THE SURGE: THEN WHAT?
I don’t deliberately set out to anger you, oh gentle and discerning reader, but there are times after I read something about the war that spells out in excruciating detail the monumental problems facing the United States, our military, and especially the Iraqi government, that I can’t help wishing I could take some of you, grab you by the shoulders, and try and shake some sense into you.
If that sounds arrogant, I apologize. But since most conservative websites either refuse to examine some of these issues or are unaware of them or simply ignore them, I figure where else are you going to get the whole story? The MSM, mired in body count journalism won’t give it to you. Even lefty sites don’t bother to examine most of the problems facing us in Iraq. They’re too busy using the war as a political club to beat Republicans over the head or denigrate conservatives to care much what happens to the Iraqi people.
But you and I have come a long way with the people of Iraq. We cheered their first tentative steps toward democracy. We marvel at their courage as they daily face the blood and chaos fomented by both internal thugs and outside forces. But they have been ill-served by a leadership mired in sectarianism and paralyzed by division.
And the hell of it is, there’s precious little we can do to help.
To illustrate that point, allow me to quote extensively from a piece that appeared in the Boston Globe by Robert Malley and Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group. The ICG is one of those earnest left wing internationalist groups that churn out studies and papers about areas of the world in conflict. They play it mostly straight, politics wise - except regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where they have a decidedly anti-Israeli bias in my opinion. Having said that, they’ve got some pretty brilliant and experienced people who know their stuff that write for them which makes reading their analyses on Iraq a pre-requisite for understanding the conflict. Their insights into the sectarianism, the tribal squabbles, the shifting power centers all contribute to our understanding of the big picture.
They begin by looking past the surge:
TO IMAGINE what Baghdad will look like after the surge, there is no need to project far into the future. Instead, just turn to the recent past. Between September 2006 and March 2007, British forces conducted Operation Sinbad in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city. At first, there were signs of progress: diminished violence, criminality, and overall chaos. But these turned out to be superficial and depressingly fleeting. Only a few months after the operation came to an end, old habits resurfaced. Today, political tensions once again are destabilizing the city; relentless attacks against British forces have driven them off the streets; and the southern city is under the control of militias, more powerful and less inhibited than before.
Operation Sinbad, like the surge, was premised on belief that heightened British military power would help rout out militias, provide space for local leaders to rebuild the city, and ultimately hand security over to newly vetted and more professional Iraqi security forces. It did nothing of the sort. A military strategy that failed to challenge the dominant power structure and political makeup, no matter how muscular it was, simply could not alter the underlying dynamic: A political arena dominated by parties — those the British embraced, no less than those they fought — engaged in a bloody competition over power and resources.
So, what happened? While British forces were struggling to suppress the violence, the parties and organizations operating on the public scene never felt the need to modify their behavior. Militias were not defeated; they went underground or, more often, were absorbed into existing security forces. One resident after another told us they witnessed murders committed by individuals dressed in security force uniform. This, of course, with total impunity since the parties that infiltrate the security services also ensure that their own don’t get punished.
We’ve seen this same scenario being played out in Baghdad. Militias melt away or hide in plain sight as members of the security services. And despite a purge of 10,000 employees of the Interior Ministry suspected of ties to Iran as well as death squad activity, the Ministry is still a hotbed of sectarian violence. That’s because the Ministry oversees approximately a dozen different security forces and it is impossible to determine which ones have gone rogue. Forces to guard the oil fields and oil infrastructure, forces to guard prominent Iraqi politicians, forces connected with other ministries used mostly to protect civilian employees and headquarters buildings - all have been fingered at one time or another as carrying out death squad activities. And they do so usually with the assistance or tacit approval of the police who are also heavily infiltrated by militias. Purging the police units caught helping the death squads doesn’t seem to be to solving the problem.
