Response to Dan Senor's WashPost Op-Ed
Several people have asked me to respond to Dan Senor's op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post about an excerpt from my book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, that was published in The Post on September 17. While I don't want to be drawn into a back-and-forth debate on the pages of The Post or in cyberspace, there are some significant misrepresentations and inaccuracies in his piece that need to be corrected for the record.
Yes, there were nonpolitical experts who worked for the CPA, and some of them even held senior-level titles, but it most cases, they were kept at an arm's length from Ambassador Bremer and, as such, were not involved in making the most important decisions of the occupation. In addition, many of them did not serve for the full duration of the occupation. Ambassador Jones, for instance, arrived in Baghdad after the November 15, 2003, agreement. By the time he arrived, the roadmap for the political transition had already been set. And, according to several senior CPA people I talked to, his influence was eclipsed by Bremer's younger, more political advisers. Ryan Crocker was there only for the first few months. Yes, he played an important role in helping to select the Governing Council in the early weeks of the occupation, but then he left Iraq. His role was filled by Scott Carpenter, a former International Republican Institute staffer. He was sent to work for Jay Garner by Liz Cheney, the vice president's daughter. (In my book, I write that Carpenter "had not been involved in the Future of Iraq Project or the department's other initiatives with Iraqi exiles but, unlike some of his State colleagues, was a firm believer in Bush's effort to promote democracy in Iraq and the broader Arab world. Carpenter 'really wasn't what I wanted,' Garner said later.") It's worth noting that Ryan Crocker doesn't even rate a mention after Page 85 of Bremer's memoir, "My Year in Iraq." Redd and Kellogg were operations guys. They didn't deal with the governance of Iraq. Larry Diamond and Noah Feldman weren't in Baghdad for extended periods of time. Feldman had no major role in shaping overall CPA policy. I've got quotes in my notebook from Senor dismissing Diamond's role in the CPA as insignificant. It's interesting that Senor seeks to tout Diamond's role now. Senor claims that "the senior tiers of the CPA were populated with a bipartisan and generally nonpolitical corps of experts." In his op-ed, Senor cited a handful of individuals. Let's consider a few others: One of the senior advisers for the Ministry of Education was Williamson Evers, an advocate for school vouchers and an education policy adviser to President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns. The senior adviser to the Ministry of Higher Education was John Agresto, the former president of St. John's College in Santa Fe, N.M.; he had worked with Lynne Cheney at the National Endowment for the Humanities. The senior adviser to the Transportation Ministry was Darrell Trent, the deputy manager of Ronald Reagan's 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns. The senior adviser to the Ministry of Health, as I detailed in the excerpt, was James Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker who was largely unknown among international health experts; he had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. The CPA's director of private sector development was Thomas C. Foley, who served as Connecticut finance chairman for Bush's 2000 campaign. Among Bremer's senior counselors was Tom Korologos, who served as an assistant to President Nixon and President Ford and was a member of the Bush-Cheney transition team in 2001. It all depends on how you define "populated." Yes, there were some bipartisan and nonpolitical experts. And yes, there were even some Democrats. I said that in the book and in the excerpt. But there weren't that many of them. Senor contends a "fairer book would critique our policy decisions." My book certainly does that. See Chapters 4 and 9. See also Chapter 16. In fact, see the whole book. It's one big critique of policy decisions. In his op-ed, Senor doesn't even seek to defend the three principal subjects of the excerpt: Bernard Kerik, Jay Hallen and Haveman. What about Senor's role with the CPA? Let me quote from my book: Stratcomm, as it was called in the palace, was the CPA's public relations office. It was run by Daniel Senor, a lanky thirty-two-year-old with a receding hairline and a you're-either-with-us-or-against-us attitude toward journalists. He arrived in Iraq with Garner but stayed on after Bremer arrived. His press relations experience was limited to a stint as a spokesman for a senator, but Senor was an ardent Republican and soon became a trusted member of the viceroy's inner circle. He helped Bremer, a fellow Harvard Business School graduate, decide when to hold press conferences, which journalists to grant interviews, and what photo opportunities were worth a dangerous trip outside the Green Zone. As the occupation wore on, Senor became the most visible CPA official after Bremer. Clad in a suit, he held televised press briefings several times a week in the Convention Center. The briefing room was decorated by a White House image consultant, who was flown to Baghdad to specify the dimensions and location of the backdrop -- a gold seal emblazoned with the words Coalition Provisional Authority. The consultant also had two big-screen plasma televisions affixed to the wall