The Volokh Conspiracy

Yup,nothing wrong with OUR plan. It's all the president's fault. We had nothing to do with it. Gosh, if we had been in charge, it would have gone perfectly according to plan.

This, from the party of 'personal responsibility.'

Rumsfeld Must Go
Just days after President Bush publicly affirmed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's job security through the end of his term, a family of publications catering to the military will publish an editorial calling for the defense secretary's removal.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15552211/

Other conservatives critical of Iraq/Bush:

Andrew Sullivan
Dick Armey
Colin Powell
Richard Viguerie
David Kuo
Richard Armitage
John Warner
Chuck Hagel
Christoper Hitchens

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

The competency of the Bush administration and the rightness of taking down Saddam are two different things.

For example, in WW2 I think it was right to defeat Hitler and Nazi Germany. We did the right thing by declaring war on them. Now, even if we had ended up losing the war, or if we won but botched the occupation, that doesn't mean we weren't right to declare war and fight in the first place. As it was, we made tons of mistakes in WW2(see Huertgen Forest, the Ardennes/Bulge, N. Africa, Anzio for starters) and when you consider how close the Germans came to winning even despite all their mistakes(postponing Barbarossa from May to June, the invasion of Crete, the invasion of Yugoslavia, the decision to hold Stalingrad at all costs instead of pushing for the Caspian and the oil fields, the abandoning of Rommel and the Afrika Corps, the incompetence of the Luftwaffe and OKW that allowed the BEF to escape from Dunkirk, the horrible strategy of the Luftwaffe during Aug-Sept 1940, etc...), we were lucky to win as we did.

That said, the administration has been woefully bad in Iraq post war. And I say this as someone who supported the war in the first place and still think taking out Saddam was the right thing to do.

But I never expected the administration and the Pentagon to do this badly. See the too small number of troops, the blind faith in democracy, the supporting of guys like Chalabi and al-Maliki who are stooges for Iran, the lack of resolve in confronting Iranian and SYrian support for the insurgents and terrorists, the lack of decisive action against terrorists, the way they've handled the media and failed to explain things ot the public, the coddling of the EU with regards to Iran's nuclear program, etc...

If I knew then what I know now about how they've performed, I'd prbably say it isn't worth it.

But it's certainly possible to be consistent and say you supported the war in the beginning not no longer have confidence in how the administration is handling the occupation and post war period. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Trotsky

癌症
癌症
尖锐湿疣
中国康网
尖锐湿疣
排铅
成人用品
尖锐湿疣治疗

omarbradley:

You have provided one of the best summaries of the problem of the Iraq war I’ve seen anywhere.

Hitchins is a Marxist. It is an indictment of the left that he has temporarily taken up on the right side of the house.

The invasion of Afghanistan was tactical: that's where the immediate enemy, Al Qaeda, was.

The invasion of Iraq was strategic and had little to do with Iraqi support of terrorism or WMD. Our plan was to change the Moslem world by force, or by the sort of persuasion that force-next-door works on neighboring countries, and Iraq was a practical place to start.

But because we were dishonest about practicing realpolitik we saddled ourselves with a need to justify the invasion by finding WMD, or WMD programs, or terrorist connections, and our failure to incontestably do so has given the war's critics all the ammunition they need. Worse yet, our real purpose seems to have been overtaken by a need to defend our rationalizations against this criticism. We have lost track of our own strategic thinking and turned the war on Islamic primitivism into The Iraq War.

Even if we win in Iraq, which we may still do, we have abandoned the reasoning that justified the invasion in the first place. Victory in Iraq will be signaled by the troops coming home, not by their massing on the Syrian border. The whole affair is an exact illustration of the old saw "When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember you came to drain the swamp."

If only the President had begun by saying "My fellow Americans, the Islamic world needs an enema and Iraq is the perfect place to put the hose," all of us who aren't educated beyond our capacity would have understood exactly what we were doing. But between dishonest rationalizations and inept execution, the whole WOT has turned to mush.

If only the President had begun by saying "My fellow Americans, the Islamic world needs an enema and Iraq is the perfect place to put the hose," all of us who aren't educated beyond our capacity would have understood exactly what we were doing. But between dishonest rationalizations and inept execution, the whole WOT has turned to mush.

Absolute rubbish. You will not remake the middle east by invading and installing democracies. The people there identify themselves along religious, family, and tribal lines. If you manage to install a democracy they will vote for mullahs, imams, etc. or those beholden to them and you will be back where you started. While you are trying to install democracy there will be tremendous amounts of bloodshed and large piles of money just incinerated in runaway military spending. In practice, trying to "install democracy" by force in the middle east results in an endless feedback loop of lost lives and money.

Perhaps you should look a little closer to home for someone "educated beyond their capacity".

Personally, I do not have much to say about this topic, however, I did find something interesting and relevant on the internet that I wish to share.