And there are other parallels with Basra as well. Baghdad has many centers of power and like Basra, we appear not to be challenging the important ones. We’re sniping at the Mahdi Army by going after some of the top commanders who appear to be operating independently of Muqtada al-Sadr’s influence as well as targeting the Iranian trained Quds collaborators in the Iraqi police force. But that’s a drop in the bucket and we know it. This is why disarming the militias was included as a political benchmark to be carried out by the Iraqi government and not a military goal of the surge. How the influence of the militias is going to shake out after the surge is over will determine how much peace there will be in Baghdad.
And if you’re thinking about the Provisional Reconstruction Teams (PRT’s) being able to do much good at rebuilding the country, here’s the British experience in Basra:
Likewise, little was done to rebuild the city. Instead, the leading parties maintained their predatory practices, scrambling to take advantage of available public resources, contracts, or jobs. Oil contraband is an open secret, acknowledged even by a fighter in Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army, who told us that “when Moqtada al-Sadr met with representatives . . . in Basra, he scratched his nose and said, ‘ I smell the smell of gasoline’ — his way of accusing his own representatives of smuggling oil.” Fadhila siphons diesel off at the source; others drill holes into pipelines. The public sector as a whole is rife with corruption — instance of mammoth-sized projects that have delivered virtually nothing are legion — malfeasance and partisan hiring.
In short, Operation Sinbad, at best, froze in place the existing situation and balance of power, creating an illusory stability that concealed a brutal and collective tug-of-war-in-waiting. Once the British version of the surge ebbed, the struggle reignited.
For Baghdad, the implications are as clear as they are ominous. Basra is a microcosm of the country as a whole, in its multiple and multiplying forms of violence. In the southern city, strife generally has little to do with sectarianism or anti-occupation resistance, both of which are far more prominent in the capital or Iraq’s center. Instead, it involves the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly are indistinguishable from political actors. This means that even should the armed opposition weaken, even should sectarian tensions abate, and even should the surge momentarily succeed, Basra’s fate is likely to be replicated throughout the country on a larger, more chaotic, and more dangerous scale.
If you’ve been reading this site for the last year or so, you know that the last sentence rings true. And given the fact that come March, the numbers of American troops will start declining (unless the Administration wants to extend the army’s tours again), the situation outlined above will present the Administration and the American people with a huge problem.
Iraq really has become the stickiest of tar babies; we can’t withdraw too precipitously, if at all and yet our military cannot do much of anything to help solve Iraq’s massive political, sectarian, and security problems. We are well and truly stuck. We can’t move forward and we can’t go back. Here’s American Ambassador Ryan Crocker:
“You can’t build a whole policy on a fear of a negative, but, boy, you’ve really got to account for it,†Mr. Crocker said Saturday in an interview at his office in Saddam Hussein’s old Republican Palace, now the seat of American power here. Setting out what he said was not a policy prescription but a review of issues that needed to be weighed, the ambassador compared Iraq’s current violence to the early scenes of a gruesome movie.
“In the States, it’s like we’re in the last half of the third reel of a three-reel movie, and all we have to do is decide we’re done here, and the credits come up, and the lights come on, and we leave the theater and go on to something else,†he said. “Whereas out here, you’re just getting into the first reel of five reels,†he added, “and as ugly as the first reel has been, the other four and a half are going to be way, way worse.â€
That from our own Ambassador. I would guess that with talk like that, it will be impossible come September to maintain any political will in Congress to continue with the surge - especially since Crocker is already lowering the bar by dismissing benchmarks as a reasonable way to measure progress in Iraq:
The ambassador also suggested what is likely to be another core element of the approach that he and General Petraeus will take to the September report: that the so-called benchmarks for Iraqi government performance set by Congress in a defense authorization bill this spring may not be the best way of assessing whether the United States has a partner in the Baghdad government that warrants continued American military backing. “The longer I’m here, the more I’m persuaded that Iraq cannot be analyzed by these kind of discrete benchmarks,†he said.
