Bush's Top Ten Mistakes in Iraq during the Past 4 Years
10. Refusing to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when his incompetence and maliciousness became apparent in the growing guerrilla war and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.
9. Declining to intervene in the collapsed economy or help put Iraqi state industries back on a good footing, on the grounds that the "market" would magically produce prosperity effortlessly.
8. Invading and destroying the Sunni Arab city of Fallujah in November, 2004, thus pushing the Sunni Arabs into the arms of the insurgency in protest and ensuring that they would boycott the January, 2005, parliamentary elections, a boycott that excluded them from power and from a significant voice in crafting the new constitution, which they then rejected.
7. Suddenly announcing that the US would "kill or capture" young nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in spring, 2004, throwing the country into massive turmoil for months.
6. Replying to Baathist guerrilla provocations with harsh search and destroy missions that humiliated and angered ever more Sunni Arab clans, driving them to support or join the budding guerrilla movement.
5. Putting vengeful Shiites in charge of a Debaathification Commission that fired tens of thousands of mostly Sunni Arab state employees simply for having belonged to the Baath Party, leaving large numbers of Sunnis penniless and without hope of employment.
4. Dissolving the Iraqi Army in May, 2003, and sending 400,000 men home, unemployed, resentful and heavily armed.
3. Allowing widespread looting after the fall of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, on the grounds that "stuff happens," "democracy is messy," and "how many vases can they have?"-- and thus signalling that there would be no serious attempt to provide law and order in American Iraq.
2. Plotting to install corrupt financier, notorious liar, and shady operator Ahmad Chalabi as the soft dictator of Iraq, and refusing to plan for a post-war administration of the country because that might forestall Chalabi's coronation.
1. Invading Iraq.
Labels: Iraq War
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/20/2007 01:33:00 AM
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11 Comments:
Bush and his Neo-Con Conmen have made nothing but mistakes in Iraq. They invaded the country for its oil and for war-profiteering. They have given as many reasons for the invasion as Heinz has pickles, but none of them are true. Rumsfeld(The Carlyle Group) thought he could have a war on the cheap, so the big money could go to his favorite military-industrial complex corporations to develop hugely expensive weaponry, the daily welfare of GI Joe and Jane, be damned. Cheney has made sure that Halliburton/KBR got the plum contracts, so his stock options continue to grow. That company specializes in charging big bucks for substandard work-a typical ploy of companies that can get by with that sort of thing,for one reason or another..... Wouldnt you know that Halliburton would be involved in the Walter Reed scandal? Yes, indeed, one of its subsidiaries got a big contract under the Bush agenda of privatization. No wonder, the place is falling down. The Bush Administration and its Congressional supporters are little more than a gigantic scam operation at the expense of the taxpayer. When greed, avarice, deceit, and viciousness are your primary modus operandi, you can expect negative results and overwhelming corruption. The negative outcomes of Bush's actions are inevitable, because his goals are inherently negative and self-serving. The proof, after all, is in the pudding.
There was one single "error" : invading Iraq. Thinking to it, it isn't even an error, it is a crime and I hope that the US will be hold accountable for his missdeeds, that his leaders will be brought to trial and condemned to life imprisonment (I'm against the death penalty, so this is the heaviest sentence) and that the US will be condemned to pay due compensations for destroying the Iraqi economy, the Iraqi states, the Iraqi civil society and countless family goods and family members.
I've often wondered why the US didn't try to make an alliance with the educated Sunnis minorities, instead of with the religious Shiites. After all they were the most seculars and the most likely to wish a type of government similar to western democracies. I've come to the conclusion that it was probably impossible because the educated Sunnis were also the most nationalist and the less likely to support the US military bases for a long time, or to accept the privatization of the oil industry.
So in the end whatever errors the US has made in Iraq following her criminal invasion doesn't matter, the operation was doomed to fail anyway.
Among the counterinsurgency techniques used by the US, I'm sure there are deathsquads (Negroponte was there for a reason). Targetting civilians in order to discredit the resistance by accusing it for the killing of innocent civilians is a known strategy which the US has already used in South America. It also led Iraq to civil war, offering the needed justifications to maintain US military bases indefinitely. However even that criminal strategy doesn't seem to work, since Iraqi still wants the US out of Iraq.
Regarding mistake two - Chalabi - it may be worth considering a distinction between Bush himself and those around him, notably the Vice-President and the Pentagon directors. According to Mark Danner and James Risen, quoted below from the New York Review of Books, Dec. 21 2006, the latter set of people wanted Chalabi but had no Plan B. When Bush himself insisted on elections as the basis for post-Saddam Iraq, the Chalabi option, already a corrupt idea, also became a redundant but residually influential one. Its primary effect was thus to weaken and confuse US policy.
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Inherent in the War of Imagination were certain rather obvious contradictions: Donald Rumsfeld's dream of a "demonstration model" war of quick, overwhelming victory did not foresee an extended occupation—on the contrary, the defense secretary abjured, publicly and vociferously, any notion that his troops would be used for "nation-building." Rumsfeld's war envisioned rapid victory and rapid departure. Wolfowitz and the other Pentagon neoconservatives, on the other hand, imagined a "democratic transformation," a thoroughgoing social revolution that would take a Baathist Party–run autocracy, complete with a Baathist-led army and vast domestic spying and security services, and transform it into a functioning democratic polity—without the participation of former Baathist officials.