One of the people quoted in the article, David Frum, has some further comments here. Scroll down to the entry titled "Vanity Fair's Inventions" if it is not already at the top. I think it is fair to say that Frum is an expert on what he meant to say. For the convenience of the readers of these comments, here are a couple of excerpts from Frum's comments,

It cites not only myself as one of these remorseful supporters, but also Richard Perle, Ken Adelman, and others.

I can speak only for myself. Obviously I wish the war had gone better. It's true I fear that there is a real danger that the US will lose in Iraq. And yes I do blame a lot that has gone wrong on failures of US policy. (...snip...)

My most fundamental views on the war in Iraq remain as they were in 2003: The war was right, victory is essential, and defeat would be calamitous.

And that to my knowledge is the view of everybody quoted in the release and the piece: Adelman, Cohen, Ledeen, Perle, Pletka, Rubin, and all the others.

(Not that it matters, but this fight is very personal for many of those people. Cohen and Ledeen have both had children serve in Iraq, Cohen's in the Tenth Mountain Division, Ledeen's daughter in the civil administration and his elder son in the Marines. As a civilian adviser in Iraq, Rubin displayed impressive personal courage living solo for long periods of time in the Shiite zones of east Baghdad.)

Vanity Fair then set my words in its own context in its press release. They added words outside the quote marks to change the plain meanng of quotations. (...snip...)

In short, Vanity Fair transformed a Washington debate over "how to correct course and win the war" to advance obsessions all their own.

Frum has much more to say and what he says sets the above excerpts in a thoughtful context. In any case, I thought that Volokh Consipracy readers might enjoy reading the thoughts of one of the sources of the Vanity Fair article as a companion to the article itself, especially as theses thoughts seem highly relevant to the interpretation of the article itself.

Hitchins is a Marxist. It is an indictment of the left that he has temporarily taken up on the right side of the house.

Having a Marxist on their side is an indictment of the right.

Their basic philosophy about the possible uses of U.S. military power is the fundamental problem. The strategic failures in Iraq are simply a particular manifestation of the flaws in the their philosophy.

Neocons are bleating about like Bart Simpson: It's not my fault! Don't blame me!.

Neocons should just climb under a rock.

EricP,

I think Americans are such idealists that they believe democracy can be spread without invasions.

Listen, this would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. The neocons were stupid, stupid blind people -- and they still are. They still cling to this idea that we could have invaded Iraq, set up a democracy in a few months, and then all the other middle eastern countries would fall like dominos once they see democracy in their midst. Their only contention is that Bush bungled the job, but the job was a good one nonetheless.

Baloney. I worked on a project for several years with the ABA entitled the Central and Eastern European Law Initiative. Our goal was to help the emerging former communist countries implement democracy, constitutions, and independent judiciary, and the concept of the rule of law among all those former Soviet bloc states. Even under the best of circumstances -- peaceful overthrow of the communist dictators, an educated public, democratic and capitalistic neighbors close by, and so on, it took many, many years of hard work. The ones that succeeded the best were Hungary, Poland, the Baltic States, and the Czech Republic. The further you go east, the less successful it has been.

So my experience is that implementing the full buffet of democracy, freedom, capitalism and so on takes years, competent and able leaders, a willing public and no small amount of good luck.

And yet we had Bush saying that we would be out of Iraq in months, and it would be a democracy 'by August'. The oil revenue would pay for the war, so no cost to Americans. Whoopee! We would get something for nothing.

Not only was this terribly naive -- yes, I'm saying Richard Perle and Dick Cheney are naifs -- and terribly wrong, but it violates the first rule of global politics. You NEVER get something for nothing.

This was a stupid war right from the start, and it was doomed to failure.

Well, the democracy thing may be naive; the preference for parlimentary democracy is surely foolish in a country as divided as Iraq. But democracy 'took' in Germany and Japan, and those places had no history of it at the time.

So, "stupid" and "doomed" are maybe a little strong. We could have done better and we may yet. I have to admit a suspicion that once we leave, Iraqi democracy will turn out to be of the 'one man, one vote, once' variety, but hey, I've been wrong before.

Keep an eye on American Thinker, there's some reaction from Perle coming. My impression is that he won't be favorable.

Orson23, the probably with your conclusion is that a "civil war reflected outward back in on itself" is the opposite of what the Neocon rats said was the goal from Iraq. The Neocon rats essentially promised that after removing Saddam Hussein from power, Iraq would become a nice little, peaceful democracy that would be an example for the rest of the Middle East. Well, I seriously doubt any nation in the Middle East will want to emulate Iraq now given its sectarian strife. However, the sectarian strife was only inevitable given that it was stifled only by the brutality imposed on all Iraqis by Saddam Hussein and his sons.