After the Iraqi government drew up the first list of benchmarks last year, American officials used them as their yardstick, frequently faulting the Iraqis for failure to act on them, especially on three items the Americans identified as priorities: a new oil law sharing revenue between Iraq’s main population groups; a new “de-Baathification†law widening access to government jobs to members of Saddam Hussein’s former ruling party; and a law scheduling provincial elections to choose representative governments in areas where Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds are competing for power.
But Mr. Crocker said there were better ways to measure progress, including the levels of security across Iraq, progress in delivering basic services like electricity to the population, and steps by Iraqi leaders from rival groups to work more collaboratively.
I’m afraid this won’t sit well with Congress if Crocker and Petreaus abandon benchmarks as a gauge of Iraqi progress. I don’t believe Crocker understands how tenuous a thread the President is holding his war coalition together. He can have all the determination in the world to see the conflict through to some kind of solution we could live with. But it won’t matter if a dozen or Senators and a couple of dozen Congressmen abandon him on Iraq.
Greg Djerjian, war supporter and Bush booster when the war started, has been a gloomy voice on Iraq over the last 18 months. I think he nails it here:
For the grim realities are these: we are in a massive and exceedingly dangerous mess in Iraq, one where if we pull out precipitously, neighbors are likelier to come in full-bore, the civil war will turn even more brutal, and genocidal actions on a scale not yet seen since the American invasion could result. Meantime, it is crystal-clear, given these stakes, that an immediate withdrawal is not going to happen, even if you think it’s, all told, the wisest course, as no consensus can be built around such a policy at this time. Even harsh Administration critics like Tony Zinni counsel against it.
We are therefore left with a feeling that our best hope is the ISG plan, which I don’t think has been overtaken by circumstances simply because its findings were published over six months ago. If anything, its findings are even more urgent, with regionalization of the conflict looming with the Turks massing more troops on the Kurdish frontier. And is the situation no longer “grave and deteriorating”, as the ISG found? Only more so, of course, as the clock keeps ticking.
There are actually two separate clocks; a countdown to September’s crucial debate and the clock in the heads of many GOP Congressmen and Senators. How long can they stick with the President without permanently damaging their careers? Their answer to that question will determine how much longer the surge will continue before we start to draw down our forces.
You know, for a bunch of folks who want to decry ‘military only’ solutions, they sure miss a lot on the political side of things.
When these oh-so-fine and wise folks actually start to address the Awakening movement for technocratic, secular government that is arising from Anbar and reaching out to the technocratic urban dwellers and the Kurds, I might take them seriously. They don’t… they want the current political framework as the future framework, while that is, patently, not going to happen. From the brothers at ITM and a from the reports from Anbar, Diyala and starting in some of the burbs of Baghdad, and the Kurdish areas, the current ruling coalition’s days are numbered. Already there are defections from it to this ‘third party’ that is technocratic and broad-spectrum in nature. The ability of the tribes to cohere and form a political basis is unknown inside Iraq, outside of Ba’athist injunctions… and even those used factionalism to reduce tribal authority and coherence.
The ’surge’ is not *just* about clearing out insurgents, it is about getting a solid basis for a new political climate going in Iraq: decentralizing power out to the Provinces and fracturing the ruling coalition. Maliki had long months to denounce Sadr and JaM, but he didn’t do so quickly enough. When Sadr left the other factions that joined in as a counter-weight to him began to hear from colleagues about doing something ‘different’. 15-20% of the Shia ruling bloc is now talking outwards to other organizations and support, inside the governing coalition, is faltering. Maliki is scrambling to actually get something going, but the piper is no longer playing a tune he can dance to easily. The death knell for this government will be getting Provincial election laws done. Then it will be replaced, either via elections or simple change in alignment within Parliament to support a new coalition: Sunni tribal affiliated groups with the Awakening, the Kurds and technocratic Shia. A Rural/Urban coalition that is multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian because it does not want a sectarian government.
Technocrats want things to run *well* and the tribes are learning that corruption is destructive to *them*, now.