How to resolve this contradiction? The answer, for the Pentagon, seems to have amounted to one word: Chalabi. "When it came to Iraq," James Risen writes in State of War,
the Pentagon believed it had the silver bullet it needed to avoid messy nation building—a provisional government in exile, built around Chalabi, could be established and then brought in to Baghdad after the invasion.
This so-called "turnkey operation" seems to have appeared to be the perfect compromise plan: Chalabi was Shiite, as were most Iraqis, but he was also a secularist who had lived in the West for nearly fifty years and was close to many of the Pentagon civilians. Alas, there was one problem: the confirmed idealist in the White House "was adamant that the United States not be seen as putting its thumb on the scales" of the nascent Iraqi democracy. Chalabi, for all his immense popularity in the Pentagon and in the Vice President's office, would not be installed as president of Iraq.
Though "Bush's commitment to democracy was laudable," as Risen observes, his awkward intervention "was not really the answer to the question of postwar planning." He goes on:
Once Bush quashed the Pentagon's plans, the administration failed to develop any acceptable alternative.... Instead, once the Pentagon realized the president wasn't going to let them install Chalabi, the Pentagon leadership did virtually nothing. After Chalabi, there was no Plan B.
An unnamed White House official describes to Risen the Laurel-and-Hardy consequences within the government of the President's attachment to the idea of democratic elections in Iraq:
Part of the reason the planning for post-Saddam Iraq was so nonexistent was that the State Department had been saying if you invade, you have to plan for the postwar. And DOD said, no you don't. You can set up a provisional government in exile around Chalabi. DOD had a stupid plan, but they had a plan. But if you don't do that plan, and you don't make the Pentagon work with State to develop something else, then you go to war with no plan.
I'd like to add a rider - in the shape of a sub-category: Bush's All Time Top Ten Mistakes.
1) Being born
Number one really is number one mistake.
Top 10 Misundertakenesses
Of course, Younger George forgot also to heed the advice of Elder George as far as Iraq and the Middle East ahve been concerned. EG had been confronted with many of the same options and opportunities in 1990-91 but resisted the opening up of the region to widespread civil conflict. (This is well-described in *Out of Ashes* by Cockburn & Cockburn.) But, as we well know, we are suffering from a perfect example of the Freudian slap, the vying of YG for the attentions of EG's surrogate mother ... but ... I'll leave the elucidation and exposition of that to those whose living is derived from delving into the devilments of the devious.
As we have become aware over the last few years, the nut of Iraq is a hard one to crack without damaging the meat, leaving what's to be consumed free of signs of the work involved to free it from its shell. Of course, the nuts in the WH have suffered the same fate, having been cracked at one point, leaving what was inside with somewhat less integrity than one would otherwise expect. It might be said that a given expression of leadership is a reflection of its generation, how many burned their brains out early on only to enter into some sort of rehabilitation (if only to delay rehabituation), intended to atone for wrongs and sins (of the father, if only to begin with), taking extreme measures in order to impress on one's self, again through others, the importance of walking the yellow line, disregarding the high speed traffic going in both directions on either side. Needless to say, the leadership does not consider itself to be vehicularly hindered, eschewing danger, forgetting that pedestrian sorts should not be allowed to mix with those who have prepared and are suitably armoured.
While it may be true that Younger George will be always remembered for having followed the advice of some and went to fly a kite, we have to recall that those who saw the auguries in YG's pursuit as an auspicious time to further investigate the Iraqi entrails were equally mistaken for the misinterpretation of the misrepresented and misunderstood
misadventures and mission on which they sought to embark. While it may be said that there was a collective 'flash-back,' the likelihood of the acid of juvenile experimentation had finally overcame the alkali of age and maturity. In short, the multitude was having a simultaneous meltdown of mellowness, hallucinating about the current hollow state and decline of their vigour and prowess.
That the military has been actually youthful, vigourous, and powerful is justification enough for the politicians who -- one way or another -- eluded military service to render the best, brightest, and boldest much more like themselves. The oldsters have been enervated and emasculated, some of whom have died off and others who merely get through the day dealing with their various afflictions and deficiencies. Wearing out and wearing protheses is normal for the aged would-be heroes; there is no reason in their minds that the youngsters who most resemble who the aged would most like to have been should not also bridge the generation gap by sharing physical deficiencies, degeneracies, and deformities. The aged can therefore make the youngsters in their own images; the godlike ones can reinvigorate with Viagra while prematurely aging other peoples' kids.
