The Emerging "Neocon" Alibi on Iraq

[Rank amateur]

I'm taking this thread off on a tangent, so maybe it should be split into two threads.

An Army captain is proud of his service but changes his mind on Iraq.

In 2002, I believed the intelligence painting Iraq as an imminent threat and supported our invasion. In 2003 and 2004, I worried about the growing insurgency and grew dismayed at our counterproductive tactics and strategy, but I still felt the war was a worthy cause.

In 2005, I volunteered to deploy to Iraq as an Army captain...

But I came home in September 2006 frustrated with the strategic direction of the war and alienated from the country that sent me there. I saw our failures to secure the country and build a new Iraq as proof of the limits of military power—and a sign that America was not omnipotent. Over a beer near Times Square in October 2006, I told George Packer (who had been embedded with my adviser team earlier that year in Baqubah) that I thought the war was now "unwinnable"—and that we must implement an adviser-centric strategy.

A senior fellow of the Freeman-Spogli Institute is optimistic post surge, but mentions some lessons.

So in the fifth year of the war, the tide began to turn, albeit for reasons that are not exactly fortuitous. Maybe, five years from now, we will be able to look back and point to Iraq as the first successful counterinsurgency war since the British bested the Malay rebels in the 1950s (though after 12 long years)...

The lesson is stark: If you don't will the means, don't will the end. To this Kantianism, let us add pure homily: Look before you leap. The tragedy of American power in the Middle East, the most critical arena of world politics, is that the United States ended up working as the handmaiden of Iranian ambitions.

8 lessons on Iraq: #4 and 8 seem correct to me.

I particularly want to talk to those of you who, like me, would like to understand the errors of this war without renouncing the use of force altogether. "I don't oppose all wars," Barack Obama declared six years ago. "What I am opposed to is a dumb war." Let's try to flesh out that distinction.

This one is actually on topic: a conservative places the blame at the top. I agree with much of it.

Another larger mistake was to put my trust in the Bush administration, not so much on matters of intelligence—faulty intelligence was a near-universal phenomenon—but on matters of basic competence. I will admit to a prejudice here: I believed—note the tense, please—that Republicans were by nature ruthless, unsentimental, efficient, and, most of all, preoccupied with winning. It simply never occurred to me that Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney would allow themselves to lose a war. Which is what they have very nearly done.