Until these folks decrying the ’surge’ actually learn to deal with the political changes going on in Iraq, even in overview, they will remain in the dark as to what is going on. They missed the reason behind Ramadi, Anbar and now, increasingly, Baqubah, Diyala… the tribal based Awakening movement is spreading across Iraq. The reaction to blood thirsty terrorists who call themselves Ba’athists, al Qaeda and Mahdi Army. These folks have a different name for them: murderers. When they went the way of pure brutality and started to murder children and women, these outlooks sealed their fates. Then they went after the tribal structure, and that has hastened things, no end.
We are now learning that the Iraqi people have a limit to their tolerance for bloodshed of their innocents. They also see the only way out is over the bodies of the killers. That is the cost of purchasing liberty, and Iraqis now step up to pay that price. Time to teach them that the blood of tyrants and patriots purchases that liberty… unless they want to live like slaves to killers.
Apparently, more of them don’t like that idea these days. Gots first hand experience of it.
It is not a question of letting go, for the US… it is a question of holding on to a people and helping them through to a better future, to help us secure our own. Or else we are no longer worthy of the gift of liberty, being unwilling to pay the price for it.
Comment by ajacksonian — 7/15/2007 @ 8:59 am
Government in the Middle East has long been a source of patronage and a money making proposition. Graft, bribes etc. are the standard way of doing business. This is why splitting the country into three parts makes the most sense, as one of the causes of this sectarian violence was access to the governments till. Eliminate the fight over the governmental graft money machine and you do two things. First you shift the fight over graft from a fight between sects to an internal fight in each region, this cuts down the sectarian violence as the players turn on each other internally. The second thing you achieve is that the governments of these areas, despite the graft, still have to provide basic security for their people. This cuts down on the criminal gangs that thrive on , and profit from, the chaos. This is basically what has happened in the Kurdish areas, there is law and order and the two parties have divided up the graft machinery. This is by far not a perfect solution, and yes sectarian violence would still exist, but at least at a more manageable lower level, particularly when the US could severely punish local governments that allow cross border raids.
Comment by grognard — 7/15/2007 @ 9:46 am
And the hell of it is, there’s precious little we can do to help.
Rick–I appreciate your sincerity, your diligence in developing complex arguments, and your acknowledgment of opposing viewpoints. But there are too many variables in your equation for it to be ultimately useful in projecting likely outcomes. Like the global warming debate, the Iraq situation with all the unknowns you cite is simply too difficult to handicap.
Try Occam’s razor. My version is as old as the written word: the one potentially overwhelming factor is an old-fashioned whipping by the American military of those who are killing us and our allies. Winning the fight will not solve all problems but it by itself will allow progress in many other areas. Can we do it? Of course. And I hope the winning strategy is underway. This is what we can do to help.
Show me a war which was won by anything but military force. And make no mistake, it is a war in Iraq despite what the Chamberlains whoud have us believe.
Comment by martin — 7/15/2007 @ 9:57 am
For another look about the whole concept of the surge, a little history lesson may be of help
Recommended reading, very well done.
Comment by SlimGuy — 7/15/2007 @ 10:31 am
1
to ajacksonian:
Those tribes in Anbar province who fight now AlQaida are lethal enemies of the US occupation AND lethal enemies of Shiite dominance - and they will turn against the US occupation again as soon as they will have reduced the danger AlQaida poses to them.
Do you still believe the information of those who always, always have deceived us? These people do not tell you the truth about the momentary Anbar allies right now. How many more lies are you willing to swallow, ajacksonian?
It’s a complex pattern of enmities now in Iraq. Similar to the long Lebanon civil war. A fragmentation that overstretches the capacities of binary thinkers.
2
to martin:
A completely self-destructive strategy. Such wars are NOT won by whipping and killing = by military means. As the situation in Iraq proves once again. But Warriors like you will never learn such a lesson. For them war is similar to a video killer game. Fortunately the USA is populated by many more reasonable citizens.
