« The Mary Cheney flap | Main | "The War was a Good Cause" »
October 18, 2004
"What Went Wrong?"
I must admit that I drew in my breath when I saw the cover of the latest National Review last week. There is a haunting picture of an Iraqi woman looking out of a window on the cover, and she has a fearful look on her face.
"What Went Wrong?" was on the cover
I hurredly looked at the table of contents and saw what I'd expected
The story of the Iraq post-war is, in part, a tale of gross intelligence failures, debilitating intramural battles, miscommunications, unintended consequences, and counterproductive half-measures. Some of these missteps were the result of the inevitable uncertainties and surproises of warfare, others of incompetence, and many of something in between.
I guess I'd expected this for some time. I've read Arthur Chrenkoff's "Good News from Iraq" series, and it is a necessary counterweight to the steady drizzle of bad news that we get from so much of the national media. But the daily bombings take their toll on even the staunchest of invasion supporters.
The article is recommended reading for all of you. Of course I'm sure you're already subscribers, so you're ahead of me. If not, run out to a bookstore or news stand and purchase a copy. And for heaven's sake subscribe. You can do so on-line here.
If Bush-haters are expecting vindication from Lowry's article, however, they will be sorely disappointed. He dismisses their arguments up front
By now, anyone who can't recite the standard critique of what has gone wrong in the Iraq war just hasn't been paying attention.It goes something like this: There was no post-war planning. What little planning took place was spearheaded by the State Department, and then maliciously ignored by the ideologues at the Pentagon, who didn't want to hear a discouraging word about managing a liberated Iraq. Consumed by Rumsfeld's fixation on light forces, the Pentagon skimped on troop levels and ignored the advice of its commanders. Anyone who said anything inconvenient about the war was systematically punished. In this narrative, "Pentagon civilian" becomes a dirty phrase.
Almost every particular of this indictment is wrong.For example, Kerry and Edwards regularly claim that there was no planning for the aftermath of the war. This is so wrong as to border on an outright lie. As Lowry makes clear, the planning was quite extensive. They went through scenario after scenario, each of them a potential horror story. The "problem", is that almost none of them took place. There was no humanitarian crisis. There was no "Battle of Baghdad", or humanitarian crisis.
Indeed, virtually none of the horrors that the left warned us about took place. And, most maddenly of all, they never seem to be held accountable for it by the media (even Fox News misses this one). Remember how we were told that there would be a gigantic "Battle of Baghdad" that would surely tie down our forces for weeks of not months? That we would have to take the capital street-by-street? That were would be a humantarian crisis of gargantuan proportions? Or that Saddam's chemical or biological weapons would lay waste to the countryside (this last from a "peace" group)?
"What Went Wrong?" is the type of analysis that perhaps can only be written by someone with impeccable conservative credentials, and published in William F Buckley's trademark journal. Were it written by the likes of Seymore Hersh, we could dismiss it as the rantings of a Bush-hater who, as often as not, doesn't get his facts straight.
Lowry remains a supporter of our operations in Iraq, as do his sources. But he makes clear that we need to face some hard realities, too.
This type of article is long overdue. Let's face it: none of us who supported the invasion of Iraq thought that it would be this difficult. Who among us really expected the insurgency to go on for so long? Who expected that, almost a full year after the invasion, we would not be able to even enter several Iraqi cities with anything less than a batallion of troops, complete with air cover?
One of the biggest criticisms of the administration is that we do not have enough troops in Iraq. Both left and right say this. But Lowry points out that invading with a larger force, or even adding more troops later, would have created additional problems, too. And it is not at all clear that the benefits would outweigh the drawbacks. More troops would have A) Slowed down the initial invasion (costing more lives, giving Saddam a chance to torch the oilfields, and perhaps destabilizing the entire region), and B) Added to our problems now by creating more resentment among those in Iraq who see us as "occupiers."
One of his themes is that for every action you take, having done the opposite may have resulted a worse outcome. "Every strategic choice has it's benefits and drawbacks", Lowry points out. One wishes that war critics would at least acknowledge this point.
I am not going to go through the entire article, as I want you to do that yourself.
Would Kerry or the Democrats do any better? Given the nature of their critique, Lowry hardly thinks so:
Bush's critics, meanwhile, have had the luxury of irresponsibility that comes with being out of office, and have taken full advantage of it. They have indulged paranoid fantasies about the administration's "neocons," failed to offer constructive criticism, waged demagogic attacks based on Halliburton and all manner of other nonsense, fudged their answer to the all-important question of whether they would have invaded, and pounced on every hint of realistic analysis out of the administration (e.g., Rumsfeld's recent obvious statement that the Iraqi elections might not be perfect). Nothing in their performance during the Iraq episode marks them as deserving of power.
Will Iraq succeed? Yes, if Bush is returned to power we stand a chance. The indications are that he is very unhappy with the situation there and that changes are in the works.
We can make Iraq succeed, and win this war.
Posted by Tom at October 18, 2004 9:46 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.theredhunter.com/mt/refer.cgi/170
