Suggested Reading

Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book, Imperial Life In The Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone has recently come out, and he’s been making the rounds. Chandrasekaran, now an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, tells the story of the first year in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, when the reconstruction of Iraq was overseen by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) led by L. Paul Bremer III. Chandrasekaran witnessed the events as the Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief. The suggestion is not to buy the book itself (although that is an option), but to check out some free avenues to review what’s in it – even an overview is a frightening look at a real travesty.

In an adaptation of the book written by Chandrasekaran for the Post, one can get a taste of the corrupt and nepotistic hiring practices of the White House’s liasion to the Pentagon, where an applicant may be asked his or her vote for President in 2000, or views on abortion, even if the job was to head the reopening of the Baghdad Stock Exchange (which was handed to a 24-year-old Bush loyalist with no background in finance). Side note: Yes, Jim O’Beirne is married to that Kate O’Beirne – some things are no surprise.

The review in the New York Times Book Review by Michael Goldfarb will only be free until next Saturday or Sunday. It contains a couple more nuggets of bureaucratic idiocy and corruption.

For those who would like a break from the reading, see Chandrasekaran’s interview (Part 1 and Part 2) on The Daily Show.

All this material is both disturbing and disheartening, almost to the point of being funny. It is one thing to hear about the utter lack of preparation for Iraq's reconstruction, or, say, how a blockheaded Defense Secretary could not adjust to his enemy. But Chandrasekaran’s book brings into even better view that, on some basic level, the Bush Administration's hubris causes them to really think that anyone who likes them, no matter how unqualified, is better for any job than someone they're not sure about. It the worst kind of identification politics leaking into the bureaucratic sphere.

Blog note: For the holiday, the posts could be light until after the New Year.

Strategic Delay

After the Iraq Study Group’s report came out, the country was anticipating an announcement of the results of the ongoing policy review by the Bush Administration. But this announcement has now been postponed to January. One guess had been that the Administration wanted the press flurry from the ISG report release to cool off. President Bush stated that one reason was to allow the newly confirmed Defense Secretary, Bob Gates, to add to the discussion.

But the timing seemed off – The Decider can’t seem to, well, decide. It has been more than a month since Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation was accepted. Then the Administration stated that they were waiting on the ISG report before any change in Iraq policy would be announced. But then there was a crush of press coverage on the ISG report, emphasizing the suggestion that the Baker-Hamilton Commission was sent to fix the problems created by the current Administration. Perhaps the embarassment of this group of elder statesmen, led by the ultimate fixer James Baker, has led the Bush Administration to attempt it’s own display of gravitas through massive consultation. But there seemed to be something missing. Democratic strategist Paul Begala thinks that postponing the new policy announcement until January would be a mistake, because that month is usually reserved by an administration solely for the State of the Union, which normally provides a boost in presidential poll numbers. Begala can’t help but think of events in their political context, but perhaps he missed another major consideration.

Incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has stated that she would use the first 100 hours to “drain the swamp” created by 12 years of Republican rule. Rep. Henry Waxman, who will become chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, is intent on using his new position to open a variety of investigations into the Administration. And Sen. Patrick Leahy, the incoming Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is planning to subpoena members of the administration to testify at congressional hearings.

Perhaps the delay in announcing a new Iraq strategy is just another Rovian political calculation. In January, the United States will swear in the first female Speaker of the House, the highest ranking woman ever in government. The new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate (although the tenuous nature of the Democratic majority in the Senate has already been exposed by the illness of South Dakota Senator Tom Johnson) would inspire a new round of press coverage. Given that many in the Bush Administration are still clinging to the now discredited slogan of “stay the course”, perhaps they view a “major announcement” of Iraq policy as a mere political tool, just the thing to divert attention from the new Congressional regime.

Ideology

Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary:

• ideology – The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture.


• dogma – 1. A system of doctrines proclaimed true by a religious sect. 2. A principle, belief, idea, or opinion, esp. one authoritatively considered to be absolute truth : TENET. 3. A system of principles or beliefs.


• orthodox – 1. Adhering to the established and traditional faith, esp. in religion. 2. Adhering to the Christian faith as set forth in the early Christian ecumenical creeds. 3. Conforming to accepted standards or established practice.

