Where Do We Go From Here?

I've written a lot about Iraq in this space, but I want to fill in a few gaps that pre-date this blog's inception. First, I supported the invasion and removal of Saddam. I felt a twinge of disgust when I saw the first bombs fall on Baghdad and the computer screens in front of me at work showed that the reflexive reaction of many Americans to the carnage was to buy stocks. But that's another issue, and based on my professional experience it was both understandable and predictable. I had little doubt military action was necessary in light of 9/11 and the intelligence that was presented in the months leading up to the war. But there's the rub. Of course, we now know a fair amount about how the prewar intelligence---as well as the public debate via the Plame outing---was subverted, hand-picked, shaded, crafted, manipulated, or flat-out fabricated to support an objective that had been conceived well in advance. At this point, this simply cannot be denied by any reasonable, clear-thinking person.

I am certainly not an expert on intelligence issues, but I have read many excellent books on the subject, most recently James Bamford's Body of Secrets which I review here. Based on what I've read, it is utterly implausible that agencies like the NSA did not know the real deal about Iraq's WMD or lack thereof before the war. Our intelligence agencies can read a license plate or hear a mouse fart at 50,000 feet. The chasm between our capabilities and the shameful dreck that Colin Powell presented to the world at the UN is simply too great. (And by the way, if you know someone who is immune from feelings of regret or shame, sit them down in front of two televisions simultaneously showing a replay of Colin Powell's speech to the UN on one, and our initial "Shock and Awe" bombing of Baghdad on the other. We haven't seen too many replays of the latter in the mainstream media over the past two years, have we? Conversely, the opening salvo of Desert Storm was replayed in the MSM for years afterward.) Scott Ritter---ridiculed, attacked, and all by his lonesome---got it right, and our entire intelligence community and its hundreds of billions of dollars in annual budgets just got it wrong? Fascinating. And speaking of those who got it wrong, what memory hole have they been shunted down? Remember characters like Laurie Mylroie? Where is she these days? What about Khidir Hamza, a.k.a "Saddam's Bombmaker", who seemed like he slept on a cot at Fox News in the months leading up the war? Did he turn into a frog at midnight the day we started bombing Baghdad? Of course, the Richard Perles and the Michael Ledeens are still at it as we see here, plying their trade and using the same playbook for Iran that they foisted on us to justify Iraq.

I know two things with certainty: we cannot simply decamp from Iraq en masse immediately, nor can we sit in the desert for the next few years at our current force level losing dozens of troops each week to death and permanent injury. In my first job out of school, I had a boss who told me that there is nothing wrong with realizing one's career path is not the right one and taking action; only losers unhappily stay in the same job year after year, citing time already spent as justification for staying the course. Over the years I have learned this to be true and applicable in many other ways. So where do we go from here?

First, we must dispense with the myriad dubious and false assumptions that currently underpin both our conduct and our self-imposed options. Though I agree we cannot simply pick up and leave right now, I am wary of the assertion that doing so would result in complete chaos and a civil war. This may be true. But a full-blown civil war---essentially one step away from the low-grade civil war taking place right now---may be inevitable no matter what we do. And let's not forget that the "after us, chaos" argument was a favorite of both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and the Vietnam hawks used it to justify the last five years or so of that war. Want to see what eventually became of Vietnam after those pillaging hordes of communists poured over the border and into Saigon? Read a bit about it here. They magically figured it out for themselves, after we left and after we buried almost 60,000 troops. And thirty years later, Vietnam's five-star hotels and world class restaurants are stops on luxury tours of Southeast Asia. Not bad for a fallen domino. Conservatives traditionally have favored limiting welfare programs on the theory that welfare destroys the incentive to work and be self-sufficient. Does that argument somehow not apply when we are essentially supporting an entire foreign nation?

I am also wary when I hear the president repeat that "setting a timetable for withdrawal will send the wrong signal to the enemy." This is one of those mantras that threatens to gain acceptance through sheer mindless repetition. It is specious and irrelevant. It relies on the false assumption that the insurgents will fight less hard---or, to the extent they are foreigners, they will decide to pack up and go home---if they think we are in Iraq to stay. That's really credible, eh? Claiming that we shouldn't set a timetable because the "enemy will simply wait us out" is akin to someone whose house just burned down from a carelessly-placed cigarette not calling his insurance company because he's worried his rate will increase. It's citing an immutable but irrelevant reality to justify compounding past mistakes and enduring an even worse fate.

