Gratitude

From George Packer’s The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (2005)

Richard Perle asked me rhetorically, “What would be accomplished by having patrols up and down the highway? The point of our presence there, it seems to me, is not to make sure that the highways are open all the time. That isn’t how this is going to be won, in my view. This is going to be won when we have a flow of intelligence that identifies the guys we’re fighting.”

Unless you had an ideological stake in it, this controversy didn’t survive your first contact with Iraqi reality. There weren’t enough troops to patrol the road between Baghdad International Airport and the city center so that visitors didn’t have to take their lives into their hands upon arrival. There weren’t enough troops in the city streets to act as a deterrent to someone who wanted to steal a car or shoot up a convoy or assassinate an official. There weren’t enough troops to guard a fraction of the million tons of munitions which were left lying around in dumps all over Iraq that were being steadily looted by insurgents. There weren’t enough troops to provide a token presence along Iraq’s borders with Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, which might dissuade some jihadis and intelligence agents from infiltrating across. There weren’t enough troops to prevent militias from gaining control of entire provinces. There weren’t enough troops on the major highways to keep bandits and insurgents from terrorizing the truckers carrying essential goods, such as reconstruction materials, or even food for the Green Zone. There weren’t enough troops to allow CPA officials to do their jobs.

Perhaps the connection between patrolling highways and winning the war was too abstract for those supporters of administration policy who never went to Iraq, and for a few who did. It shouldn’t have been that hard. Why would Iraqis join the American effort when their personal safety, or even a minimum of public order in their country, couldn’t possibly be upheld by the occupying forces?

Now, three years later, the situation is much, much worse. And while all sane people are deeply frustrated by the situation, until this week we hadn’t gotten any indication that our Derelict in Chief felt any of that frustration. Now, however, we know: he’s just as frustrated as we are . . . but he’s frustrated about something else:

President Bush made clear in a private meeting this week that he was concerned about the lack of progress in Iraq and frustrated that the new Iraqi government — and the Iraqi people — had not shown greater public support for the American mission, participants in the meeting said Tuesday. . . . More generally, the participants said, the president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. “I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States,” said another person who attended.

Those ungrateful Iraqis. But maybe he’s got a point. Maybe the Iraqis should thank us—for not somehow screwing up this war and occupation even more. Hell, I’m almost to the point of being grateful for every day that Bush doesn’t decide to nuke someone.

Oh, but I should give the Derelict in Chief his due. From later in the New York Times story:

Participants said Mr. Bush appeared serious and engaged during the lunch, which lasted more than 90 minutes.

He was serious and engaged! He did his job for 90 whole minutes! And don’t forget: it’s August, when by right he should be on vacation! That brush isn't going to clear itself, you know.

Now don’t you feel more grateful?

Back to Iraq

From George Packer’s The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (2005)

General Franks’s innovative strategy used enough troops to take the country but nowhere near enough to secure it.

You know, I was going to go on and run a long passage, but as I typed that sentence, I had to stop. Enough troops to take the country, but nowhere near enough to secure it. Nowhere near enough.

Yet no one has gone to jail over this debacle. No one has even faced serious Congressional inquiry over this debacle. And of course no one has been fired over this debacle. While those who created this nightmare evade accountability, our grandchildren will still be dealing with the deadly repercussions of the Bush administration’s criminally bad planning and execution of the Iraq war.

I promise I’ll be over this, and back to literature and history and such by next week. But right now, I can’t get away from it. Hate is not healthy. Hate is not productive. But hate is what I feel.

Back to the book:

Even so, a concerted effort could have stopped the most egregious looters and warned off others with a show of force. It never happened. In vain, employees of the museum begged the leader of a nearby tank platoon to park one tank at the museum entrance and scare off the pillagers who were making free with the country’s antiquities. . . . Afterward, some Iraqis insisted that they had seen soldiers not just permitting but encouraging and helping looters, as if the mayhem were joyous celebration of the fall of the regime. This was the secretary of defense’s view. Only the Ministry of Oil was protected.

Martial law was not declared; a curfew was not immediately imposed. No one told Iraqis to stay at home or to go to work.

Here, I feel like I should take a break to warn you that you’re about to encounter a level of detachment from reality that is astonishing even coming from a member of the Bush administration. You may want to go to stuffonmycat.com for a minute to calm yourself before forging on.

You’ve been warned.

Later, Douglas Feith would insist to me that, technically, the American military asserted its authority early on. “When the Saddam government fell, it was going to be necessary to issue a first proclamation,” Feith said. “But there had been an Iraqi history that whenever there was a coup, somebody issued Proclamation No. 1. So we decided that we didn’t want that, which is why it was renamed ‘Freedom Message.’”

