The Emerging "Neocon" Alibi on Iraq

[Rank amateur]

and be smack dab in the geographic center of the ME, they thus became an easy target.

Define "easy."

The object in attacking Iraq was not to produce a stable ME, it was to get bases in the area

If you're right, then the war was unnecessary. Saddam would've given us a huge base in the dessert in exchange for his life.

[Ken White]

Define "easy."

That was fairly easy.

Huh? Oh, the last five years? All that was due to (1) A massive Intel failure before the invasion by numerous agencies. (2) An Army that had no idea how to occupy another country because they had not done that in almost 60 years. (3) An Army that due to deliberate and planned lack of training and focus over an almost 30 year period under four Presidents from both parties was not prepared to pre-empt an insurgency or to fight it if it erupted. Even at that, it's been easy and five years later, we've used about one third the body bags estimated by many for the initial attack. As wars go, trust me, this one is real easy.

Yeah, aside from the casualties, always a concern but inevitable to some degree, it's also been expensive, dollar wise -- but a very large part of that is due to inane laws and regulations prompted by those laws, all passed by a series of lame Congress critters over the years in oder to 'protect the taxpayers money.' You'll have to speak to Congress about that; out of my hands.

That's the definition of easy. Not for the poor guys that got hit but, all in all, as wars go, that's easy.

If you're right, then the war was unnecessary. Saddam would've given us a huge base in the dessert in exchange for his life.

Funny guy. In order for that to have occurred, we'd have had to have the ability to deprive him of life -- we obviously did not.

Besides, we wanted three or four, dispersed, all with big airfields to facilitate rapid deployment elsewhere -- and with no strings on their use. That meant taking them. Even Saddam's generosity had limits...

[Ski]

Ken

I understand where you are coming from now. Don't agree with you all the way, but that's life.

We do have an air base in Turkey - Incirlik. Been there twice.

[Jedburgh]

....I understand where you are coming from now. Don't agree with you all the way, but that's life.

We do have an air base in Turkey - Incirlik. Been there twice.

Ski - I've spent a bit of time there as well, but Incirlik is not our base. It is a Turkish AF installation, of which they permit us to use a part. We've been using it since '55, but it still ain't our base. They've made that very clear; especially clear on the occasions that they've rolled armored vehicles onto the airstrip to stop our aircraft from taking off when they were engaged across the Iraqi border.

Over the years, Incirlik has played an important role in a broad spectrum of missions, from the '58 intervention in Lebanon, to OPC/ONW and current ops. But the Turks always have the last word on what we can launch from that site - and since the interference they ran against us with OPC missions, and the issues we had with them over OIF launch, they are no longer viewed as reliable ally in the COE (despite public stroking to the contrary). In too many important regards, their interests diverge from ours - long-term, we need an air base to replace Incirlik that will meet the same regional needs.

[Ski]

Thanks for the clarification. I did not know that. The education continues...

Ski - I've spent a bit of time there as well, but Incirlik is not our base. It is a Turkish AF installation, of which they permit us to use a part. We've been using it since '55, but it still ain't our base. They've made that very clear; especially clear on the occasions that they've rolled armored vehicles onto the airstrip to stop our aircraft from taking off when they were engaged across the Iraqi border.

Over the years, Incirlik has played an important role in a broad spectrum of missions, from the '58 intervention in Lebanon, to OPC/ONW and current ops. But the Turks always have the last word on what we can launch from that site - and since the interference they ran against us with OPC missions, and the issues we had with them over OIF launch, they are no longer viewed as reliable ally in the COE (despite public stroking to the contrary). In too many important regards, their interests diverge from ours - long-term, we need an air base to replace Incirlik that will meet the same regional needs.

[SteveMetz]

These guys need to spend less time taking shots at each other and focus on Tenet and Powell.

Peter Feaver's essay in the Weekly Standard is much more useful contribution to the debate.