(Or — was Martin’s post meant to be a satire?)
3
to Rick Moran:
Well, if things are the desastrous way you put them in your post -
who brought you into this mess?
who anticipated this mess and warned before the war?
why were the warnings not listened to?
who takes responsibility for this epic failure?
how could similar mistakes be avoided - f.e. in the case of an air-war against Iran?
All three options are bad:
- escalate the war
- scale it down (ISG-proposal)
- withdraw completely in the course of a year
(The ISG-proposal seems to be the least bad option of the three, but it will not work either.)
What a desaster for US politics. And for all of us.
But there are still some who believe in a victory and want “to stay the course” … We know this mindset from German history.
Comment by leo — 7/15/2007 @ 11:32 am
If I have to read one more idiot tell me how right they were and how wrong I was, I will crawl through my monitor and punch you in the face.
The number of things war critics were wrong about are absolutely astronomical. I refuse to grant critics anything - people who said we’d lose 10,000 men in the fight for Baghdad and the like or people who had been saying for 4 years that there was a civil war when each and every time they made that statement, they were wrong or people who said the elections wouldn’t come off or that they couldn’t write a Constitution. It goes on and on and on and on.
The warnings were not listened to because they were politically motivated - as is your critique. For every CIA report predicting disaster there were 2 or 3 that said the opposite. War critics are the most insufferable assholes when it comes to crowing about “I told you so” except they forget how wrong they were about 95% of what has gone on in Iraq. The 5% you’ve been right about is nothing to be proud of for in fact your actions have helped along the disaster.
Who the hell do you think takes responsibility you sanctimonious twit? The President is at fault. And loons who still believe he knew there was no WMD in Iraq when we invaded don’t have the brains of a marmoset. If you believe he knew there were no WMD then you must also believe that he either wanted to lose the election of 2004 or lose the war against Iraq.
Even a 5 year old could figure out that if we won the war, we would have to look for WMD. Not finding it meant that Bush loses the election of 2004. Only because of the absolute stupidity of the Democrats in nominating John Kerry saved his ass. Anyone else would have beaten him in a landslide.
So which is it? Do you think Bush wanted to lose the election or lose the war? If he lost the war, he wouldn’t have had to worry about looking for WMD in IRaq, would he? So which one do you think Bush had in mind, him lying about WMD and all?
And your gratuitous slap at my commenters who disagree with you by bringing up “German history.” (Which history is that? Frederick the Great? Bismark? The Weimer Republic? Do you even know what I’m referring to?) will not be tolerated. Do it again and I’ll ban your ass faster than you can write a comment telling me to screw off.
Comment by Rick Moran — 7/15/2007 @ 11:48 am
To Leo–Such wars are NOT won by whipping and killing = by military means.
Please define “such wars” and provide a specific example of such a war won by other means. See also the definition of “war”.
Some Chamberlains cannot understand that when one’s enemy–unprovoked– begins killing you and states its dedication to wiping your culture off the face of the earth, you are in a war and you can generally count on killing or being killed. This has been demonstrated to be true for thousands of years. It is unfortunate but true.
But maybe Leo’s post was, like Moore’s feature films, an attempt at satire.
Comment by martin — 7/15/2007 @ 12:13 pm
SlimGuy, interesting read indeed. Question, did not the French Right destroy itself as a political force over Vietnam and Algiers? Unfortunately that might be another lesson this country will repeat.
Comment by grognard — 7/15/2007 @ 12:52 pm
grognard
Actually it’s more like they were worn down from fighting the left and the socialist dominance in the country.
Now it’s getting to the point where it really doesn’t matter as much as before, because of submission to the EU which is really turning sovereign states into subsets of the EU with more and more being dictated mandates from them that end up leaving very little for the individual states to call their own shots on.
Add on political correctness and multi cultureism gone wild and you have a big hole they may now be starting to dig themselves out of if the pendulum is finally swinging.
