what was the pattern of our error; what were the roots of our blindness.

Robert McNamara's 11 Lessons from Vietnam: [UNLEARNED Lessons, apparently]
from: In Retrospect, Robert S. McNamara, 1996

1. We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
4. Our judgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
5. We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine.
6. We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
7. We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.
8. After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did.
9. We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people's or country's best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
10. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
11. We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

"We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community"

If he were not entirely innocent of the capacity for introspection, Bush would, in his darkest moments, lament that he did not, (as he braggingly thumped his chest while announcing) in fact have the second resolution voted on before the Security Council, where "everyone's gonna have ta' lay their cards on the table".

Had he permitted himself to be restrained by the failure of that second vote, how much better off the world, (and he) would be.

McNamara's list is a start, but only that. It's not only the mind that needs to be searched, but the heart, the character, and the style of government that led McNamara & Co. to their willed refusal to listen to contrary advice.

Todd Gitlin

"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly"

Arthur Carlson, General Manager, WKRC in Cincinnatti

Everyone has two things- an opinion and an a******. What we are paying for these days in our elected leaders, is to be able to spot when the "Wise Men", these "Smartest Guys in the Room" are spewing the same thing from both openings.

I didn't hear a peep from the elected guys when Wolfowitz stepped on Shinsecki's neck about the need for "hundreds of thousands" troops to do the job in Iraq. Wolfie's disparagement of the notion as "wildly off the mark" should have been the signal that it was time to flush. That would have been the deal breaker, right then and there, the spectre of hundreds of thousands of troops rucking up to go fight for oil "freedom".

I agree that deep introspection into motive, framework, and the decision points is useful and necessary after the fact. When the knowledge gained is simply used to bamboozle the next generation, however, the notions of forgiveness of error have to be re-thought also. While Arthur Carlson will never drop turkeys out of a helicopter again, can the same be said for the gaggle of "Wise Men" that Mr. Gitlin points to? Should anyone, ever, have to listen to them make a case for why things went so wrong?

I think the only way that Wolfowitz would have a "road to Damascus" moment is if he were doing a drive-by.......

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

The real error was the contempt and disdain for the Iraqi people demonstrated by all of the monsters who created this situation. There was no general uprising, no widespread dissension or strikes or any indications whatsoever of what the Iraqi people wanted - it was decided for them by people who didn't live there and hadn't lived there for years and years.

Daniel, by disregarding Shinseki on force levels and going in too light with too harsh rules of engagement vis a vis Iraqi civilians we guaranteed this result.

You apparently are willing to discount the death and destruction on both sides to zero. Which makes you morally bankrupt.

"most likely a rewriting". No sorry some of us were writing this in real time, you are the one trying to send this whole CF down the memory hole. This was predictable because predicted. Try Google.

(BTW most of Saddam's monstrosities were performed when this exact same set of people were in power. If it wasn't a moral imperative in the 1980s when the gassings and mass murders were happening why did it become one on Sept 12, 2001? Sorry me boyo, special pleading ain't so damn special.)

Daniel, your post makes absolutely no sense.

You can't have been FOR getting rid of Saddam without Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld being the ones running the show, and you acknowledge that their incompetence could have been foreseen (and was by many) at the time.

I guess you missed the testimony of Gen. Shinseki on the number of troops needed, followed shortly thereafter by the delusional testimony of Paul Wolfowitz on the same topic.

Those, such as you, who claim that we could not have known such things are the ones attempting to rewrite history.

Amos,
It is wrong to deny that there was an intellectual component to Iraq. The invasion of Iraq wasn't wholly dreamed up by George Bush, it was a bipartisan effort that was a continuation of the strategy for the American control of Iraq. Every such endeavor has an intellectual component. The warmongers need support from intellectuals to justify and explain their nefarious deeds.

Any intellectual that is used as you describe is by definition not an intellectual, i.e. does not have the capacity for rational and intelligent thought. The fact that you and I disagree with their conclusions (schmucks!) doesn't mean they haven't thought the matter through.

That being said, as Todd indicated above there are other components, beside rational thought, that go to American exceptionalism and how we view other human beings on this planet. In this sense you're correct that these rational intellectuals perhaps were lacking in the understanding and empathy necessary for human universality. It's a common American trait.

The probable fact that Bush isn't thinking about the errors of Makiya and Packer doesn't nean that we shouldn't, unless we pattern ourselves after him.