I'm thinking of emailing him directly. He wrote, "Despite strenuous efforts, war critics have not come up with well-substantiated cases of the administration saying something that it knew was not true or had no evidentiary basis for believing was true. Of course, there are many cases of the administration saying things that turned out to be not true. But moving the public from "you were lying" to "you were mistaken" would be significant progress. And moving it all the way to "you had understandable reasons for your policy" could be game-changing."

I think he is doing exactly what the administration did in 2002: deliberately making HALF a strategic argument. A complete argument is not simply saying "X is a threat" but to say that "the threat from X justifies the costs and risks of dealing with it using method Y."

[Ken White]

For Rank Amatuer:

Opinions are good, everyone should have at least one. Whether any you link address all the realities is immaterial, I suppose; long as they get a point or a few correct, there's always something to like...

For Tom Odom:

We can agree on the music quality -- and I've got a tin ear...

For Steve Metz (at last; I have an at least moderately substantive comment!):

"I think he is doing exactly what the administration did in 2002: deliberately making HALF a strategic argument. A complete argument is not simply saying "X is a threat" but to say that "the threat from X justifies the costs and risks of dealing with it using method Y."

I totally agree with you on both counts. I also acknowledge that in the case of Iraq (and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan) the argument was done exceedingly poorly if at all. Further, I'm trying to dredge up a memory of when the USA has ever really done that at all well? Can you think of any involving the commitment of troops in any thing more than token numbers?

My point is not to denigrate or challenge what you say, I do agree with you. It's just that my perception is that we do not do that very well. We certainly should, no question, however, indications lead me to believe it's sort of unlikely. Thus the follow on question is, I suppose -- how do we get that to happen routinely?

[Presley Cannady]

I think he is doing exactly what the administration did in 2002: deliberately making HALF a strategic argument. A complete argument is not simply saying "X is a threat" but to say that "the threat from X justifies the costs and risks of dealing with it using method Y."

Except in 2002 the Administration made a full strategic argument. Repeatedly. And since then, the President has consistently echoed the same piece: failure to disarm Iraq, by force if necessary, will non-negligibly risk a Baathist regime--or whatever follows should it collapse--offering Islamic terrorists material support to improve on the record of 19 hijackers armed with box cutters. That is, the death of three quarters of the number lost in Iraq in a single day and the evisceration of half an annual federal outlay --or a third to twice the cost of five years in Iraq (depending on whose numbers you go by)--in a single quarter.

As for Perle and Feith, after five years of having their names dragged through the mud for a post-war everybody including State agrees they weren't allowed to muck around with, I can understand some of their resentment.

[Ken White]

Ken

I understand where you are coming from now. Don't agree with you all the way, but that's life.

We do have an air base in Turkey - Incirlik. Been there twice.

So have I -- more than twice; see Jedburgh. Also been to Izmir. We were guests and we had restrictions on use.

[Rank amateur]

In order for that to have occurred, we'd have had to have the ability to deprive him of life -- we obviously did not.

Obviously, we had the ability to kill Saddam, because he's dead now. Obviously he knew it, because he had a spider hole prepared.

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.

Even Saddam's generosity had limits...

I wasn't refferring to his genoristy. I was reffering to his desire for self preservation. I suspect that Saddam with a gun to his head would be more likely to 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.

Huh? Oh, the last five years? All that was due to

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.

it's also been expensive, dollar wise

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.

Slate has a whole bunch of people reflecting on whether they were right or wrong five years ago.

This is the link to the liberal hawks." (There are a few more that will be coming on line this week.):


IMO, Richard Cohen is the most honest:

"I admit it—I wanted to strike back."


"How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I trusted Colin Powell and his circumstantial evidence—for a little while," by Fred Kaplan. Posted March 17, 2008.

"How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I underestimated the self-centeredness and sectarianism of the ruling elite and the social impact of 30 years of extreme dictatorship," by Kanan Makiya. Posted March 17, 2008.

[Ken White]

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.

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.

... 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.

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.

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.

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.

[Rank amateur]

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.

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.

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.

[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