a few years in the ME and I know that four previous Presidents inadvertently encouraged them to continue their attacks over a 20 year period. Bush may not be great but at least he had enough sense to say 'enough.'
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Where we part ways - Gathering bases is a do-nothing plan for me when we have bases scattered in the region from Turkey to Oman to Kuwait to Qatar to Bahrain to Kyrgystan...how many is enough?...
Actually we don't have any bases in Turkey though they did allow us to use some of theirs under very tightly controlled conditions. The others you cite in the ME are all subject to similar conditions and all are small and would not allow for three or four BCT with training space. Kyrgyzstan is not in the ME (neither is Afghanistan). It's not how many, it's where they are and the capability they provide.
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...We could have done enough damage to non-state terror groups without invading Iraq for additional bases (do you really believe that?)...
No, I don't believe we could have done such damage -- we haven't done them much damage even with Iraq ;) ; that's a different thing entirely and is being worked quietly in many places around the world by a surprising number of US guvmint employees from many agencies (not least USSOCOM who are not into advertising). Yes, I do believe the bases were a very significant reason for the attack on Iraq; not the only reason, there were a dozen or more but the bases were a biggie.
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...We could have kept a close eye on Iraq, built up a Division size presence on the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border. Hell, we had a great deal of military surveillance on the place as is...after 13 years, we should have known everything about the damned country.
In reverse order; we obviously didn't know much about it all (Intel failure of significant magnitude); Kuwait is not big enough to allow a Division sized force and adequate training room plus there would have been conditions of use; yet again, Iraq is not the issue -- the support of trans national terrorism by a broad swath of people throughout the ME is the issue.
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I don't believe the American public will allow us to stay in Iraq for 15 years, much less 30. We shall see.
Heh. Okay. We will, indeed... :D
Then, on the other hand...
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Originally Posted by
Rank amateur
Obviously, we had the ability to kill Saddam, because he's dead now. Obviously he knew it, because he had a spider hole prepared.
We had the ability to kill him after we found him in the hole; we did not to get the bases at the time of the invasion or for a great many months thereafter; so that's really a sort of silly argument.
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Or to express my thoughts more concisely, if all we wanted were bases, we should have offered to call off the invasion in exchange for bases. Since the people in the White House are pretty smart and didn't make that offer, I suspect it was about more than bases: at least in their minds.
Of course it was about more. As I said there were over a dozen reasons I can think of and they probably had a few I didn't think of -- I simply believe the bases were among the most important if not the most important of all those reasons.
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... give us permission to use bases to attack Iran than an Iraqi Prime Minister who has been told that he's liberated and holds hands with Ahmadinejad. But that's just my opinion.
Who said anything about attacking Iran? That's your construct, not mine.
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I'd place the blame for the last five years higher up: a combination of arrogance and ignorance of the basic fact that urban combat can't possibly play out like the 1991 slaughter in the dessert. But that's also just my opinion.
Those factors had a play but were not the principal problems.
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Given that one of UBL's objectives was to weaken our the economy, and our massive debt has contributed to the weakening economy, I personally wouldn't brush off the expense so quickly.
You don't have to, I've seen our debt far higher in my lifetime so, hopefully, you won't mind if I yawn and move on.
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Slate has a whole bunch of people reflecting on whether they were right or wrong five years ago.
And all these people had what role to play in the whole thing? You really pay much attention to those talking head squirrels? Surprising.
Since I'm batting somewhere between .800 and .900 on the whole thing, you'll forgive me if I sort of ignore the Punditocracy who rarely get much of anything correct in my observation. ;)
Because you linked to him...
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Originally Posted by
Rank amateur
Since you commented on Hitchens I thought you might find it interesting. I find comparing the mea culpas to the excuses interesting and at the very least it gives Steve a platform to plug his book.;)
Only reason, I also skimmed your links above but didn't really see anything to attack or defend. Not that I was defending Hitchens, merely stating he wasn't totally out to lunch. Neither are the others -- nor do any of them offer any significant insights, IMO. Been my experience that those self appointed mavens rarely do...
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I took a simple approach 5 years ago. Powell knew more about military affairs than anyone in the cabinet. The cabinet ignored him. I made some predictions based on those facts. I'll refrain from guessing my batting average until I've read Steve's book, but sometimes the simple approach - "hit them where they ain't" - can produce a decent batting average.
Neither of your approaches were or are bad; both are good, in fact -- the latter particularly so. If you can do that...
My take on the whole thing wasn't radically different than Powell's. Like him, I reconciled myself to the fact that we were going to do it anyway -- and I think he will acknowledge, as do I, that it doesn't have to be our way to work and that sometimes you can't hit 'em where they ain't because you don't know where that is. Intel is never flawless...
Meanwhile Back at the Coliseum
So of course Mssr Bremer must answer idealogue Mssr Perle and disciple Feith as he does in this article in Nat Review
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Facts for Feith
CPA history.
By L. Paul Bremer III
A recent article in the Washington Post previewed the forthcoming book by former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith. In his book Feith apparently alleges that I was responsible for what he calls the single biggest mistake the United States made in Iraq. He claims that I unilaterally abandoned the president’s policy, promoted by Feith and others before the war, to grant sovereignty to a group of Iraqi exiles immediately after Saddam’s defeat. On March 16, Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute elaborated on this theme, arguing that a key error was that “we did not turn to well-established and broadly representative opponents” of Saddam.
And so he disputes the details going so far as to produce a copy of a short memo from SecDef Rumsfeld approving a memo of his. That is in itself bizarre as Mssr Bremer uses "the former presidential envoy to Iraq" as his credit line. Presidential envoys do not work for the Sec Def; they work for the President. So Bremer using Rumsfeld's memo of approval suggests confusion.
But where it just gets too surreal is in the closing:
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Admittedly, it was an imperfect political process. The occupation lasted 14 months, which no doubt frustrated and angered some Iraqis. But the time we bought allowed the Iraqis to write a progressive constitution and to embark on the long, difficult path to democratic government.
Technically I guess that is true, marking the period of the CPA and Bremer's tenure. But in 2008 that sentence just kind of stands out--yes I added the bold italics--as symbolic. To Bremer, who left soon afterward, the "occupation" lasted but 14 months? All said and done, it comes across as a 5-person band version of Nero fiddling. No one was clearly in charge but they all really tried. The music still sucked.
Tom