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

If a man makes a major mistake by murdering his next door neighbor, we don't seek ways for him to learn why he made the mistake. We know he was well aware that what he did was wrong no matter how one looks at it. That is what Bush and the compliant liberal hawks did to the country in 2002.

The invasion of Iraq was possibly the single worst decision ever made by an American government. It has had horrific consequences. It cost enormous sums of money. It has placed the civil liberties we all profess to love in grave jeopardy. This is not something to seek to understand. It something to be treated just as a murder is treated.

I can remember very well how certain I was that what has come to pass as a result of that invasion would come to pass. And, I am far from an intellectual pundit. Those b****** pundits deserve no better treatment than a common murderer, in my opinion. At least exile them, shove them off into the hinterlands, ignore them forever, kiss them off, treat them as they have proven to deserve to be treated.

Politicians like Hillary Clinton can be voted against. Pundits can be ignored as I do. Worse punishment is deserved.

Hoppy in Sacramento

This is at least the second NYT Magazine profile of Makiya. And it seems to be the thousandth retrospective about the liberal hawks, chastened, saddened, wondering how it went wrong. Still noble, though.

Yes, they're quite tragic. But self-pity is inherent in the fundamentally narcissistic, romantic outlook of the liberal nationalists. Failing grandly and poetically is even more beautiful than succeeding prosaically. Its like a grail quest; a movie script. The current phase of ritual expiation is just preparatory to the predictable recovery of morale in the next act, which is already underway, and the subsequent climax of redemptive heroism.

I'm put off a bit by the currently popular distinction between "getting Iraq right" and "getting Iraq wrong". This language suggests that "we all have the same goals" but that some just did a better job than others in predicting the consequences of military action. Those who share the entirety of the liberal nationalist outlook and ideology, but made a better call on what would happen following an invasion, are those who "got it right" according to this way of looking at things. The liberal nationalists' chief excuse now for bad predictions about outcomes is that they failed to account for the fact that evil conservatives and other mere politicians - the usual gang of gangsters - were in charge of executing their lovely liberal plans.

I reject this facile attempt at reconciliation - which is being driven by the fact the the liberal interventionists and nationalists now have prominent positions in the campaigns of the leading Democrats. We don't just have an unfortunate disagreement about means among people who all share the same ends. There are competing ideologies in play here.

Liberal hawks got sucked into supporting the war in Iraq because they have bought into the notion of humanitarian war. This is one very dangerous idea. I still maintain that the thinking that led many otherwise sensible people to support the war against Serbia left them vulnerable to the Iraq war hysteria. Go back and read Friedman in 2002 and 2003 and you will see he was selling Iraq as a humanitarian crusade. I find it nutty to read Tod denouncing preventative war while simultaneously supporting humanitarian war.

I know many here still believe that Clinton did the right thing attacking Serbia but I will just note before you respond that the public justifications for that war were as bogus as claims of WMD and Iraq involvement in 911. Serbia was not guilty of any of the charges that were made against them prior to our attack as international courts have found. Many bought into lies then and were vulnerable to buy into the Iraq lies.

I think his point about the admission that we are not omniscient goes pretty far in that direction. Looking at films of the era, the characteristic that leaps out from people like McNamara and Walt Rostow is their certainty. These were guys who were educated in the '30s and '40s, in the first grand triumph of statistics and rational planning. It's not that surprising that they would fall prey to the superstition of mission plans, technologies and body counts.

I still find it more horrifying that in a supposedly post-modern era, when even conservative business managers have supposedly embraced uncertainty, our leaders would again imagine themselves possessed of that omniscience. Rumsfeld talked about "unknown unknowns", for crying out loud, and then walked into foolhardy ventures on the basis of distorted intelligence. One might conclude that this crowd grounded its pretence to omniscience on purely irrational grounds -- that where ex-Ford CEO McNamara thought he couldn't be wrong because he'd run the numbers through the computer at RAND, Bush, at least, like General Boykin, thinks he can't be wrong because his God is bigger than their God.

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

I'm a little unclear on what you mean when you claim that "Serbia was not guilty of any of the charges that were made against them prior to our attack". Serbian special police did, in fact, commit the mass murder of 50-odd civilians as retribution for alleged Kosovar Albanian insurgent activity. This was the incident that drove the Euro-American demand for Serbian forces to be withdrawn from Kosovo, and thus set the stage for Western military intervention. Serbia did, in fact, prepare a grand plan for the expulsion of the entire Albanian Kosovar population; this became clear when it quickly put that plan into action after NATO's bombing began and expelled all the province's Albanians. (It was called "Operation Horseshoe" if I recall correctly.) So the Western allegation that Serbia was preparing to carry out ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, just as it had in Croatia and Bosnia, was proven right.

