May 14, 2008
Analysis: Rethinking The Iraq Critics
U.S. News & World Report's Michael Barone Says We Are Only Beginning To Learn About What Went On Behind The Scenes
-
(AP / CBS)
-
Photo Essay Week In Iraq Photos A daily diary with scenes of the latest attacks and snapshots from the effort to rebuild a nation.
-
Interactive Iraq: 5 Years At War Five years after the U.S.-led invasion, the war wears on.
In trying to understand news about the conflicts in Iraq, I work to keep in mind the difference between what we know now about decision-making in World War II and what most Americans knew at the time. From the memoirs and documents published after the war, we've learned how leaders made critical judgments. But at the time, even well-informed journalists could only guess at what was going on behind the scenes.
Today we're only beginning to learn about what went on behind the scenes on Iraq. One important new source is the recently published War and Decision by Douglas Feith, the No. 3 civilian at the Pentagon from 2001 to 2005. Feith quotes extensively from unpublished documents and contemporary memorandums, just as in the late 1940s Robert Sherwood did in Roosevelt and Hopkins and Winston Churchill did in his World War II histories. The picture Feith paints is at considerable variance from the narratives with which we've become familiar.
One such narrative is "Bush lied, people died." The claim is that "neocons," including Feith, politicized intelligence to show that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction. Not so, as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Silberman-Robb Commission have already concluded. Every intelligence agency believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and the post-invasion Duelfer report concluded that he maintained the capability to produce them on short notice. There was abundant evidence of contacts between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Given Saddam's hostility to the United States and his stonewalling of the United Nations, American leaders had every reason to believe he posed a grave threat. Removing him removed that threat.
Unfortunately -- and here Feith is critical of his ultimate boss, George W. Bush -- the administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around the fact that stockpiles of weapons weren't found. Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, apparent in debates on gun control, that weapons are the problem, rather than the people with the capability and will to use them to kill others. The fact that millions of law-abiding Americans have guns is not a problem; the problem is that criminals can get them and have the will to kill others. Similarly, the fact that France has WMDs is not a problem; the fact that Saddam Hussein had the capability to produce WMDs and the will to use them against us was.
Feith identifies as our central mistake the decision not to create an Iraqi Interim Authority to take over some sovereign functions soon after the overthrow of Saddam. Bush ordered the creation of such an authority on March 10, 2003. But it was resisted by State Department and CIA leaders who argued that Iraqis would not trust "externals" -- those in exile -- and who were especially determined to keep the Iraqi National Congress's Ahmed Chalabi from power. As head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer took the State-CIA view and, without much supervision from Washington, decided that the U.S. occupation would continue for as long as two years. Only deft negotiation by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld produced a June 30, 2004, deadline for returning authority to Iraqis. The January 2005 elections placed many of the "externals," including Chalabi, in high office.
Feith admits he made mistakes and misjudgments. He criticizes Bush for not defending the main rationale for invasion -- protecting Americans from a genuine threat -- and instead emphasizing the subsidiary and iffy goal of establishing democracy. He says little about military operations, beyond noting that Bremer and the military leaders had no common approach to combating disorder.
There's still much to be learned about our decisions, good and bad, in Iraq. But Feith's book is a step forward, as were those of Sherwood and Churchill 60 years ago.
By Michael Barone
Copyright © 2008 U.S.News & World Report, L.P. All rights reserved.
| U.S. News & World Report: "The most credible print newsweekly" --The Pew Research Center. |
More From Politics
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- next
See all 70 Commentsliars and theives,
they belong in prison,
if you like what they have done, vote for mcbushsame
Posted by JohnShaft4 at 11:40 AM : May 15, 2008
Larry Craig says Feith is hung like Saddam...."
That would be kind. Make him inventory the body bags that return from Iraq. Then he has to tell the families directly what happened to their sons and daughters. He is the worst kind of coward.
Posted by JohnShaft4 at 11:40 AM : May 15, 2008
Larry Craig says Feith is hung like Saddam....
THEY ARE NO DIFFERENT THAN THE NAZIS INVASION OF POLAND IN 1939!
Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
By Jan Frel, AlterNet. Posted July 10, 2006.
A Nuremberg chief prosecutor says there is a case for trying Bush for the ''supreme crime against humanity, an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.''
AMERICA STAND UP OR SHUT UP!
Oil is $125 a barrel - $4.00 a gallon for gasoline, and it takes $1.55 to buy one Euro dollar...twice what it was in 2001.
We started with a budget surplus eight years ago and are one trillion in debt today. That is Trillion with a "T".
Islamic fundamentalists won''t allow a democracy and we have to accept that. Pulling out years from today or expeditiously tomorrow will not change the inevitable result: Democratic Government in Iraq will be defeated by Islamic fundamentalists.
Under the eventual defeat in Iraq, the fundamentalists are most certainly prepared to repeat the atrocities seen in Iran with mass executions.
Our best course of action is to give refugee status to those most likely to be executed under successful fundamentalist insurgency, and grant their asylum status in the USA. Simultaneous troop withdrawal and evacuation of Iraqi democratic participants will be less deadly to us if we don''t wait for Islamic fundamentalists to propel an accute offensive.
Well said, Tonyd_31!
But to know how deep the poison goes, it would be wise to read Feith''s book. When dealing with cancer it is procedure to do a biopsy in order to know what you are dealing with.
The US has killed relatively few "in the name of peace". However, the Iraqi (and Saudi) people have killed thousands in the name of religion, the thurst for power, and revenge. Let us put the blame in the correct place.
In all of this, where was the congress? Remember those people that take an other to represent you and to limit the power of the president and to exercise proper judgement in the conduct of public policy.
And as for the presence or absence of WMD, how do you know they weren''t there, but stamped "made in the USA" on the side of them. There are things that we will not know for years about this war. I am a soldier in the Army Chemical Corp. I am not allowed to go to Iraq for medical reasons (cancer) but I have friends over there that tell me very disturbing things. Things that don''t make sense given the reports we hear on both sides of the issue.
No, the vast majority of informed people in the western world didn''t rely on their information from the mainstream mass media and therefore KNEW that what was being reported was a pack of lies. Hence the biggest demonstrations in human history against the war BEFORE IT STARTED, with people carrying placards stating ''LIARS!'' etc. Now stop being an apologist coward and either go fight the ''war'' you ''support'' or shut up and learn something instead of gullibly suckling on the Corporatist teat. These people don''t give a toss about you so stop blindly supporting them - ALL of them (Reps and Dems, Tories and NooLabour), they''re ALL THE SAME.
And it''s this author''s belief that because it was this way in WWII, it lends credence to what happened in IRAQ? Bubby, let me direct you to history.
Today we have technology.. Today we have cell phones.. today we have streaming video.. in the 1940''s it still took a 2 weeks to get a letter from one end of the US to the other, for cryin'' out loud. To equate that era to this is pointless and a non-issue. That, "Geesh... we didn''t...um..know...cuz we didn''t have correct information." just does not fly, and in many years from now it still will not.
History will show this was a pointless and painful part of the American experience. My God have mercy on our souls!
Considering the documentaries and books already written WITH interviews of the people who were actually there and took part in this debacle, Feith''s Folly will certainly make it into comics routines but I doubt anyone will ever consider it a serious piece of history. More likely to be held up as an example of the writings of a armchair soldier on LSD!
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- next
See all 70 Comments