In November 2001, the campaign to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan was proceeding smoothly and was nearing it's completion. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's idea of a light mobile force was a smashing success. Public approval of the operation in Afghanistan hovered around 90%. Rumsfeld was a rock star; people from across the political spectrum tuned into Defense Department briefings to see this enigmatic leader. And Osama bin Laden, the evil mastermind and financier of the 9/11 attacks, was in the mountains of Tora Bora, surrounded.

But there was a problem. Even after days of raining down daisy cutters on Tora Bora, Bin Laden was still alive, hidden in a complex of caves and tunnels. The force holding down Tora Bora was predominantly Afghan, with very few American soldiers. This was the way most of war had been conducted -- American Special Forces assisting Afghan troops. This was Rumsfeld's design.

There was sufficient time to replace or augment the Afghan contingent with an American force. This was before the beginning of the Iraq War, so there were more than enough American troops available. But to do that would alter Rumsfeld's design, which had worked so well.

The result is well known -- Osama bin Laden escaped into the netherworld of the Pakistani tribal areas, where he, more than likely, remains to this day. (See an account at How bin Laden got away.) The speculation is that members of the Afghan force assisted Bin Laden's escape, which is not farfetched given that much of the progress in the Afghanistan War resulted from troops merely switching sides. Loyalty to any particular cause did not seem to exist. Rumsfeld's military ideology didn't take this very flexible loyalty into account, even with all the evidence. That's the problem with ideology.

The definition of ideology given above is succinct and beautifully accurate in it’s seeming vagueness. Ideology is inverted logic – the principles are fitted to an desired end result. It’s really more than desire, it’s a need, like the jonesing of a heroin addict. Without ideology, members of many groups would lose their self-identification, they would be people without a country.

Ideology does not just infect the right wing of the political spectrum. At the onset of the war itself, many stated that invading Iraq was “immoral”. Committing the US blindly to an adventure in Iraq may have been foolish, impractical, and not nearly the most important and reasonable use for the military at the time, but it certainly wasn’t immoral. A typical case for this stand of immorality states that “No one has the ‘right’ to attack another person because they ‘suspect’ that person is planning to attack them. This holds for nations as well. A preemptive war is legal and moral only if there is overwhelming, objective evidence that the offending country or people are actively trying to destroy the defending country. A guess is not a moral premise for war.” This may be true when the countries in question are civilized democracies, but is overthrowing a repressive dictator immoral? Would it have been immoral to attack Hitler’s Germany if the only reason were to stop the Holocaust? Many have called for intervention in the Sudan to stop the genocide in Darfur, yet the Sudanese haven’t attacked us, nor do they plan to. Would an invasion of the Sudan to stop genocide be immoral? This discussion of the immorality of the Iraq invasion was prompted to a great extent by the initial bogus reason given by the Bush Administration, that Iraq was in possession of WMD, but it is sheer Rovian twisting of fact to use this as a basis for analysis.

The left wing has currently equated the Iraq War with the Vietnam War, even though there are palpable differences (as outlined in Outcomes II). It is as if any war that is badly executed, fundamentally lacks the backing of the country backing the war, has endemic violence caused by insurgents, and turns into a “long, hard slog” (in Rumsfeld’s immortal words) is the Vietnam War all over again. The absolute illogic of equivalencing Vietnam and Iraq is a perfect example of purely ideological thinking. The left identifies itself with their victory of the US leaving Vietnam, and is craving a similar victory in Iraq. This is not to say that leaving Iraq is the best overall course given current circumstances. But the left’s equation relieves itself of thinking of any future consequences of leaving.

Not every war that is bogged down is equivalent to Vietnam. The American Civil War was bogged down until Lincoln fired McClellan. The Reconstruction, which was in all ways a war between Southern racists and blacks and their federal protectors, was also a long hard slog, and because of the weariness and lack of support of the North, combined with political factors, was forfeited to the South, guaranteeing almost 100 years of brutal repression.

Ideology infects every area of political and economic thought, from Democrats holding on to fossilized welfare systems that had the unexpected effect of destroying family structures to Republicans demanding stimulative tax cuts when the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates to cool off the economy to minimize the threat of inflation. Both sides are guilty of using ideology to ignore the potentially painful gray areas to paint falsely definitive images in black and white. Only when we ignore ideology, and see the entire range of potential outcomes to any proposed solution, will we be able to understand the full impact of our decisions.