so Senor could play video clips. While other CPA officials waited months for equipment and staff to arrive from the United States, the press room's needs were quickly met. Behind the podium, Senor never conceded a mistake, and his efforts to spin failures into successes sometimes reached the point of absurdity. "The majority of Iraqis . . . do they want the coalition forces to leave? They say no," he once said. The CPA's own polls suggested just the opposite. Asked why Iraq had such interminable lines at gas stations, he insisted it was "good news" -- more Iraqis were driving because the CPA had allowed the import of a quarter-million new cars. He made no mention of the CPA's delays in getting Halliburton and other contractors to solve the problem by repairing refineries. When Senor was frank, it was never for publication. In April 2004, a few reporters asked him about a paroxysm of violence that had Americans hunkering in the Green Zone. "Off the record: Paris is burning," he told them. "On the record: Security and stability are returning to Iraq." Senor couldn't speak Arabic. When an Iraqi journalist asked a question, the cameras captured Senor lifting a pair of earphones so he could listen to a translation. His language handicap made some briefings almost comical. Basic queries posed by Iraqi reporters -- When will you pay pensions? When will electricity production increase? -- were often unsatisfactorily answered because the question or the response was mangled by a translator. Other requests for information about government services were punted to the Governing Council, to perpetuate the myth that it had real authority. The Governing Council's press office was inept, so the Iraqi reporters rarely received an adequate answer. Senor's briefings were intended for an American audience. He talked about visits by congressional delegations and cabinet secretaries. There was another session for Arabic speakers, but it was conducted by a Brit who regurgitated day-old items from Senor's talking points, a slight that rankled many Iraqi journalists. "The Iraqis want to know what is happening in Iraq," a correspondent for one of Baghdad's largest newspapers groused after a Senor briefing. "But all he talks about is American politics." In his final paragraphs, Senor suggests that I prefer the rapid political transition plan favored by neocons at the Pentagon. Far from it. Yes, I quote an Iraqi political official as saying the occupation was a mistake, but I do not espouse the rapid transfer of power to exiles led by Ahmad Chalabi. Instead, I write in Chapter 16 that a better political transition could have taken several forms: "The compromise between their desire for self-rule and the absence of a leader with broad appeal could have taken many forms, as the State Department's Arabists pointed out over the months after the invasion: a temporary governor appointed by the United Nations, an interim ruling council, or even a big-tent meeting--similar to the loya jirga convened after the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan--to select a crop of national leaders. There certainly was a role for a tireless, charismatic American diplomat to shepherd the process. It could easily have been Bremer, with a different title and a shorter mandate, with a viable political plan and meaningful resources for reconstruction." Sure, there were people at the State Department who wanted the same sort of open-ended occupation that Bremer favored, but there were plenty of others who wanted a shorter, more modest, Iraqi-led process that didn't involve handing the keys over to Chalabi and his ilk. That's where I come down. My book, contrary to what Senor contends, does acknowledge "the depths and ambiguities of the problem." That's what it's all about.
Senor is doing the usual RNC tactic of flinging mud and hoping some of it sticks. But the issue is simple. Did the people sent to Iraq have the minimal qualifications that a reasonable person might look for:
Some command of Arabic
Experience in conflict or post-conflict countries
Some specific knowledge of Iraq beyond that gleaned from pre-war talking points.
For the IRI/NRO/Heritage/RNC hacks sent to Baghdad, the answer is No, No, and No.
October 11, 2006 6:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
The New Yorker's "Briefly Noted" calls your book "even-handed."
It will take going outside the premises of this discussion to explain why there was no hope of the enlightened approach followed by occupying forces in Europe. But consider this: My grandfather had a job during the occupation as "diplomatic liason for cultural affairs." Among other issues was restoring the cultural life of both France and Germany!
This time around we watched as a treasure trove of early human civilization was looted. I suspect an undercurrent of cultural racism that honored Europe but dismissed the Fertile Crescent was no help in gaining the cooperation of Iraqis.
It is reflected in the certainty that we could improve their government, and that it needed improving. By contrast, the history of admiration for Germany's cultural, intellectual, and economic achievements probably had something to do with the cautious and humble approach to rebuilding. Funny how the nation that threatened the entire world with inhuman policies got a Marshall Plan, and the one that was complying with international sanctions (grudgingly, but still) got butkus.
How could anyone expect good results from that? How could we "pull off" such a disrespectful trashing of Iraqi life?
