Back in late 2005, a brilliant young US moderate-left commentator named Matthew Yglesias and his colleague Sam Rosenfeld penned a prescient essay for The American Prospect called “The Incompetence Dodge”. They began by noting how many policy figures were coming to the conclusion that poor execution was damaging the conduct of the Iraq War. Among those using this argument were John Kerry, Hilary Clinton and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Rosenfeld and Yglesias went on to argue that the execution of the war was largely irrelevant. The original decision to go to war was disastrous, they argued, and almost nothing done afterwards could save it.
In the 16 months since, the bungled-invasion meme has only gathered strength. It spread from the “liberal hawks” to conservatives such as Charles Krauthammer and William Kristol. Bob Woodward’s book State of Denial argued that high-level Washington incompetence was to blame. (The denial referred to in the title was George W. Bush’s denial that this incompetence needs to end, through the removal of people like CPA chief Jerry Bremer and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.) Thomas Ricks’ book Fiasco (discussed earlier at Troppo by Cam Riley) argued that the both the administration and the military got it wrong. A gaggle of conservative pundits started whining that the real problem was the Iraqi people, who were incompetent in executing their piece of the US plan.
And in the past couple of months George Bush has joined the push to treat the whole thing as an execution problem, sacking Rumsfeld and his two key US military commanders, and this week signalling a new approach and even taking a little blame for the current failure.
In the welter of analysis we are getting about the new approach in Iraq, it is important to keep Rosenfeld and Yglesias’s thesis in mind. (Ygelsias himself has revisited the incompetence dodge this week in a new essay for The American Prospect, “The Personnel Delusion“. In Australia, The Road To Surfdom makes a similar argument under the magnificent title “Lost on the planning fields of Harvard“.)
The incompetence dodge, as Rosenfeld and Yglesias noted, provides comfort. It comforts the political representatives who voted for war, the analysts and public intellectuals who supported the decision, indeed anyone who does not want to believe that George W. Bush and his advisers simply made an enormous policy blunder which will haunt the US, Britain and Australia for decades. It lets journalists cram books with the thoughts and actions of second- and third-level functionaries – generals, admirals, political operatives and other expert problem-solvers with their own views about how to fix the mess. (The incompetence dodge suits Woodward particularly well: finally banned from the Oval Office coffee sessions during the writing of State of Denial, he now gets to avoid admitting that his two earlier Bush-fights-terror works simply misread the quality of the President’s own decisions.)
But to a sceptical reader, the arguments of people like Woodward and Ricks actually undermine the incompetence argument. Many of the people in charge seem cluey enough to be part of a capable government. Indeed, Cheney, Powell, Wolfowitz and Rice were all part of the George H.W. Bush administration, acclaimed – particularly these days – for its conservative conduct of the first Iraq War. Woodward’s book in particular reveal plenty of strains, but nothing unfamiliar to students of teams placed in tough situations. And the George W. Bush administration’s supposed mis-steps mostly look a lot like no-win situations. Keeping Baath Party members in government jobs would have merely aliented Iraq Shias faster. The same goes for keeping the Sunni-dominated Iraqi army together. More US troops would have eased some problems but multiplied others. And so on. In chronicling Iraq as a series of poor micro-decisions, Woodward, Ricks and the rest have almost accidentally confirmed the opposite: given a sufficiently foolish strategy, ground-level competence becomes almost irrelevant.
Many disciplined problem-solvers have spent time in Iraq over the past 40-odd months, and many are naturally puzzling over how to fix the mess. Trained to execute strategy rather than question it, they naturally avoid much reflection on whether their President’s invasion decision was the problem. But post-invasion Iraq looks less like a wristwatch and more like an egg: no amount of tinkering will fix it. It should simply not have been messed with in the first place.
Iraq does not represent a failure of execution. It represents a grand failure of post-9/11 strategy. The incompetence dodge is just that – a poor excuse for foolish policy thinking. George W. Bush decided to invade a large, complex, fragile nation where he lacked the clear capability to deliver a brighter future. Everything after that was just detail.
Understanding this point is central to any understanding of what we do next about Iraq, militant Islam and the “war on terror”.
What a handy “thesis”. No matter what anyone does, Yglesias and Rosenfeld are always “right” – the war is/was a disaster!! Far fewer errors have been made in Iraq compared to other wars – Roosevelt and Churchill would have been run out of office by these two cranks. Bill Clinton would have been shot.