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

Jan 23, 1980 -- Jimmy Carter State of the Union Address -- "Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force [except the US] to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, . . "

Carter was referring only to the USSR, but the Carter Doctrine has been expanded. Now "outside forces" means, not only extra-regional threats, but also any Gulf region government that fails to accept US hegemony, which puts them on the "Axis of Evil" hit list.

I think this says it all. I have no interest in beating up Makiya or Packer, but I also have no interest in continuing to analyze their naval gazing and hand wringing about why they were wrong especially when it's usually lost in a sea of recriminations about people who were not wrong, at least not about the likelihood of catastrophe. I'm not a pundit but if I could put two and two together (say, for instance, that Iraq was nothing like Japan or Germany after WWII) I knew that what was being sold ranged from a pack of lies to a profound dose of wishful thinking of the worst sort -- the sort that elevates grand ideas over the lives of innocent people. When grand ideas die people like Makiya and Packer might fret a bit, but when innocent people get killed -- what can I say, if the dead bodies matter now, surely the live ones mattered just as much then. The only goal is getting out of this mess and so far as I can tell, Makiya has zero ideas, enmeshed as he still is in documenting Saddam's atrocities, which I do not have anything against in the least, it just seems a bit beside the point right now.

I have no patience with the view that, because George Packer supported the war, he is a running dog.

I fail to see how a well-informed person could have supported the war. Read James Fallows' Flying Blind In Iraq if you don't believe me.

Sorry, but I just don't see how being catastrophically wrong about something as important in the Iraq war doesn't hurt Packer's credibility

Be pissed off, and be pissed off at whatever group you are calling "American intellectuals". Personally, I've never found that a terribly useful term, other than as a substitute for intelligentsia.

Bush and Cheney are intellectuals?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

"So the Western allegation that Serbia was preparing to carry out ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, just as it had in Croatia and Bosnia, was proven right."

Error number two. Serbia never carried out ethnic cleansing in Croatia or Bosnia. In fact this was investigated by the International Court of Justice and last year issued a report declaring Serbia innocent of those charges at least with respect to Bosnia. There was never a credible charge with respect to Croatia.

Todd, you are right that many conservatives refuse to admit they were wrong about Bush. However, for Will and many others, it is a different story.

Remember, Bush ran in 2000 as a foreign affairs realist who criticized Clinton for being an idealistic interventionist. And for this he had the support of a majority of conservatives.

Then after 9/11 Bush suddenly became a raving neocon. Most conservatives dropped their more moderate views and supported Bush. Some, like Will, kept to their old views and criticized Bush for being dangerously unrealistic.

Now Bush's policies have lead to disaster and many conservatives have gone back to more moderate views. Many of them, as you point out, refuse to admit they were ever wrong. Others, like Andrew Sullivan, do admit it. And then there are the hard core neocons like Bill Kristol who still think a global crusade is a workable idea. And one more twist here is that, while he doesn't come out and admit it, Bush himself has become considerably more moderate in his foreign policies.

The ICJ affirmed that Serbian forces had carried out ethnic cleansing throughout Bosnia beginning in 1992. This included periodic massacres, mass internments, mass rape, and a systematic effort to drive Muslims out of entire regions. However, it ruled that this did not amount to "genocide" because there was insufficient evidence to conclude that Serbia intended to physically eliminate Bosnian Muslims as a group, rather than simply kill many of them and drive out the rest. At Srebrenica in 1995, the ICJ concluded that genocide took place, but Serbia was technically no longer in command of the Bosnian Serb forces who carried it out.

The Court however accepted that Bosnian Serb forces were guilty of genocide at Srebrenica in July 1995, but by that time Serbia-Montenegro / the FRY was no longer in formal command of the Bosnian Serb forces, even though it was continuing to finance and supply them and exercised considerable influence over them. In other words, for the spring of 1992 there was conclusive evidence of the guilt of Milosevic’s Serbia for massive and systematic killings of Muslims and other crimes consistent with genocide, but not enough evidence to convince the ICJ of actual genocidal intent; and for the summer of 1995, there was conclusive evidence of genocide, but not enough evidence to convince the Court of Serbia’s control over the perpetrators. -- http://zope06.v.servelocity.net/hjs/sections/greater_europe/international_court_justice

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

Bush before Sept. 11, 2001 was an ignoramus and a cover-up artist. Bush after Sept. 11, 2001 was an ignoramus and a cover-up artist. He was an ignoramus and cover-up artist with a different passion, but he never ceased to be an ignoramus and a cover-up artist. To behold Bush before Sept. 11, 2001 and not notice that he was an ignoramus and a cover-up artist, or to notice it and cover up the embarrassing fact because he was your ignoramus and cover-up artist, is sheer intellectual disgrace.  This is what the pundits refuse to see about themselves.