You’re probably beginning to see why General Tommy Franks, no stranger to cravenness and stupidity, called Feith “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.” Not only did Feith actually believe that his "Freedom Message" was going to make a difference to the chaos enveloping Baghdad—he still wanted to make sure Packer gave him credit for it a year later! As The Assassins' Gate continues:

The implications weren’t lost on Iraqis, including potential adversaries. “We’re incompetent, as far as they’re concerned,” said Noah Feldman, the New York University law professor who went to Baghdad as constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority. “The key to it all was the looting. That was when it was clear that there was no order. There’s an Arab proverb: Better forty years of dictatorship than one day of anarchy.” He added, “That also told them they could fight against us and we were not a serious force.”

I know it’s probably getting old, but you can never say it too many times:

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Do it now.

Now that's what I call a Freedom Message.

Bush + Iraq = Quagmire

I’ve been reading George Packer’s The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (2005), which is about as infuriating a book as I’ve ever read. Packer begins by making a surprisingly strong case that the invasion of Iraq might have been justifiable simply on humanitarian grounds, and that it might, with careful planning, lots of luck, and clear-eyed realism, have been possible to prosecute successfully. It was an extremely long shot, and even Packer's case at its strongest doesn't convince me. But it was possible.

However, Packer follows that case with example after example of how the Bush administration, through its fecklessness, hubris, and incompetence, managed instead to more or less guarantee failure, with all the death, destruction, and instability that has accompanied it. Packer’s been everywhere, it seems, and talked to everyone—former Baathists, Defense Department officials, U.S. Army Captains on patrol, and ordinary Iraqis. Many of the ordinary Iraqis and most of the U.S. soldiers come across as real heroes—working incredibly hard in terrible conditions to attempt to rein in chaos, improve the country, and stay alive.

By the end of The Assassins’ Gate, it’s hard not to conclude that the Bush administration has failed on nearly every front. I started with what I thought was the lowest possible opinion of the administration; what I’ve learned reminds me that Brad DeLong has yet to be proved wrong when he says, “The Bush administration is worse than you think, even after you’ve taken into account that the Bush administration is always worse than you think.”

All of which has me thinking about a particular word—here’s The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary’s take on it:

Treason: 1 The action of betraying a person, etc., betrayal of trust, treachery. 2 Law Violation by a subject of allegiance to the sovereign or the State, esp. by attempting or plotting to kill or overthrow the Government. Formerly also high treason 3 An act or kind of treason. Now rare.

Hmm. That doesn’t seem quite right. I don’t think anyone in the Bush administration is actually trying to overthrow the government,; in fact, I’m sure they think they’re working on behalf of the government. They’re just disastrously, criminally incompetent.

That gives me an idea. How about:

Dereliction 1 The state of being abandoned or forsaken, dilapidation, neglect. 2 The act of deliberate abandonment. Now rare exc. Law, of a chattel or movable. 3 Failure, cessation; esp. sudden failure of the bodily or mental powers. 4 Reprehensible abandonment; wilful neglect. Chiefly in dereliction of duty.

Here’s just one of the countless examples. I could almost have picked this at random—seriously. See what you think:

By the end of the summer [of 2003, Paul] Bremer understood the extent of the problem and its political urgency. He went to Washington and let the White House know that Iraq was going to cost America tens of billions of dollars. Iraqi oil money and seized assets wouldn’t come close to covering it. The reassuring forecasts of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz went into the dustbin of history.

President Bush broke the news to the country on September 7, 2003, and Congress quickly passed an $87 billion appropriation bill that included $18.4 billion for Iraq’s reconstruction. Much of the money was earmarked for the huge infrastructure projects—power plants, water and sewage treatment, telecommunications—that only large multinationals could carry out. . . . By August 2004, ten months after the appropriation, only $400 million of the $18.4 billion—barely two percent—had been spent. By the time Iraqi subcontractors saw any of the money, all but a small fraction had been lopped off in overhead, security (as much as 40 percent of any contract), corruption, and profits. The CPA kept promising Iraqis that the spigot was about to be turned on and the country was going to be flooded with lifesaving cash that would put tens of thousands of people to work. It never happened.

Part of the problem lay in the business-as-usual attitude back in Washington. Rumsfeld, still technically in charge of the postwar, set the tone: In mid-September, just a few days after Bush’s televised speech, the defense secretary said, “I don’t believe it’s our job to reconstruct the country. The Iraqi people will have to reconstruct that country over a period of time. “ He even offered the Iraqi people a reconstruction plan of sorts: “Tourism is going to be something important in that country as soon as the security situation is resolved, and I think that will be resolved as soon as the Iraqis take over more and more responsibility for their own government.”

Let's look at "Dereliction," sense four again:

4 Reprehensible abandonment; wilful neglect. Chiefly in dereliction of duty.

I think we have our winner. It’s time to jail Donald Rumsfeld on a charge of dereliction of duty and criminal negligence.

But let’s not forget his bosses, who through all of this have found no reason to fire—or even publically reprimand—him.

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Do it now.

Lessons of history

Often as it's quoted, I think George Santayana's "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" isn't quite sufficient to describe the current situation. Not as pithy, but more apt for right now would be, "Those who cannot remember the past are—along with everyone else in the entire world—condemned to repeat it."