The previous administration insisted Iraq had WMD – as did the UN – and there is no doubt Iraq attempted to acquire, and would have gone on attempting to acquire, the capacity for a nuclear weapon. Doctor Germ was on the payroll. Links with al Qaeda were made – that’s why Clinton bombed Sudan – and Saddam’s financing of suicide bombing was undeniable. Likewise, Saddam was a mass murderer who invaded other countries, lobbed shells at Israel and committed genocide against his own people. He was the late twentieth century’s worst dictator and he had a succession apparatus in place for his violent dynasty to continue. He was found guilty of war crimes and would certainly have been found guilty of genocide. In about the same time as ONE US presidential term, this bloodthirsty tyranny has been overthrown and Iraqis have proved themselves enthusiastic for democratic procedures and methods of governance. The invasion was absolutely moral, absolutely justified and legal.
While doing this, Bush has also overthrown the Taliban – in what lefties belatedly recognised as the Good War (it was “another Vietnam” for a while) – and waged a borderless war against terrorists in places like Somalia (which Clinton botched embarrassingly). This is a great President – accidentally so, perhaps – and that’s what really sticks in the craw of the critics.
Well, tough luck.
D.W. Griffiths, others will have a better grasp of the Hawkish intentions in the Bush administration than me. I’m given, on readings, to take on board that those Iraq intentions were there before the public tipping point of September 11.
But you do mention September 11, and you do place upon the occasion of Iraq the overall context that it was effectively a mistake from the start.
This comment may be of no consequence to what you are invoking in your article here. It’s given that it includes a little bit of understanding about America from a personal perspective.
Again, the Hawks may well have had plans prior to September 11. But to feel that day from an American perspective there was one consequence Bush absolutely had to address. This was American anger.
After the hurt, the nation was outraged.
It’s very hard today to recall empathetically that anger. It was visceral. This raises the questions of how a President might deal with that anger. It absolutely had to be dealt with.
On this I wonder what another leader might have done. My conclusion is that it would have taken a person of historically extreme capabilities to absorb that national anger, allow it, appease it, make it thoughtful, make it reflective, and then direct it towards a positive, diplomatic, peaceful resolution.
On the other hand, I wonder how it was that such a pugilistic-fantasising boofhead was there to take that call.
So it was.
To whatever extent September 11 played in the decision to hit Iraq (noting Afghanistan as the first point of call), the fact of nationwide American anger must be taken into account. This, was a new anger.
I’m going to retract the description ‘boofhead’ from the above thoughts. It’s inflammatory and at heart I do believe unfair. Such an easy trap to fall into, upon recollection of the swaggering aggression in Bush in his hitup hey day- but I acknowledge also that others saw that as strength and decisiveness in that ongoing “hour” of need. In this I wonder at the power of the Hawks and unknown forces behind the scenes.
And, for what it’s worth, I do accept C.L. may well prove correct. It may well have taken that total disconnect to diplomatic resolution to allow an overall resolution, at least for America – as a differing take on the way he puts it.
As example to how time plays the discerning role in this, if we can’t recall that American anger, in real terms, then we may have difficulty in predicting where it might lead.
Having said that, we now hear the deep resounding thoughts of America in reflection, and from that we can move forward with thoughts of value. Perhaps people similar to C.L’s viewpoint can meet us there.
Who knows where it will lead. Maybe we can at some point draw a line against military action, and maybe that time will come from this.
Retraction noted, Robert. Worth remembering: during the 2000 campaign Bush was actually criticised for running with a withdrawal policy on US military commitments around the world. Al Gore ridiculed him on this basis, even arguing manfully that he – AL GORE – would be willing to wage regional conflicts in America’s national interest. The pugilistic-fantasising boofhead was the candidate for the Democratic Party.
C.L., people will go you on this:
They might not know which way you call it, for or against. Let’s hope no pugilistic-fantasising boofhead offends your sensitivity.
Otherwise mate, here’s something on the table. I’m no historian, and blind as any bat: What would you do or have done differently, regarding “Iraq”?
They won’t “go” me on it, Robert. That’s the way it was before 9/11 – theories about “neo-cons” (often leftist code for “Jews”) and Bush’s pre-existing, inherent desire to interfere in the world are historical nonsense. The previous US administration went on and on (and on) about Saddam Hussein having WMD and even bombed a factory in Sudan because it was thought to be at the service of both al Qaeda and Iraq.
So you’re the President and the worst homeland attack occurs in half a century. Thousands are killed. The nation is abuzz with speculation about further attacks, perhaps using radiological or chemical weapons. That’s how it was. Iraq has “Dr Germ” on the payroll, has used chemical weapons against Iraqis on a massive scale and – according to your predecessor – was manufacturing military toxins in probable alliance with Osama bin Laden. People are saying, pointing out, desperately highlighting that we can’t wait for a WMD attack – we can’t afford to do that. Everyone knows Saddam is playing games with the UN and its so-called weapons inspectors. It’s been going on for years.