The choices we make in Iraq obviously must move us quickly toward the objective of bringing home troops in regular and significant increments. Two qualifications here. First, if it becomes absolutely necessary, we can send them back for specific operations. Second, if we continue to train and equip Iraqi forces for another six months or so and see little progress, our loyalty must be to ourselves and our own men and women in uniform. The goal for our military right now should be the four R's: rest, regroup, retool and recruit. For now, however, I agree with the Bush administration that a phased withdrawal should coincide with the training and readiness of Iraqi troops. That's precisely why there must be a measurable standard for this training, as well as public accountability for those responsible for overseeing it. But does this inexplicable disaster of a press gaggle demonstrate that any such accountability exists? Or, like so many other devil-is-in-the-details failings of this administration, is it a perfect manifestation of what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill called "kids rolling around on the lawn"?

The kids-on-the-lawn syndrome may be as good an explanation as any for what ails us. In The Price of Loyalty, O'Neill describes how, during the Nixon and Ford administrations, a special department prepared well-researched and extremely detailed internal papers on major issues before policy was formulated. And everyone in those administrations---right up to the president---knew them stone-cold, front to back. The current administration represents the primacy of pure ideology over pragmatic, fact-based policy. But you can't fight a war (particularly a preemptive one in which every mistake is second-guessed and debacles like Abu Ghraib destroy the aggressor's moral high ground) and engage in nation-building on ideology and faith alone; it takes planning, and an obsession with and command of details. This is one of the reasons I voted Democratic in a presidential election for the first time in my life last year. Bush---single-minded, unwavering, "with us or against us"---was exactly what this country needed at a specific and extremely important moment in time. But it has always been obvious that the thirst for details is not in him. It wasn't in Ronald Reagan either, but the only war we fought under Reagan was ideological. This one's the real deal, with real troops and civilians dying by the thousands while the kids roll around on the lawn back in Washington.

Vietnam was a disaster, as was Lyndon Johnson. But at least Johnson and his top aides went to bed at night in full command of details like troops levels and bombing targets. Yes, that was symptomatic of the micromanagement of the war from Washington. But just as defeat can result from micromanagement, it can also be born of aloofness and detachment---not sending enough troops, not securing the major weapons caches, disbanding the Iraqi army, not paying the civil servants, and not planning for an insurgency. Oh, and throw in not knowing or not caring about how the one thing that will actually allow our troops to come home---yes, the training of Iraqis---is progressing. In this administration, carelessness and negligence wear the mask of "faith."

I am not unsympathetic to those who are working on this every day. Unlike those in the oft-snarky blogosphere opining about this stuff with the benefit of distance as well as frequently utilized hindsight (and I include myself in that group), our political and military leaders toiling on this in the maw of the beast have an extremely tough job. It is indeed "hard work" as President Bush is fond of saying. But that does not absolve them of the responsibility for getting us into this mess in the first place, nor does it obviate the need for accountability that thus far has been sorely lacking. In my world, even a relatively minor mistake can mean losing one's job; a single sufficiently serious one can be career-ending. In this administration, committing a series of colossal historic blunders is a prerequisite for receiving an Orwellian, Soviet-style "Freedom Medal." This, from the MBA president who promised to restore an ethos of corporate accountability to the White House. By the way, this is the main reason I support Cindy Sheehan. I don't agree with everything she's saying. But she represents the ability of the average citizen to hold our highest elected officials to account for their actions; since this administration has proven itself unencumbered by self-evaluation or introspection, now more than ever this must be done. Exactly who has been publicly held to account for the utterly improbable series of intelligence and policy mistakes of the past few years? And has a physicist been consulted yet about the memory hole---apparently stronger than any black hole in the cosmos---in the basement of the White House?

That's the crux of my criticism of this administration. The ones who got us here are mostly still running the joint, some have actually been promoted, the ones who were proven right were fired early on, and the few who left did so with medals on their chests. That gives me zero confidence in the ability of this bunch to pull off Iraq, Iran, or anything more challenging than organizing the White House's annual Easter egg hunt. And if its continued unforgivable reliance on mantras, platitudes and bromides is any indication, our political leadership has about the same level of confidence in its own ideas and abilities that I do.