Centerfield

The base isn't demanding more from the democrats nationally because they are getting it locally. While the national party simply hammers home the meme of "Republicans are incompetent at running the government" local politicians and cantidates are relatively free to set out their own positions within the tent of the party. James Webb can run as a conservative democrat in virginia while facing a primary challenger from the left and Ned Lamont can launch a campaign from the left against Lieberman in CT. After hearing the constant refrain over the last decade that "the majority of the country is conservative" the possibility of regaining the blue dog democrats is rather appealing to most moderate democrats. Now this effort is disjointed, however nearly all the platforms of these cantidates that I have seen include some form of universal health care and other long term liberal goals. The details always differ, but the Democrats have learned that to a large extent the details don't matter. The Kerry campaign came out dozens of wonky proposals to deal with numerous problems and they got studiously ignored. Most democrats figure that as long as they support a slate of cantidates and politicians that agree in the broad strokes, the differances can be worked out in comitee if they gain the majority. Lieberman is an exception this, but his problems are mostly self-inflicted.

Honestly, are you hoping to watch the democrats shoot themselves in the foot this year? Any realistic plan to balance the budget in the short term would require draconian cuts and massive tax increases. Every single cut and tax increase will spawn an attack ad carefully calibrated toward the affected groups. Instead they simply propose changing the new medicare bill to allow competitive bidding as part of a limited slate of short term objectives, which would cut the cost of the program by tens of billions at least.

The problem with saying that "we're better" is insulting, is that aside from being an overly simplified generalization it just so happens to be true. It is objectively true that most aspects of the government functioned better under the democrats in the 90's. Also, the democrats have proven that they can take an agency stuffed with cronies and rehabilitate it into an effective entity. The best example of this was FEMA which went from a response time of weeks in 92 to a few hours in reaction to the oklahoma city bombing. If democratic cantidates are smart, they will emphasize this story in the fall. You can simplify a political campaign as saying "we're better" or "They're worse." Everybody is agreed at this point that the republicans are pretty bad and the democrats aren't going to get any more mileage by driving them down.

Posted by: Chris P at May 21, 2006 09:20 PM

I think the so called malaise is overrated. And I never even voted for Bush.
I vote Democrat. I liked Clinton and many of his policies.I voted for him twice, Gore in 2000 and Green in 2004 (I almost voted for Kerry, but could not understand his stance on Iraq. Do I regret? Heck no.).

People are beginning to overromanticize the Dems because we didn't have anything of such magnitude as 9/11, and we were more than happy to take oil and enrich a sadistic tyrant so long as it did not disturb our applecart.
You can call me a shill for W - shoot away. We may have made mistakes in Iraq but name me a war that was easy. I think this is more of the "success has many fathers, but defeat is an orphan" mentality.
And don't assume that a Democrat would not have gone to war in Iraq. What was Clinton doing in December of 1998? One can easily argue that was the beginning of the Second Iraq War.

Bush v. Gore was the beginning of the end of maturity. Instead of taking the high road of internal discussion and general agreement of ideas, we Dems allowed ourselves to be whiny and not come up with any ideas. We became the Clinton Republicans.
I think - slowly, but surely, both parties are waking up to the fact that Americans want maturity with their leaders, and are not getting it. Republicans feel theirs have betrayed their credo while Democrats feel theirs have been acting like babies.
But legistlative dissatisfaction is not new. It did not begin with W and it will not end with him.

Posted by: Rachel at May 21, 2006 09:40 PM

I won't accuse you of being a shill for W. However, you do seem unduly optimistic about the war and dismissive of the rather stagerring incompetance that has been displayed over the last three years. When the justice department advises that 5,000 police trainers are sent to Iraq in order to train 100,000 new police...and twenty are sent instead, that's mind boggling. If there were only a few mistakes, that would be more understandible than the continous revelations about one opportunity squandered after another.

I will never understand those that act as if democrats should 'want their own 9/11.' For some reason, being in command when the most devastating terrorist attack in US history occured is seen as a bonus to the republicans securty credentials. The spin job they did on that one worked unbelievably well.

There is a possibility that Gore might have taken us into Iraq as well by this point. However, I would say that is highly unlikely given that very few, if any, Iraq hawks would be in the administration. Any push for the invasion would have come from Congress and the media and would never have succeeded.