So Bush acted – as he should have.
As for the invasion, hardly any in history go perfectly well. The truth is today’s Democrats probably would have impeached Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the screw-ups he oversaw in the early years of World War II and later. “The loss of 749 soldiers during a D-Day exercise shows that an escalation is pointless”, Nancy Pelosi might have said.
That, I feel C.L, from your perspective, needs time and space to breathe.
After that, I feel your words: the urgency of otherwise nornmal American life, beset immediately by all these threats. Changed so radically in that instant.
There is Dr Germ – I recall what that felt like. And you’d allow me a mind to imagine what could have been during those days of fear. In part I do remember.
Mate, you’ve lost me on the “your predecessor” thing. I imagine nevertheless that you’re referring to the very real feelings we all had that chemical weapons (that’s a biggie, thrown up in the public mind, full on) were, then, (any day!)) now! a part of our lives.
As I hear you: all of a sudden it was brought to a head.
It required action (which hadn’t til now happened): and Bush acted.
Am I hearing you?
Shorter CL: it’s the thought that counts.
P.S. Clinton was worse.
Not at all. Actions speak louder than words, rather. Or, alternatively, it’s better to overthrow the Husseins and the Taliban and kill thousands of terrorists than it is to let Osama bin Laden escape Africa on a chartered jet. And Clinton wasn’t worse on this, as I always insist. On the threat of Saddam Hussein, he was actually very good. Did nothing substantive about it or al Qaeda but his (verbal) militancy was spot-on.
Just a couple of comments. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 so why does anyone still try to justify the invasion/occupation on that basis. The Taliban is on the rise again in Afghanistan and may soon be as powerful as it was prior to 9/11 (with a good deal of support from the Pakistan military – who are supposed to be on “our” side).
Now if the US had focused on sorting out and fixing problems in Afghanistan instead of attacking Iraq it may have achieved some success, although even that is problematic given the Russian experience. Oh, I forgot Aghanistan doesn’t have any oil, just opium poppies.
Shorter CL: Cinton was less good than Bush.
I suppose Clinton’s enforcement of no-fly zones, bombings (of Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq), enforcement of economic sanctions and enforcement of UNSCOM supervision were all “insubstantial” in your book, but as a result Saddam:
1. Was militarily neutralised.
2. Had no WMDs.
What’s Bush’s legacy in Iraq? Time will tell, but he’s already several hundred $bn and several thousand US lives (that’s assuming Iraqi lives don’t count) in the hole.
It’s not looking good so far, is it? That peace & democracy goodness better start kicking in REAL soon.
I think you’re so right, D.W. The only real question I had at the time — when it had become obvious the US would invade — was just how disastrous the eventual outcome would be. So far, unfortunately, it has in many ways exceeded my worst fears. While some of this can be sheeted home to the “management” of the occupation, the plan was, as you suggest, conceptually incoherent and hence destined to fail, not only in Iraq but also in a wider geopolitical sense.
I also agree that accepting this has important implications for “what we do next”. I put down some thoughts on exactly this question (see Post 19) in the earlier thread you started on Iraq, so it probably doesn’t make much sense to repeat them here.
In roughly one presidential term, Bush has overthrown Hussein (part of what Clinton called an “unholy axis”), the Taliban (in the Good War in Afghanistan), restructured the military, waged a borderless hot and intell war on terrorists everywhere and killed thousands of them. After two full terms, Clinton managed to assassinate an al Qaeda camel in Sudan and before allowing terrorists kill 3,000 people in down-town New York. Which part of that 1995 memo on how terrorists wanted to hijack planes and use them as missiles didn’t he understand? But Bush’s policies are a “disaster”.
Laughable.
Shorter CL: Iraq isn’t a disaster. *Laughs*
But let’s not be flippant – let’s check the list:
– Saddam gone? Tick.
– Taliban gone? Kinda – Al Qaeda and OBL still at large…half a tick.
– Restructured the military? In a bad way by overtaxing it. Cross.
– waged a GWOSBNAT (Global War on Some – But Not All – Terrorism). Did. Not. Complete.
– killed thousands of terrorists. Kinda – most of the terrorists killed are the ones he CREATED by invading Iraq. Half tick.
– allowed 9/11 to happen. Cross.
– invaded a country with a sexed-up casus belli. Cross.