Comment by SlimGuy — 7/15/2007 @ 1:50 pm
To Rick Moran:
A remarkable answer:
Yelling.
No poise and composure.
Dirty words.
Nerves on edge.
Such impulsiveness might be one of the general and underlying reasons for failing when it comes to strategy and of long-term planning.
Is it frequent in the USA? - Could be.
First:
What I wrote is not about “I-told-you-so”. It is about accountability. It is about responsibility. One historical strength of Conservatives often was insisting on accountability and responsibility.
I miss that in your case, as well as in the case of your government.
You were fooled in 2002 and the following years, and don’t want to admit it, and don’t want to learn from it, and can’t accept your personal responsibility.
YOU, too, led the USA into the morass of Iraq, and into adopting a losing strategy against our common foe, Islamist terrorism.
Second:
That Iraq did NOT pose an imminent threat, that there were no WMD likely, that the whole WMD claim was conceit - that was well know all over the world, although not in the USA. Why not in the USA?
That it would be easy to conquer Iraq was well established almost everywhere - but that the aftermath would become the problem: insurgency, civil war, drawing the neighbours into the conflict - all that was also intensely debated, at least in Germany, in most of Europe.
It really was amazing to follow the US debates which simply did not address such topics in any responsible manner. It was all patriotic madness at that time in the USA.
So, Rick Moran, this is part of the challenge you have to meet! Patriotic blindness was behind this being fooled - on your side, too. You had the courage to address some of the real problems. Address that patriotic blindness, too! Don’t cut and run! Don’t hide behind yelling and dirty words!
And then your last paragraph:
“And your gratuitous slap at my commenters who disagree with you by bringing up “German history.†(Which history is that? Frederick the Great? Bismark? The Weimer Republic? Do you even know what I’m referring to?) will not be tolerated. Do it again and I’ll ban your ass faster than you can write a comment telling me to screw off.”
Wow, what can I do now? I must not answer at all, because if I answer to tell you what I was referring to — you will BAN ME!
So I am not allowed to answer Martin - you would ban me for whatever I would write to him, as it would be about German history.
(Really, is to refer to German history forbidden on your blog? Am I not allowed here to tell you what I’ve learnt from German history?)
For me, it’s fascinating to experience American cultures of debate.
I learn!
And will present this nice little piece of debate to my students …
Comment by leo — 7/15/2007 @ 4:34 pm
Rick,
What did you expect from the the Leo’s of the left. The same thing happened to Greg, the nutroots took over as commenters. Our Repuiblican legislators that are waffling like you will meet the same reaction and they will go down to sure defeat in ‘08. That paper referenced by slimguy hit it right on the head. You have to have the will to WIN. Rick you seem to have lost the will to win and the lefties are going to eat you up for lunch,nomatter how much the bravado.
Comment by Moose — 7/15/2007 @ 8:23 pm
Rick closes: “How long can they stick with the President without permanently damaging their careers?”
I believe, Rick, that their “careers” will more likely be over because of their abandoning the President, thus also, most importantly, thumbing their noses at the troops, and, most disgustingly, at General Petraeus, after having confirmed him unanimously a short time ago. It boggles my mind.
That said, I was prompted to reply by your use of “careers.” It wasn’t supposed be a career, it was supposed to be temporary service to our new nation. Now it’s morphed into a bunch of old men that don’t know the meaning of the word “service.”
Worse, they don’t seem to have retained any memory of the exceptionalism of our country — perhaps they don’t, after too many years at the public trough, even believe we’re exceptional any longer, it sure seems that way.
It’s a very sad thing when our “leaders” are so anxious to cut, run, and dishonor our troops and ultimately lose our country — and not too far in the future at that, thanks to their fecklessness.
