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Never Too Soon to Rewrite History, I guess...
I continue to be a little gape-mouthed at the logic of this whole discourse around the "mismanagement" of the war. It's not that I'm disputing that the war was mismanaged -- far from it. From the beginning, I've been really astonished that anyone ever thought that we could just order up the "perfect war" -- in and out in 6 months, solve all our problems, clean up the mess, "Mission Accomplished," and presto! Democracy! But surely, the Iraq war has cured us of any such illusions. Right?
It seems not. All the rhetoric that blames Bush only for "grossly mismanaging" the war while exculpating him for getting us there in the first place is based on the continuing delusion that there could have been that "perfect war" that so many people expected we would have. This is a cherished illusion, I realize. But it's also a fundamental error about the nature of warfare. By starting a war, we are signing up for the devastatingly unexpected, for the unforeseen enemies as well as the foreseen ones, for our own mistakes as well as those of our allies. Because -- pick up any history book -- that's how war goes.
Today's WaPo editorial was a classic example:
It seems not. All the rhetoric that blames Bush only for "grossly mismanaging" the war while exculpating him for getting us there in the first place is based on the continuing delusion that there could have been that "perfect war" that so many people expected we would have. This is a cherished illusion, I realize. But it's also a fundamental error about the nature of warfare. By starting a war, we are signing up for the devastatingly unexpected, for the unforeseen enemies as well as the foreseen ones, for our own mistakes as well as those of our allies. Because -- pick up any history book -- that's how war goes.
Today's WaPo editorial was a classic example:
Now, I generally agree with those who say that it's more urgent to deal with our present situations, both foreign and domestic, than to re-hash the argument over whether we should or should not have gone to war in Iraq. Clearly we did, and we need to deal with the situation at hand. But the WaPo speaks here as though the Iraq War just fell out of the sky, and that while Bush first mangled everything, he has recovered and can now even be proud of the "stabilized mission" that he's leaving #44. The idea that there should never have been a mission to stabilize doesn't seem to cross their minds.Having all but destroyed his presidency through mismanagement of the war, Mr. Bush can now fairly argue as he leaves office that his successor will inherit an Iraqi mission that has been stabilized both militarily and politically.
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I was there and I read the leading books, too. Fiasco was a good one, but only one good one of many (Cobra II, State of Denial, The Assassin's Gate, S. Hersch's book). The war was utterly idiotic, as you kindly observe, and you are right to attack this gentile treatment by the Post.
Still, asinine in principle as it was, it was also horrifically mismanaged. Bush was trying to nurse some ridiculous unresearched and narcisstic ideas about reducing the military's size (he thought it up, so it must be brilliant) while trying to win an extremely complicated war. No plan was there to win the peace, none, because they were all slapping themselves on the back about how easy it would be since they were incapable of making mistakes. It was breathtaking. They destroyed the Iraqi military, intelligence structures, political elites, things that any country needs and created near universal unemployment, even among weapons hands who needed to feed their families. They refused to give orderly development aid at first, since the Iraqis would do such a great job of it themselves. As it got more and more desperately out of control, Bush wouldn't fire his Enabler General, that utter jackass Rumsfeld.
So it's both IMO, and ineffably terrible idea, with the most incompetent implementation imaginable.
November 30, 2008 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
gentile treatment by the Post.
Hard as I try, I am unable to deconstruct the antisemitic thrust of the Post's language....
November 30, 2008 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
So I meant what I realize in English is spelled "genteel," which does strike me as a sort of silly orthographic rendering.
"Genteel" comes from the French "gentil," which means "kind."
I mean it in the senses put forth by Merriam Webster's defintions 2(b):
b (1): marked by false delicacy, prudery, or affectation (2): conventionally or insipidly pretty
I fully understand your confusion caused by my error, and it was a shocking thing to read your accusation. So I learned the correct spelling.
December 1, 2008 8:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, and I got the "an" wrong, too:
"and ineffably terrible idea"
December 1, 2008 8:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your voice here is much appreciated. We have to rethink everything. This war. Any war!
November 30, 2008 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
First thanks to Overreach for his or her service and for this comment.I read Cobra II and Fiasco etc. etc. and it's hard to reach any conclusion other than the War was mismanaged.
But.............
in a certain sense it's in the interests of the Right to trumpet that mismanagment in the hope it absolves them from their mistaken support for the war in the first place. And leaves them better placed in their coming support for the coming next military adventure.
Just to keep grounded in reality,however, all wars seem mismanaged.Because they are. Because it's impossible for it to be otherwise.
It's hard enough for most businesses to get through a day without making 5 mistakes of which ,with luck, it fixes 4 . (And that's with no one shooting at you!) The mismanagement of wars (and businesses)doesn't mean the Generals and CEO's in charge are stupid. Far from it,in each case they have risen though a hierarchy with many steps at each of which they have had to compete with their peers for the next step up.