– screwed the pooch in occupying said country. Cross.
– caused the death of thousands of people, and that’s just in his own armed forces. Cross.
– spent hundreds of billions of US taxpayers’ money making Iraq WORSE than when he found it. Cross.
Your arithmetic’s screwed up, CL, but keep doubling down on a losing bet. That’s always a good strategy. No doubt you’ll find some lefty to blame for the mess once the US finally has the good sense to get the fuck out of Dodge. Oh, I know: Clinton is to blame for Iraq, right? No? OK, how about Whitlam? Tell me when I’m getting warm.
Well, Fyodor, I haven’t heard Whitlam coming out in support of the GWOT. That should tell us something…
CL:
Yes, he’s probably muttering something about “fucking Balts”.
Or planning an affair with Hilary.
Eww. Would that be considered “fucking Billary”?
Trying to get a grasp of your thinking here, C.L. Bush was a cleanskin, he and his administration had no intentions of interfering in the world, gets a terrible homeland hit, strikes back to get Bin Laden, all of a sudden Hussein’s wmd threat is unbearable, and Bush in response invades Iraq to maintain safety.
That, against a background of Bush’s predecessor going on and on about Hussein’s wmd’s.
Am I reading it from you right? Is cleanskin too provocative? Do you rule out absolutely any intention on the part of the Bush administration to interfere in Iraq prior to, say, September 11?
“What a handy “thesis”
Cl says:
“They won’t “go”
Oh dear, various refugees have become bored with the “debates” over at LP and have migrated to a blog that doesn’t ban people. Understandable, I guess.
Following your “logic” and that of the left, Don, Churchill and Roosevelt didn’t win because they had to keep soldiers in Germany and Japan in order to guarantee the peace in Europe and Asia until – well, they’re still there actually. Still in Korea too. But – OMG! – the Nintendo commentariat is bored and insists the Iraq War is a “failure” and a “catastrophe”!!
– Saddam gone? Tick.
– Taliban gone? Kinda – Al Qaeda [thousands of whom are now kinda dead] and OBL still at large [after being allowed to escape five times by President Clinton]…
half a ticktick.– Restructured the military?
In a bad way by overtaxing it. Cross.Destroyed Saddam Hussein’s combat capability in three weeks. Overthrew the Taliban, despite lefties warning – yawn – of “another Vietnam”. Massive reserves still in place – as usual – in Europe and Japan and Korea. Tick.– waged a GWOSBNAT (Global War on Some – But Not All – Terrorism). Did. Not. Complete. [Evil George Bush – should have invaded Chechnya and the Shankill Road]. Said from the start the war was generational – not one that would finish early for the A.D.D. generation. Tick.
– killed thousands of terrorists.
Kinda – most of the terrorists killed are the ones he CREATED by invading Iraq. Half tick. [Mussies become terrorists when they’re angry – whatever you say Mr Sophisicated]. Tick.– [Bill Clinton] allowed 9/11 to happen.
Cross. Correct.– invaded a country with a sexed-up casus belli.
Cross.As Kevin Rudd and Kim Beazley pointed out, every intelligence agency in the world believed Saddam had WMD. Sexed up anything is not something associated with people like Womble and Bomber.–
screwed the pooch in occupying said country. Cross.Easily overthrew Saddam Hussein – a convicted war criminal who is presently dead. Tick.–
caused the death of thousands of people, and that’s just in his own armed forces. Cross.Many more Americans die of food poisoning in the US every year than have died in Iraq. The casualty rate has been remarkably slight. 3000 dead on 9/11 because Bubba let bin Laden go – oops.–
spent hundreds of billions of US taxpayers’ money making Iraq WORSE than when he found it. Cross.Iraq is far better off than it was under the state terrorism of Saddam Hussein. Casualty rate of that regime – close to a million.What they did sex up was the immediacy of threat. (As C.L. clearly expresses above). It was, simply, ridiculous, and many of us at the time were disappointed even one person could be fooled by such a childish, pathetic attempt to supply a reason to ignore the world’s wishes in what became very quickly a lust to bomb.
And the wmd justification at the time was not at all clear cut, as implied by C.L. Powell’s embarrassing power point presentation was laughable, except, again, for the lust to bomb.
CL
Where do you get the figure of “close to a million” for the casualty RATE of Saddam’s regime? It’s probably a fair approximation of the total casualty count if you include the Iran-Iraq war and the slaughter of Shiites in the wake of Gulf War I. But the casualty RATE (i.e. state-sanctioned killing) in the years immediately preceding GWB’s invasion was around 2-3000 per year, according to credible sources like Human Rights Watch (excess non-deliberate deaths e.g. malnutrition etc would no doubt take it higher).