Comment by Mark H. — 7/15/2007 @ 10:11 pm
We don’t own Iraq people, the righties always speak like Iraq belongs to us. Its a sovereign country, we have no business trying to run it. We toppled Saddam , now we should get the hell out. We invaded a country that didn’t attack us. How arrogant was that? Now were in a fiasco,poetic justice I call it. If the US was invaded I’d fight to the death against the invaders, why is it the neo-cons can’t understand Iraqi Nationalists fighting a foreign invading army. Bush has lost the country on this one, he’s to stupid and stubborn to change coarse now. We’ll have to wait till he leaves office to get out of Iraq. We don’t belong there, we never did.You reap what you sow Bush. Worst foreign policy blunder in our history.Thanks Rick for a honest, blunt assessment of Iraq.
Comment by Joe Helgerson — 7/15/2007 @ 10:57 pm
To Rick Moran:
You wrote this:
“… And loons who still believe he knew there was no WMD in Iraq when we invaded don’t have the brains of a marmoset. If you believe he knew there were no WMD then you must also believe that he either wanted to lose the election of 2004 or lose the war against Iraq.
Even a 5 year old could figure out that if we won the war, we would have to look for WMD. Not finding it meant that Bush loses the election of 2004. Only because of the absolute stupidity of the Democrats in nominating John Kerry saved his ass. Anyone else would have beaten him in a landslide.
So which is it? Do you think Bush wanted to lose the election or lose the war? If he lost the war, he wouldn’t have had to worry about looking for WMD in IRaq, would he? So which one do you think Bush had in mind, him lying about WMD and all?”
My answer to that:
1
They hyped the WMD threat - because they assumed they could easily take over and transform Iraq. After such a success it would have been irrelevant whether WMD were found or not. People would readily pardoned the “error”.
Bush had problems in 2004 not because of the WMD fraud itself, but because Iraq had already begun to be a desaster, and therefore the WMD question remained relevant.
I think the mistake this government made was not to deceive others (about WMD), but to deceive themselves (about Iraq’s realities and the chances of occupation).
2
You claim it was an error. So does, f.e., Powell.
Powell prefers to concede error to concede fraud, and so do all the others, because in your moral world it is pardonable to err but unpardonable to commit fraud.
The Downing Street Documents, among others, prove that that it was not error, but fraud. And anyway, I know that somebody like Cheney or Powell is not so stupid, so incompetent not to recognize hyped intelligence.
The CIA was coerced to hype intelligence. CIA people work for the executive, and can be ordered to spin intelligence for political purposes. They delivered.
Politics, like Poker, is not a game in which you have to be so moral to show your opponents your cards. To deceive others is part of the game. But to deceive yourself is - incompetence, and for incompetence you have to pay a high price.
So in my political world it is not fraud, but erring what is unpardonable. And they erred about the reality into which they ran in Iraq.
Comment by leo — 7/16/2007 @ 3:25 am
Moose wrote:
“Rick you seem to have lost the will to win and the lefties are going to eat you up for lunch,nomatter how much the bravado.”
Indeed, a dilemma. A tricky psychological situation for Rick Moran.
Someone who gambles or speculates in money is on a losing streak and asks himself: Should I go on and invest more money? Throw more good money into the abyss?
You may turn the corner, if lucky, or go broke completely.
Grown-up and levelheaded people usually stop early enough. They know that mere will-power will not coerce reality.
It was Karl Rove, I think, who famously said: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality … we’ll act again, creating other new realities … We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
That is the mindset: Create your own reality by the power of your own will. The “Moose mindset”: You win if you have the will to win.
It doesn’t work. Reality should always be treated humbly. Superior to our will.
It is not “lefties” who eat you up, Rick Moran, it is reality.
And you know: The “Moose mindset” would ruin your nation, if the nation followed it, as it has ruined plenty of gamblers and speculators, and as it had ruined Germany twice.