They fail because in many cases the task, objectively, is beyond human intelligence , but also because of a host of other reasons prominent amoung which is hubris.
What was completely inexcusable was the Administration's botched post-victory planning. Or ,rather, lack thereof.
No one was shooting at W (when he transferred that responsibility from
Powell to Rumsfeld). Or at Rummy who seems in turn to have assigned it to the field commange..
November 30, 2008 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
"But surely, the Iraq war has cured us of any such illusions. Right?"
I thought the same thing about the Vietnam War. It seems it takes about 20 years for our culture to forget important lessons. To paraphrase John Kenneth Gailbraith in THE GREAT CRASH 1929 it is the historians job to remind people what happened in the past so they don't, as Santayana said, "repeat it".
November 30, 2008 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
People think they have learned from past mistakes. I'm sure Rumsfeld was not ignorant about Vietnam. The problem is that military action should not be used as a substitute for political and economic pressure. Rumsfeld could not learn that, and with Cheney clearly moved Bush to try to assassinate Saddam as part of an invasion. Saddam was seen as the problem of Iraq. Chalabi helped sell this notion.
Having just watched part of Charlie Wilson's War, I am reminded of how national policy so often comes down to one or two people who make the difference.
November 30, 2008 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
And the problem is that the learning can sometimes occur backwards. So.... the neocons were trying to prevent one kind of danger to America - from without - and nearly replicated another type of danger (fascism) from within.
Just my 2 cents.
November 30, 2008 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think we have the wrong reading and premise. It is not that we did not learn the lessons of Vietnam nor that the war was mismanaged that was the true paradigm at play.
There was a complete paradigm shift for the purpose of war under the Bush regime, we were not trying to bring democracy to other countries, there were no WMD's nor can the mission ever be accomplished...because the purpose of the war was to gain leverage and control of the global oil supply.
There are no prior lessons of war, other than succesful models of how ruling nations rape and plunder for resources to maintain power, when it comes to gain control and monopolizing the oil supply.
America had no leverage over Japan or China who are our bankers unless we controlled more of the oil which they so desperately need.
Bush&Cheney are part of the oil and war profiteers cartel in our country. The Iraq war made a lot of people rich and it will continue to provide access to one of the largest oil supplies outside of Saudi.
Only when we understand the real reasons we went to war, can we begin to get what is meant by the war being 'mismanaged'.
The corporatists oil profits were badly mismanaged and did not flow into their coffers as planned due to the inability to successfully gain control of Iraq. The oil companies and military/industrial complex are angry about that and that is what they are focused on when you read the war was mismanaged.
November 30, 2008 9:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
mismanagement of the war
For an example of a brilliantly managed criminal *war of international aggression, I suppose the German campaigns of 1938-1941 are head and shoulders above the competition.
As well as they learned the lessons of Dr.Goebbels (a democracy may be easily brought to wage aggressive warfare by pushing some very simple propaganda buttons...) the "architects" of this disaster learned nothing from the retrospective conducted at Nuremburg.
*btw the premier war crime...
November 30, 2008 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Flucht nach vorn
Had Germany's national security policy been conducted by others than Nazis, would those 1938-1941 campaigns have constituted the "premier war crime"?
After the collapse of the Concert of Europe in WWI the proper boundaries (Großdeutschland ) necessary to provide adequate security to the Germans had to be established. At Versailles* the two future European powers, Germany and Soviet Russia, were frozen out, and this question was left unresolved.
* Wilson's equitable peace -- whatever we may think of it -- was sabotaged by Lloyd George and Clemenceau, and too, his ordering of European states on the basis of national self-determination (a common tongue) could well be viewed as an argument for a Großdeutschland .
December 1, 2008 8:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I suggest you watch "No End In Sight". It is the best non-partisan documentary about the war.
It is not the white washed "mismanagement" meme you are portraying...the Iraq War was nothing but gross negligence on the part of this Administration. Gross negligence on a grand scale - thousands of Americans and almost a million Iraqis dead, our national treasury bankrupted, personal freedoms limited. I would think the word mismanagement is a very weak descriptive word.
One of the most poignant quotes in the documentary went something like this:
"There were about 500 ways to do things wrong and only about 2 or 3 ways to get it right. What we didn't understand was that we were going to have to go through all 500."
Check out the trailer:
No End In Sight
December 1, 2008 2:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the recommendation! I have been meaning to get to that. Now if only I could convince Netflix to go international.... :)
December 1, 2008 4:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Never has, never will.
For the Post it is not so much re-writing history as an inability to admit they were wrong. The editorial board were and have pretty much remained strong supporters of the Iraq Invasion/War/Occupation.
It is much easier for them to say "mistakes were made" than it is to say "what the fuck were we thinking?!"
December 1, 2008 8:35 AM | Reply | Permalink