October 11, 2006 7:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think any contrast and/or comparison between the approach to Germany post World War II, and the approach to Iraq after April, 2003, has to begin with comprehending what George C. Marshall brought to the table long before the US became engaged in World War II.
General Marshall's efforts to understand any occupation of enemy territory, and provision of a civil government for residents of occupied territory began with his job on General Pershing's staff in the wake of November 11, 1918. Without prior consultation and planning, the Brits, the French and Americans occupied the Rheinland and the Ruhr zone, and the Americans remained for about 18 months. It was -- put mildly -- a disaster. But Marshall's staff job was to daily review all the field reports, and brief Pershing, and do some late day liason with the French and British about conflicting concepts of occupation. In fact, many believe the botched occupation was in part responsible for the rise of the Frei Korps in post WWI Germany, Korps that eventually became partisian militia.
Marshall spent considerable time after returning from Europe in 1921 seriously studying the problems of military occupation, He encouraged his mentor, Pershing, who became Army Chief of Staff to commission reviews -- resulting in the Hunt Report of 1922, a History of the US Army's efforts to provide marshall law to civilian populations, 1775 - 1921. Marshall Used this document in problems classes he taught at the Army War College and the Command School between 1921 and 1934. The "Problems" were one thing he had in common with FDR, as both of them crossed paths in France when FDR was a Jr. member of Wilson's delegation to Versailles, and Marshall was a member of Pershing's staff. They crossed paths again when in 1933 FDR worked with Marshall in establishing the camps for the CCC program. It was thus in 1934 that Marshall pushed forward the task of writing an Army Field Manual for an occupation -- a task that went through five editions before Marshall was satisfied in 1940. In the meantime, Marshall worked with the British Imperial General Staff in reaching a meeting of minds on occupation. The Brits stood up a 6 month course on the subject at Cambridge University, and Marshall nominated the American participants. With some changes, this became the model for training occupation officers for Germany -- Marshall required about 6000 of them, and they were all trained and in England by the time the balloon went up at Normandy. The NCO's and many of the designated occupation troops were trained in England, and after 1944 the training bases in the US turned out 120 thousand Constabulary troops, specifically for post surrender Germany.
Marshall's theory of occupation was that the end point was to restore normal politics, minus the Nazi operatives that served the national state. Restore normal politics meant, beginning at the local level, restoring party structures, holding elections at the city or village level as soon as possible, but governing under a charter that imposed a Military Government of Germany (MGOG) supervision over local decisions. The MGOG could, over time, reduce the scope of supervision, restoring gradually autnomy to local government. In the meantime, lower levels of selected government would participate in creating the higher levels -- Lander reconstitution and its governing functions, and in turn those selected leaders would work to write a working constitution for what ultimately became just the three zones of W. Germany.
Marshall's rules for immediate post combat government by MGOG were harsh and strict, but they resulted in security. They completely disarmed and destroyed all arms in a few weeks. Personal weapons had to be kept in Armory Storage (even hog slaughtering knives) -- there was a strict crefew, passes were required for any travel between cities and zones. The MGOG took over the rationing system, and reduced the rations. Violations of MGOG rules resulted in trials before American Judges -- and FDR spent days trying to find local Judges in the US who spoke some German, and personally invited them to volunteer for a Commission for the MGOG. As it became clear that security had been established, some of these functions were returned to Germans.
Marshall strongly believed one could not combine Combat with an Occupation. Thus none of the MGOG officers served in any combat units, and virtually all of the NCO's and ordinary troops had not been blooded. If you look at the organizational charts, only Eisenhower and Bradley held a position in both Combat and MGOG -- everything else was seperate. Marshall believed you trained combat troops to fight, and occupation troops to facilitate government, and they are absolutely not the same thing. (Personally, I think the loss of this insight vis a vis Iraq is one of the primary causes of failure -- and would suggest that the politically aligned Frei Korps of 1919 and after in Germany are the result of the same dynamics as we have witnessed in Iraq. But I think Rummy is far too much of a "know it all" to ever read George C. Marshall. In fact, I once asked Wes Clark on a blog whether they still taught this stuff at West Point -- he assures me they do, but in this instance no one had the guts to tell Rummy the facts.)
And all this was long before there was an economic recovery package known as the Marshall Plan. That came along in 1948. Instead, this was about the architecture of turning a combat victory into the seeds of a political success. We really need to hold any leadership to this standard.