Comment by leo — 7/16/2007 @ 3:45 am
“The number of things war critics were wrong about are absolutely astronomical. I refuse to grant critics anything – people who said we’d lose 10,000 men in the fight for Baghdad and the like or people who had been saying for 4 years that there was a civil war when each and every time they made that statement, they were wrong or people who said the elections wouldn’t come off or that they couldn’t write a Constitution. It goes on and on and on and on.”
If you look at individual detailed predictions, I agree that many people were wrong about many things. The only thing that I was concerned about was whether Saddam might have had some WMDs and would use them in inventive ways resulting in mass casualties. Of course that was before we found out how thin the evidence was that he did.
But looking at specific predictions is always troubling because the more detailed the prediciton the more chance that it would be incorrect. What is more instructive is to look at the broad picture predicted by different people. In this, the picture painted by those who were in favour of the war was that the Iraqi people would embrace freedom and democracy, US troops would be scaled right back to 30,000 months after the invasion and that reconstruction of the country would be well on its way by now with Iraq as an example to the region. The anti-war prediction was that, as an ethnic state, democracy would produce ethnic divisions and the security situation would result in an eternal occupation which would, in the way of things, get more and more violent as the years passed, resulting in the fabled “Quagmire” while doing little or nothing to counter the terrorist Islamist threat to the West.
The reason why many people remind others of this is mainly because they are concerned that the people from the former camp are still making all the decisions regarding Iraq, whereas the latter group are generally ignored until reality screams so loudly that it cannot be ignored.
Still, not much of it matters in any case. This course was set in place long ago and we just get to watch it play out.
For those who believe that the alternative grouping of Shiite Secularists, Sunni Tribes and other small parties are going to form a cohesive government as an alternative to the Kurds, SIIC and Dawa, please could you explain the numbers on this? As far as I can tell they don’t have a hope in hell of getting it together and, even if they do, it is hard to imagine a grouping less able to hold together and actually govern Iraq. Say what you like about the current government but it is, at least, relatively unified. Useless, corrupt, incapable of action and largely holidaying in Jordan, but at least they’re not shooting at each other (most of the time).
Comment by Drongo — 7/16/2007 @ 4:12 am
This is a hopeless situation, the dems only want victory in 08, not victory in Iraq so like I’ve said, lets bring our troops home. The PM of Iraq has said we can leave anytime we want, lets take him up on his offer and sit back and watch em wipe each off the face of the earth, thats what he wants so be it.
Comment by Drewsmom — 7/16/2007 @ 4:31 am
Monday Morning Links…
I disagree with Roger Simon that there are too many Pres. candidates. The more the merrier. And, speaking of merrier, Ralph Nader will probably run again. Ralph is always a cheerful, optimistic presence. Did you know that he is from the lovely Litchfi…
Trackback by Maggie's Farm — 7/16/2007 @ 10:59 am
“If you believe he knew there were no WMD then you must also believe that he either wanted to lose the election of 2004 or lose the war against Iraq.”
It’s not that Bush knew, or didn’t know, it’s that he DIDN’T CARE. It still amazes me how many people think Iraq had anything at all to do with 9/11.
Comment by tHePeOPle — 7/16/2007 @ 11:44 am
Leo in #15 wrote:
It is not “lefties†who eat you up, Rick Moran, it is reality.
amen, brother.
Comment by HyperIon — 7/16/2007 @ 2:51 pm
Reality has a well known liberal bias.
Comment by tHePeOPle — 7/16/2007 @ 4:42 pm
Not addressing your main point, but a tangential one. Yes, your characterization of the ICG is correct. One of its worst perpetrators of the anti-Israel bias, is a co-author of the report you’re citing Robert Malley. He was on Albright’s staff and represented the Palestinians at Camp David in 2000. It is largely his (skewed) account that was the source for Deborah Sontag’s valedictory article as Mideast correspondent for the NY Times. I can’t address any of the points here, but his dishonesty is legendary and I’d be very skeptical of taking anything he says seriously unless I knew it was corroborated by someone else.
Comment by soccer dad — 7/17/2007 @ 12:26 pm