The Emerging "Neocon" Alibi on Iraq

[Ken White]

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...

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...

[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.

[Tom Odom]

So of course Mssr Bremer must answer idealogue Mssr Perle and disciple Feith as he does in this article in Nat Review

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:

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