Without too much thought, it is plain to see that those who have sought political power have also fallen prey to the desires of the likes of Younger George. As the youngster in a manlike body who has been constantly attempting to achieve redemption of one sort or another, he has acquired many fellow-travelers on his bad-trip flashback. He has not only lured many who regret the foregoing of the heroics of youth into his vacuous vision and version of personal 'hell' but has created a situation that will last for generations, ensuring that untold numbers will suffer the associated traumas and distresses according to his own image, having left unfulfilled his Faustian pledges, his unworthy soul irredemable as it turns out. Only others' souls can hold out any hope of satisfying the infernal ones, those who actually have had some honour to trade for Younger George's perilously puerile pursuits. What was once a Vietnam-era substance-induced flashback has become an Iraq-error substantial recurring nightmare.
Yes, Younger George might have a whole list of misunderestimations that can be listed, beginning with ignoring the lessons of the past, even those of his father's experiences, not only as a 'Bush' pilot but as President and one who waged a conflict on Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Day after day, there are reports of the military being constantly drained of its strengths. Even yesterday, Joe Scarborough and Senator Bond agreed that the strains had to do with the too-deep cuts in the 1990ies. What Joe and Kit don't want people to get is when the reductions really began. While 'Ducking' Donald Rumsfeld attempted to dunk the issue by stating that "you go to war with the Army you have," he well-knew that it was his old-timer huntin' buddy and fellow Defense Secretary RB Cheney who, following [Sir] Colin Powell's lead, actually put the United States into dire straits well before BillJeff Blythe IV Clinton and his hatchet man cum Defense Secretary Les Aspin performed their 'Bottom Up Review.' [Sir] Colin's 'Base Force'* was the first of a series of 'Michael Jackson'-style cosmetic operations that cut into the military's active duty strengths, austensibly based on the the decline of the Soviet Union. What was forgotten was that 'evil empire' had actually reduced the numbers of forces required by the 'West' to keep the peace through maintaining their own expeditionary forces, if not for Western Europe but then for Afghanistan and threats to other countries. The 'Kool-Aid Kids' all bought into the rosy future of the post-'Cold War' World as presented by the Powell-Cheney-Bush (PCB) initiatives, something that was even believed, like Somalia and Waco, TX, by the successors to the Bush 41 Presidency. The Clintonians inherited not only the defective thinking and planning but performed the roles as fall-persons for policies not entirely of their own desire, design, nor making.
In short, Younger George has outperformed his own predecessor, BJB4C, by being driven to best the antecedent of both, Elder George, at some of the same games. The list of errors must include not only resurrecting and carrying on the Bush41 Presidency but bringing on those who were instrumental in formulating policies that have put the United States in a very dim light, reducing its role as a 'beacon' for the World. And, now, the dimmed wits will leave the cleaning up of the wrecks on the rocky shores to others; replacing the bulb in the lighthouse (or boob in the White House) has been just too much trouble.
But. We have to consider Younger George's enablers, the ones in whom he misplaced his trust, those most in need of redemption of their own for dubious but decidedly dastardly deeds. It is to these persons who we must look, despite the dimmed light, and at their own lists of mistakes in order to properly spread the responsibility for the past misstatements and the current states of affairs.
Younger George did not do all of this alone, acting like some addled Austrian, single-handedly conducting the cacophony of war. He was smart in a way, relying on his 'experts' and briefers (those once pert and briefly so). The present pResident's precedents and predecessors have all contributed something to that for which all Americans will have to pay, whether today or tomorrow. [Sir] Colin and 'Dead-Eye' Dick as well as the remainder of the camarilla have all pounded their pieces of the jigsaw puzzle into place, justifications for creating an amateurish avantgarde artform through heartless artifice standing only the tests of the present times. Only those enjoying the hallucinatory images of power can appreciate not only the gaps and torn edges but the lack of patience and foresight required to understand how the picture is supposed to look. Constantly having to view past as present, even far into future times, can be a valid series of exercises but only if the proper approach is taken and lessons are correctly learned. Unresolved personal conflictedness should never result in unresolvable wider
conflicts. We only have to look at Iraq to see the inner turmoils of those who will be seen as the ones who ruined the puzzle for everyone else!
*'Numbers Racket'
http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/04/numbers_racket.html
*'The Base Force'
http://www.afa.org/magazine/Dec2000/1200base.asp
I would add
a. Chosing such a weak inexperienced bureaucratic non public team, from Rove, and Cheney, to the minor political appointees - never a group up to the standards a modern government requires
b. Framing the present-future in such weakly gounded un-historic perspecives. No awareness of the history of the ME, for exampe of England's role and failure in afghanistan and iraq.
c. Allowing a business agenda to have such prominence in a republic.
doug carmichael
doug@dougcarmichael.com
This list begs the question. How would things be different today had the Bush administration not totally botched this operation.
Let's say they clamped down hard and fast on the looting, kept the Iraqi army on the payroll and in it's barracks, limited Debaathification to the top tier of insiders, put competent people in charge of the reconstruction and cultivated the allegience of tribal leaders. My guess is things would be quite different. I've heard it said not planning for success is the same a planning for failure. In this case it's as if they actually did plan to fail.
It must have been excruciatingly difficult to winnow that down to ten!
I'll second that.
Then of course there's Bush's all time big mistake: operating as if the Dems would never win in 04.
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