October 11, 2006 9:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pretty much supports my point, from a different angle.
There was plenty of detailed knowledge about successful occupation from Marshall and Pershing, and plenty of cultural knowledge about Iraq from Churchill and others. We knew how to do this, but the same knowledge of "how" tended to argue against doing it at all. Thus it had to be ignored.
October 11, 2006 9:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
What was the name of the "image consultant" flown in to do the backdrop?
Was is Scott Sforza, a White House employee?
Or was it someone who worked with the WH, but not on the WH payroll?
October 11, 2006 10:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
I knew shortly after Baghdad fell that what we were doing in Iraq was more part of a GOP partisan political agenda then it was about helping the Iraqis form a government and engage in self rule. What was the first thing we tried to do after the fall of Baghdad? Try to get the oil flowing again. Not get the electricity, water and sewers running again. Not getting the hospitals up and running. Not providing for basic services the Iraqi people needed to live. Nope, we needed to get the that Iraqi oil flowing first. The Iraqis are a smart people (much smarter then the Bush adminstration realizes) and they saw right through the claim that "we need to get the oil flowing first and get a cash flow going before we can do anything else". Right at that point we lost any chance, as the saying goes, to "win their hearts and minds" and exposed the deep flaws in the US "post war" planning. The myriad of administration flunkies paraded into and out of Iraq were sent there not to help the Iraqi people but to help George Bush's domestic agenda.
There was never a chance that we could "succeed" in Iraq and it was evident from the beginning...assuming that success was was to be measured by helping the Iraqi people engage in self rule and their chances for prosperity. If that was the goal the oil wouldn't have been the top priority and the Iraqi people, not Halliburton and other US multinationals, would have been allowed to take the lead in the rebuilding of and sharing in the wealth generated by the rebuilding. Instead it was Bush's business cronies and political flunkies were the only beneficiaries. And instead of achieving "success", the misery of the Iraqi people and then the insurgency flourished...while the "real plan" was implemented.
October 11, 2006 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you very much for answering my question.
Do you know how much money these people made? I assume they were highly compensated and received hazard pay and bonuses for working in a war zone (regardless of the relative safety of the Green Zone or Emerald City).
Were you able to get comments from any GOP Members of Congress on the selection process for CPA staff? They should be just as outraged as the rest of us and holding an investigation, and the fact that they aren't says all you need to know about how seriously they are taking the Iraq War and the GWOT.
October 11, 2006 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Recall way back in 2004, during the election, the Post slipped in a relatively unnoticed story about the political appointees who would rule Baghdad.
Was it strange or unusual that the Heritage Foundation was filling key jobs? Absolutely. And not probed enough in 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48543-2004May22.html
October 11, 2006 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just wanted to say thanks for your time and effort both in writing the book and in posting/responding here on TPMCafe. We do appreciate it.
sPh
October 11, 2006 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Do you know how much money these people made? I assume they were highly compensated and received hazard pay and bonuses for working in a war zone ...
Probably, although the whole kit and kaboodle wouldn't amount to much -- most of these same people could probably work at a law or lobbying firm in DC and make more, and many probably do so now. They weren't there for the money, they were there to build the Perfect Conservative Society That Will Once And For All Prove Those Liberals Wrong(tm).
In this particular instance, the problem with hiring incompetents isn't the unfairness to qualified applicants, but the results. If Bush had a hundred supercompetent cousins who spoke Arabic, and he wanted to hire them all and pay them a quarter million per year, that would have been perfectly fine with me.
October 11, 2006 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Rajiv,
Remember, "Dan Senor" is the English phrase for "Baghdad Bob". He merits ridicule for his silly, disastrous tenure. You, by contrast, receive our gratitude for being a master of your craft.
October 11, 2006 2:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Although the Arabic language is difficult, it surely would have been better if more could have some familiarity with it. However, any dumb cluck could have learned the history of Mesopotamia, and with that knowledge would have chosen another country in which to experiment with democracy. There are lots of books out there about the Middle East and what went on right after WWI. Did these idiots read any of them? Did they think themselves larger and stronger versions of T.E. Lawrence?
October 11, 2006 2:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Given that even right wing mouthpiece Senor admits that
and acknowledges the
and given the fact that there were no WMDs and evidence for that was clear, or at least that the evidence that there were WMDs was murky, at best, even before the invasion, why was it that we started this war in the first place, again?
October 11, 2006 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for that excellent short history Sara. My uncle was one of those MGOG judges, a distinction he wore with honor (on the bench) all of his life.