Todd Gitlin

To behold Bush before Sept. 11, 2001 and not notice that he was an ignoramus and a cover-up artist, or to notice it and cover up the embarrassing fact because he was your ignoramus and cover-up artist, is sheer intellectual disgrace. This is what the pundits refuse to see about themselves.

I agree completely. What I don't understand is why they were taken in by him so completely. Was it incompetence or something else?

You're repeating disinformation spread by Serbian denialists. I don't know what your reasons are for doing so.

My reasons are simple. We were lied into war against Serbia and you are repeating much of the disinformation.

The village of Racak is where the battle I described above occurred. Those dead were combatants, not innocent civilians. The Kosovo massacre stories were hyped in the west to support war, like much war propaganda they were lies.

The claim that Serbia did not practice ethnic cleansing in Croatia or Bosnia is a perversion of history; relatives of the 7000 Bosnian Muslims massacred at Srebrenica would hit you in the face for saying such a thing.

I am sure that the relatives of those victims blame Serbia. But the fact is that Serbia had nothing to do with it. You are equating Bosnian Serbs with the state of Serbia. At the time of the Srebrenica massacre the state of Serbia (ruled then by President Milosovic) did not have troops there nor command over the Bosnia Serb forces. They were led by Karadzic and Mladic. Milosovic tried to warn Mladic to not enter Srebrenica but he did not command him and obviously his warning was not heeded.

I know it is idiosyncratic to defend Serbia, but I have followed that history closely for many years. The reason is historical. My father fought along side Yugoslavian troops during the second world war and developed real respect and admiration for Tito. I followed what was happening there since a child.

You call the Serbs fascists. Just like the neocons now describe our current enemies as Islamofascists. Nice name calling but nonsense nevertheless. But you do bring up an interesting historical point. Tudjman's political and financial support came from the Croatian community living in Canada and the US. These are the descendents of the Croatian fascists that fled Yugoslavia in 1945 and were welcomed by the west because of their strong anticommunist credentials.

“Suggesting that leaving a monster like Saddem in power would have been a good thing is morally indefensible."

Mr. Greenbaum do you suggest that we now march about the world and attack every nation controlled by a dictatorial monster? If it is morally indefensible to have left Saddam Hussein in power then would it not also be morally indefensible to leave any tyrant in power?

Invading a nation that had not attacked us and was no threat to us or its neighbors was a monstrous act that is morally indefensible.

We will, in the final analysis, be responsible for more death and misery visited on the people of Iraq than Saddam Hussein.

To our everlasting shame and without just cause we invaded a weak, nearly helpless nation and trashed the place.

Daniel,

What you said

Getting with of Saddem was and still was the right thing to do.

Those things were not seriously considered by the Bush administration, nor was what the changes would mean to the people of Iraq and the Middle East. The invasion of Iraq was little more than a Right-Wing temper tantrum intended to prove that "America is STILL Number one!" It was also a demonstration that George W. Bush was no wimp, so Americans should elect him President in 2004.

By now it is clear that even the Iraqis who wanted to get rid of Saddam would have hesitated if they knew what would happen to Iraq afterwards.

Tell me. If getting rid of Saddam was such a great idea, just who was it a great idea for? Except, of course, the Republicans who want to run on national security because they don[t know how to run a government.

I'd rather than Bush had gotten serious about going after al Qaeda and terrorists, but maybe that's just me. As it is, except for an aborted and badly botched invasion of Afghanistan, there has been a seven year hiatus on actually fighting terrorism (as opposed to imposing totalitarian controls on the American population which seems to be the main preoccupation of Cheney and the Bush administration.)

Dear Alphonse: That is just so evil of the Iranians. We ought to kill them for it. GWB

This is a misconceived idea in the first place but is also explains why Mearsheimer et al are wrong: Israel is in this strategic view an unsinkable aircraft carrier. It is our base and we would defend it whether or not AIPAC existed. Israel's counterproductive harsness is tolerated as a bargaining tool: conditions are going to remain horrible until you agree to leave Israel (our base) alone and safe.