There are, after all, many of us who remember the past; many of us have even taken the trouble to learn about events that transpired before we were born. But because the Bush Administration and its enablers actively refuse to learn any lessons from past mistakes (or, god forbid, past successes)—and because the Purported Opposition Party for some reason can't decide that it's a good idea to point out to the world that the Lunatic War-mongering Incompetence Party is, in fact, lunatic, war-mongering, and incompetent—we're all stuck repeating history.

Those of us who are lucky are repeating history, that is. The unlucky are being killed by bombs.

Along those lines, this post is about one historical tradition that doesn't ever seem to go out of style with military or civilian leaders: underestimating the fighting ability of the men on the other side.

From Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1 (1587)

SPY
An hundred horsemen of my company,
Scouting abroad upon these champian plains,
Have viewed the army of the Scythians,
Which make reports it far exceeds the king’s.

MEANDER
Suppose they be in number infinite,
Yet being void of martial discipline,
All running headlong after greedy spoils
And more regarding gain than victory,
Like to the cruel brothers of the earth
Sprung of the teeth of dragons venomous,
Their careless swords shall lance their fellows’ throats
And make us triumph in their overthrow.

MYCETES
Was there such brethren, sweet Meander, say,
That sprung of teeth of dragons venomous?

MEANDER
So poets say, my lord.

MYCETES
And ’tis a pretty toy to be a poet..
Well, well, Meander, thou art deeply read, and having thee I have a jewel sure.
Go on, my lord, and give your charge, I say,
Thy wit will make us conquerors today.

From Justin Marozzi’s Tamerlane (2004)

Fighting was in [the Tatars’] blood. Famed for their skill as archers, they charged across the steppe on horseback, raining down arrows upon their enemies. [In the words of a contemporary account,] “They were archers who by the shooting of an arrow would bring down a hawk from the hollow of the ether, and on dark nights with a thrust of their spearheads would cast out a fish from the bottom of the sea; who thought the day of the battle the wedding night and considered the pricks of lances the kisses of fair maidens.”

From George Packer’s The Assassin’s Gate (2005)

It wasn’t the job of the uniformed services simply to salute their civilian leaders and march off to war. Franks, who was known to rule by fear, and his staff also had an obligation to the men and women under their command. Yet they never seemed to ask themselves what would happen if Rumsfeld was wrong—what might happen to their troops once they were in Iraq, without the necessary forces and protection, if things did not go according to plan. Plan A was that the Iraqi government would be quickly decapitated, security would be turned over to remnants of the Iraqi police and army, international troops would soon arrive, and most American forces would leave within a few months. There was no plan B.

From John Nagl’s Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (2002)

The patience and willingness to suffer over a long period in order to achieve ardently desired revolutionary goals have led one observer of the phenomenon to observe, “Insurgents start with nothing but a cause and grow to strength, while the counter-insurgents start with everything but a cause and gradually decline in strength and grow to weakness.”

From James T. Patterson’s Grand Expectations (1996)

In Korea . . . the war went badly for the United States and its UN allies in the first few weeks. MacArthur had been optimistic; like many Americans he had a low opinion of Asian soldiers, and he thought the United States could clean things up quickly. But he had done a poor job of preparing his occupation forces in Japan. The troops who were rushed from Japan to Korea . . . were poorly equipped and out of shape. Colonel John “Mike” Michaelis, a regimental commander, complained that many of the soldiers did not even know how to care for their weapons. “They’d spent a lot of time listening to lectures on the differences between communism and Americanism and not enough time crawling on their bellies on maneuvers with live ammunition singing over them.” . . . If conditions had been better, the troops might have had a little time, once in [Korea], to train more intensely. But they were rushed to the front lines. There they were torn up by the well-planned North Korean advance.

From George Packer’s The Assassin’s Gate (2005)

Rumsfeld looked upon anarchy and saw the early stages of democracy. In his view and that of others in the administration, but above all the president, freedom was the absence of constraint. Freedom existed in divinely endowed human nature, not in man-made institutions and laws. Remove a thirty-five-year-old tyranny and democracy will grow in its place, because people everywhere want to be free. There was no contingency for psychological demolition. What had been left out of the planning were the Iraqis themselves.

. . . .

Cheney didn’t believe that the postwar planning would matter in the end, anyway. Like the president, Cheney maintained an almost mystical confidence in American military power and an utter incuriosity about the details of its human consequences.

MEANDER
Then, noble soldiers, to entrap these thieves,
That live confounded in disordered troops,
If wealth or riches may prevail with them,
We have our camels laden all with gold
Which you that be but common soldiers
Shall fling in every corner of the field,
And while the base-born Tartars take it up,
You, fighting more for honour than for gold,
Shall massacre those greedy-minded slaves;
And when their scattered army is subdued
And you march on their slaughtered carcasses,
Share equally the gold that bought their lives
And live like gentlemen in Persia.
Strike up the drum, and march courageously!
Fortune herself doth sit upon our crests.

MYCETES
He tells you true, my masters, so he does.
Drums, why sound ye not when Meander speaks?

[Strike drums]