October 11, 2006 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Asked why Iraq had such interminable lines at gas stations, he insisted it was "good news" -- more Iraqis were driving because the CPA had allowed the import of a quarter-million new cars."
I read about the marked increase in cars in Iraq after the US invasion soemtime last year and wondered about them.
Does anyone know where the cars came from? How did the Iraqis finance the purchase of the cars?
What I really want to know is whether the US financed the 250,000 cars in some way through aid or direct purchase or loans.
Something about the Iraqi cars story did not sit right with me and I usually have pretty good instincts when it comes to sniffing out government corruption.
October 11, 2006 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
On a slightly related note, consider Powerline's "Deacon" account of who he met at National Review Online's 10th anniversary party --
One of the highlights of the evening was meeting Simone Ledeen, who volunteered to work on the Iraqi reconstruction, only to be slandered by the Washington Post for her efforts. Another was a long and delightful chat with Mona Charen, whose work I have admired for years.
The evening was proof once again that being a conservative is fun even when times are not necessarily happy for conservatives.
She volunteered?
October 11, 2006 8:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, Sara. It's often forgotten how much creativity went on in the tightly budgeted military between the World Wars. You make excellent points about Marshall, certainly one of the most able people ever to serve the country. A bit of an aside, but the Marines developed doctrine and techniques for amphibious warfare starting in the twenties. Among the military services, and for all their spit-and-polish image, the Marines have managed to tolerate brilliant eccentrics. Major Earl Ellis qualified under both, but from about 1913 on, was thinking about how to fight a future Pacific war with Japan. Ellis died under mysterious circumstances in 1923; we don't know if he was killed by the Japanese, committed suicide, or died of numerous ailments including alcoholism.
Getting back to the German occupation, nothing was more ignored by Rumsfeld & Co. than the WWII planning process, and, as you point out, the distinction between combat and military government. The Army's Center for Military History has several volumes dealing with the OPERATION RANKIN series of occupation plans, which were developed by the US-UK Chief of Staff, Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC) organization, under Sir Frederick Morgan, reporting to Eisenhower. In particular, it's worth looking at RANKIN CASE C, the contingency plan for a sudden collapse of the Nazi goverment, which, while obviously not the same situation as Iraq, has some interesting parallels.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 11, 2006 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
At the renowned Defense Language Institute, the first course in Arabic takes 62 weeks. I find it strange that the Administration, given the crunches for general and special operations linguists, hasn't done anything about language and area studies starting in K-12 and incentivized in college. Oh, I forgot. "No Child Left Behind".
What about the children that are at the head of the pack? My high school languages were, by some strange perception of needs of the sciences, were Latin and German. The school also offered French and Spanish.
Spanish is a legitimate priority, but I really wonder about the relative needs for French and German versus Arabic, Farsi, Mandarin, and Swahili. Russian and Japanese are more common these days, and deservedly so.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 11, 2006 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
you wrote: "While I don’t want to be drawn into a back-and-forth debate on the pages of The Post or in cyberspace" --- that does seem to be what's going on here.
If, as you write, "there are some significant misrepresentations and inaccuracies in his piece that need to be corrected for the record", then why did the Post publish the column? Even an op-ed piece needs some level of accuracy, so I'm left questioning either you or the Post... not sure which at this point, maybe both.
October 11, 2006 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did the people sent to Iraq have the minimal qualifications that a reasonable person might look for:
I've repeated this story here before: Josh Rushing, Marine and press officer for CentCom, said on Fresh Air that he got that job because he knew the answers to some questions about Iraq, having read "Iraq For Dummies" on the plane ride over...
Dissent Protects Democracy.
October 12, 2006 7:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
I believe that opinion pieces - op-ed or column - are not subject to so-called fact checking. That's why they may be published with impunity.
So feel free to question the content of opinion pieces in the Post, the NYTimes, the Wall Street Journal and so forth.
October 14, 2006 10:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
This does not really answer the question -- one that someone at the Post should answer... perhaps most appropriately the author of this blog himself.
There is some fact-checking of op-eds that goes on, at least at the NY Times. I assume the Washington Post editorial board carefully considers and scrutinizes op-ed columns before publishing them.
If the Post is relentlessly plugging the work of one of its staffers, as it did in the case of this article and book, and then it publishes an op-ed ripping the work, readers deserve a bit of explanation as to why they would do that.
October 15, 2006 8:27 AM | Reply | Permalink