Political Detachment
I've been reading, "Fiasco," a book about the country's failure to plan Phase IV - the aftermath of the war. The there was no planning or analysis but that would make for a very short book. Thomas Ricks, its author, exhaustively explains the many ways that it did not take place or failed when attempted.
The administration ignored the people who knew something about Iraq and what would happen if the center - Saddam and his Baathist regime - did not hold. Plenty of people predicted just the disaster that occurred and is worsening daily.
Finally, many different constituencies are trying to articulate plans. The center is saying that the troops should be withdrawn, with or without a timetable. The President is edging toward the pack. Senator John McCain is the lone hawk, demanding more troops. Charles Rangel, the black Congressman from New York, says, if there are going to be more troops, let's reinstitute the draft to level the playing field. Neither the McCain nor Rangel view will prevail, and we will end up pulling out along one fault line or other.
If you ask the Iraqis, they would probably say, "Get out as quickly as possible." And in support of that view, the New York Times published accounts of three Iraqi-English translators, whose lives and families were at risk because they were cooperating with the Americans. One commented, sounding like someone from the James Baker Study Group, that the Americans should have taken out Saddam but left some other, benevolent autocrat in place. The Iraqi army should not have been disbanded. With those two institutions in place, the warring sects in Iraq would have been held in check. Hopefully, some day, he suggested, democracy might take hold. But it is useless to foist it on the Iraq nation, when the factions do not see themselves as a nation.
Isn't this more or less what our government has done in many countries? Destabilize and overturn the regime and replace it with a puppet. When one Pinnocchio becomes a real boy who we don't like, we knock him off and build another. 41 would have done just that if in his presidency he took out Saddam. 43 threw out his father's playbook and opted for the naive, optimistic no-plan that has failed.
I don't often agree with James Baker or 41, but perhaps I have been naive. If the negotiations of foreign relations ranges from non-recognition to war, then coersion in its many forms is a realpolitik post-war option. If we will topple a regime, why then hesitate to install one we want. I'll reserve judgment on whether and it what circumstances regime-toppling is a valid objective. But it is clear that you cannot topple a regime without some idea about its replacement and its viability.
The administration ignored the people who knew something about Iraq and what would happen if the center - Saddam and his Baathist regime - did not hold. Plenty of people predicted just the disaster that occurred and is worsening daily.
Finally, many different constituencies are trying to articulate plans. The center is saying that the troops should be withdrawn, with or without a timetable. The President is edging toward the pack. Senator John McCain is the lone hawk, demanding more troops. Charles Rangel, the black Congressman from New York, says, if there are going to be more troops, let's reinstitute the draft to level the playing field. Neither the McCain nor Rangel view will prevail, and we will end up pulling out along one fault line or other.
If you ask the Iraqis, they would probably say, "Get out as quickly as possible." And in support of that view, the New York Times published accounts of three Iraqi-English translators, whose lives and families were at risk because they were cooperating with the Americans. One commented, sounding like someone from the James Baker Study Group, that the Americans should have taken out Saddam but left some other, benevolent autocrat in place. The Iraqi army should not have been disbanded. With those two institutions in place, the warring sects in Iraq would have been held in check. Hopefully, some day, he suggested, democracy might take hold. But it is useless to foist it on the Iraq nation, when the factions do not see themselves as a nation.
Isn't this more or less what our government has done in many countries? Destabilize and overturn the regime and replace it with a puppet. When one Pinnocchio becomes a real boy who we don't like, we knock him off and build another. 41 would have done just that if in his presidency he took out Saddam. 43 threw out his father's playbook and opted for the naive, optimistic no-plan that has failed.
I don't often agree with James Baker or 41, but perhaps I have been naive. If the negotiations of foreign relations ranges from non-recognition to war, then coersion in its many forms is a realpolitik post-war option. If we will topple a regime, why then hesitate to install one we want. I'll reserve judgment on whether and it what circumstances regime-toppling is a valid objective. But it is clear that you cannot topple a regime without some idea about its replacement and its viability.
posted by Evan Sarzin at 3:52 PM
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