Also,
one thing that no one mentions in comparing Iraq to WW2 is the USA did not win WW2 by itself! People seem to forget about the Soviet Union. They took 50X the casualties we did! 50X! If you look at the figures, 80%+ of German divisions and 85%+ of war materiel and weaponry was were destroyed by the Russians, not the Americans. IN reality, the Eastern Front was where WW2 was won. The western front was like the minor leagues compared to the major leagues of the east. If Germany had had been able to use all its forces in the ast against us in the west and not had to worry about the Russians, things would have turned out differently. Ask any true historian or military guy, and he'll tell you the Russians had more to do with beating the Germans than we did

We don't have a Soviet Union fighting the stength of the enemy for us in this war

They have no honor. They have stolen ours.

It's true that going to war for democracy" was well down the list of reasons for toppling Saddam. But the Iraq Liberation Act of October 1998 made that the goal of US foreign policy, and it was signed by Democrat president Bill Clinton. Thus, Bush merely acted on official US policy.

Furthermore, the fact remained that Saddam WAS at war with the US. Given that the peace terms signed in the armistice were perpetually broken, the situation reverts to a state of war. Costs of "containment" were already sunk. The Fodd For Oil program and the rampant corruption thus exposed - and far too little discussed in the media - meant that such a strategy wasn't viable. As last year's book "The Bomb in my Garden" details and a recent NYTimes story confirms, Saddam had aggressive WMD programs at the ready, only waiting out the US and UK enforced trade embargo. (And UBL made these a point of Jihad in 1998 in his declaration of war against the US.)

No, the war in Iraq was a good and necessary war. The bloody and prolonged pacification struggle there since, however, may not have been avoidable. These fair weather neocons seem committed to not realizing that. Tom Sowell in the Wall Street Journal points out the fact that diversity itself made this difficult outcome almost inescapable.

But Fouad Ajami has repeatedly trumpedt the fact that popular rule is now on the table in the Arabic speaking Middle East. This gives them an example to know and learn from that Israel could never be. And since democracy IS widely admired there, this is all to the good for any modern future. Who here will argue agains the preception that popular government has somthing to do with Western success? Not Arabs.

A recent "Opinion Survey of the Arab Street 2005" by Al Arabiya news network provides interesting confirmation. The survey sought to see what Arabs thought about the relative lack of economic progress in the Arab world. In answer to the question, “What is stalling development in the Arab world?,” 81 percent chose "Governments are unwilling to implement change and reform"; asked "What is the fastest way to achieve development in the Arab world?", had 67 percent choosing "Ensuring the rule of law through justice and law enforcement." http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/200552911951.asp

Too bad so many here will deny the Araqb world the obvious. Iraq provides an object lesson in how and how not to proceed to a brighter future.

... hence the dodges and misdirections like WMD

Barone on WMD

Orson: But the Iraq Liberation Act of October 1998 made that the goal of US foreign policy, and it was signed by Democrat president Bill Clinton. Thus, Bush merely acted on official US policy.

Yeah, and there is just no way that the President of the United States could change official policy.

Not to be overly offtopic, but I was just wondering if anybody else was as struck by Annie Leibovitz's portrait of Bush in that article? It was fairly breathtaking to see a portrait that so strips him of the presidential identity.

Oops. The quoted notables now claim that they were misquoted, twistquoted, and quoted out of context and that the VF article does not represent their views.

You all were laboring under the illusion that a media institution was being honest, an unexamined premise.

Silly.

"You all were laboring under the illusion that a media institution was being honest, an unexamined premise."

Yeah, there real views are that things are going really well in Iraq and it was a good thing to invade them and the plan was executed perfectly. That's their REAL view?

Or maybe their real view is that Bush isn't really at fault for bungling the invasion, but that they are.

Well, now I can sleep better.

Sheesh. If that *isn't* their real view, then they are even more in denial than I ever thought possible....or maybe .... they are just mad because their views came out before the election?

Then what IS their real view? I'm mean, it's pretty much limited to the following:

The plan to invade was a good one, but it was poorly executed by Bush (The VF article).

The plan to invade was a good one, and it is going along just fine (The out of touch with reality argument)

The plan to invade was a bad one, and it's going along badly (IMO a true argument, but it would require Perle to admit that he was wrong, which I doubt), or

The plan to invade was a bad one, but it's going along nicely. (Bizarre on all accounts).

So which one is Perle claiming now? He has every opportunity to clear the record as to his real views right *now* and chooses not to. Therefore, I suspect that the VF article is quoting him accurately, but he's just mad that his real views are made known before the election. But the public has a right to know what his views are, since he was one of the main people arguing for this war in the first place, and it's topic number one in the minds of the voters.

Great. But my point is that IF VF misquoted Perle, then why doens't he bother to tell us what the real quotes are? The fact that it somehow doesn't occur to him makes me suspect that VF didn't misquote him as much as he says they did, and that he just wants to backtrack from the firestorm it unleashed.

I do presume the media lies -- that's why I don't watch Fox news.