Compare that with the casualty rate for the 4 years or so SINCE the invasion. According to the (controversial in some circles) Lancet study, the total is over 600,000 (or 150,000 or so per year). Even if we accept that this is seriously overstated and slash it by 2/3, you’re still left with a death count of 200,000 (or 50,000 per year). Thus, in outcome if not intent, the Iraq invasion has been an unmitigated tragedy for Iraqis (including the majority Shiites who hated Saddam’s guts with good reason).
Nor can you plausibly claim that such an outcome could not have been predicted. Plenty of observers, including ones like Tim Dunlop and John Quiggin, DID in fact predict it. Check their blog archives and see. By contrast, I didn’t. I cautiously suuported the invasion. I was wrong. I frankly don’t understand why you can’t admit that you were too. And the fact that everyone (including JQ and Tim Dunlop) believed erroneously that Saddam had WMD doesn’t help your case either. Much of the CIA and State department also believed it but, until they were bludgeoned into line by Rumsfeld and Cheney, they also believed that containment was the only sensible policy option and that invasion would lead to disaster. They were right too.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that “cutting and running” now is the wise course of action. Perhaps Bush/Blair/Howard should be exploring radically changing the mix between military effort and policing/intelligence (as DW Griffith argues – it doesn’t have to be a black and white either/or situation). Perhaps they SHOULD be looking at engaging Iran and Syria in dialogue (howver unlikely success in such an endeavour may be). Perhaps they should be looking at some degree of partition between Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish majority regions, in practice if not formally. I simply don’t know.
But it seems highly unlikely that just sending 20,000 more US troops to Iraq, while somehow hoping that the Iraqi “government” will be able to shoulder more of the burden soon, is going to achieve anything positive at all. To make the sort of case you want to advance CL, it seems to me you need to deal at the very least with this point made by Andrew Sullivan (hardly a bleeding heart lefty):
Tim and John also predicted casualties in a war, Ken? I’ll respectfully put them in the Clauswitzian class as pundits too, then. ;)
The overall body-count of Saddam’s misadventures, killings, otherwise unnecessary sanctions-related excess deaths etc is about a million. Easily. The Lancet study wasn’t even picked up by lefties this time around – so ludicrous was it.
This is the regime that many believe should have been left in place for the sake of “stability”. (Aka: if the deaths aren’t being discussed by Les Roberts, Anonymous Lefty or the New York Times, they’re not really a “disaster” or a “catastrophe”).
On the question of the Shiites, I think there are more varying and shifting shades of like-mindedness and cooperation between Maliki and the Mahdi than Sullivan’s analysis allows. (Sullivan, as an aside, wants Chimp to fail because gays can’t “marry” – yawn). Even the once conventionally proferred suggestions for non-military solutions to the problem of Iraq presumed that the Shiites would eventually dominate. What has to be done – with that inevitability now brought forward – is to buttress the government and attempt to finesse it towards self-interested survival-in-moderation rather than Ayatollah lunacy. That’s a big project and it can’t be timetabled. Remember that this was always going to happen anyway and is not some turn of events out of a conceptual nowhere thanks to the evil neo-cons, their Jewish enablers, BushCo etc etc, bla bla bla.
In my view, this situation will come down to an attritional race of will and stamina between – in one lane – Iraq’s political and, especially, economic revival and – in the other lane – the ability of extremists of all stripes to chase America out of the country. A surge is not necessarily about definitively ending the IED attacks etc – as the President has stated. It is about trying to regularise the government as a here-to-stay institution, with more ruthless attacks on terrorists as part of the new strategy too, one hopes. I believe this race can and should be won. The counter proposal – skedaddle now and leave it to the Iraqis alone – is a shockingly stupid and wilfully partisan idea whose chief objective is to draw a line under Bush foreign policy and glory in calling it a “disaster”.
CL says:
“The Lancet study wasn’t even picked up by lefties this time around – so ludicrous was it.”
It isn’t an argument to say the study is ludicrous, CL. You need to actually point out its methodological flaws.
From what I can gather the team who did the Lancet studies have experience in doing these types of studies in conflict situations. No-one seemed to quibble about their methodologies on those occasions. Is the methodology the real problem, or is it the unsavoury result?
How about an honest and careful analysis rather than chest-thumping? It helps if you want to be taken seriously.
by crikey saddam’s links with AQ were so reliable even bush and the rest had to deny them!
Good post this one.