Posted by: Chris P at May 21, 2006 10:32 PM

Chris P,

When the justice department advises that 5,000 police trainers are sent to Iraq in order to train 100,000 new police...and twenty are sent instead, that's mind boggling.

I've never actually heard this one before-- could you provide me with a link so I could check it out? I'm not saying it's not possible or even unlikely-- although I would be the first to caution everyone into understanding that what organizations say they want versus what they actually do when it comes down to execution (witness the State Department's demand to be in control of the PRTs in Iraq and their subsequent inability to fill key positions with actual foreign service officers) are often two completely different and diametrically opposed things.

But I've not heard this one before, so I'd like to read more about it. Thanks!

Posted by: Bobby at May 22, 2006 01:54 AM

Sure, the story was actually just in the NY Times:

Misjudgments Marred U.S. Plans for Iraqi Police

Actually, it looks as if I missed part of it. Initially there were only a dozen advisors there to start with and the total reached 50 after eight months. The original Justice department plan was to use 6,600 advisors. 5,000 were called for in General Garner's plan.

Also, it's amazing just how many massive screw ups Undersecretary Feith was involved in.

Posted by: Chris P at May 22, 2006 04:21 AM

hmmm. goes to show that there are few if any centrist republicans to count on, let alone willing take on the task of trying to balance the budget - cuts and restoring tax rates to some semblance of reality. They don't want to end up like democrats who had their butts hammered for being fiscally responsible in 94.

god forbid someone will actually scratch their head and wonder why on one hand we lower taxes for the mostly wealthy in the latest round of cuts to "stimulate the economy" while on the other hand we're raising interest rates that adversely impact the lower and middle classes in the name of "slowing the economy and preventing inflation" (in other words making sure wages stay down so that high profit margins and ROCE's can be maintained -ROCE is Return on Capital Expense)
Welcome to Bizarro World/Robot Chicken World.

Posted by: Marcus at May 22, 2006 04:22 AM

I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period.

Please, a little restraint. History requires historical perspective. CAn we give it a little time before we make a "historical" judgment. (I'm still trying to swallow several pundits comments regarding Ronald Reagan being one of our greatest Presidents. It just seem too early to tell.) Posted by: c3 at May 22, 2006 10:02 AM

c3,

Well, McIntyre made that bold statement and obviously thought about it before writing down on his website for all to see. I actually found the article thru Andrew Sullivan who was quick to cross link and discuss it.

My perspective on Bush is a little different. I was rather ambivilent in 2000. I didn't care who won. And didn't mind him at all thru 2001. I watched cautiously thru Afganistan and hoped for the best. But the conversation was forced onto to Iraq, I changed quickly. Throughout the buildup to war, I became more cynical and angry and then on invasion day, I was lost to Bush and went down to rock bottom by summer 2003.

While his approval rating hung in good territory, I gave him a flat, fat ZERO. I hated him. I was amazed at how easily the country went along for the most part. I was all so wrong to me.

After the election, he pushed his SS agenda and other initiatives, I rolled my eyes. Good causes, bad ideas.

Then the smoke settled. He started doing less and less that bothered me. By the time of Dubai, I'd drifted back to the center with regard to Bush. Since then, he's done very little wrong and I've had little to disagree about.

So as my anger subsided and my opinion retured to pre-9/11 levels, the country's opinion begins to plummet...as if there were a two to three lag in public opinion. Now I laugh at polls. I say it's too late. All this sentiment built too slowly. So while Bush hangs in the low 30s, I have no current quarrel with him.

All this Bush-Bashing, even from Republicans like McIntyre among others is too little too late.

But his assessment of the "now" is spot on and I'm shifting my ready and cocked hand of anger to the squabbling Dems who I've sympathized with for most of Bush's term. Bush's impermeable fog is lifting and very laggard public opinion is in their favor. And now that they have a sympathetic audience, they're doing very little to impress me.

Posted by: John at May 22, 2006 10:39 AM

I agree that the Dems have nothing to be proud of with their performance. They have shown little vision or understanding about the issues at hand. I have been criticizing the Democrats ad nauseum (to some, anyway)for having no program and no solutions. But, let's face it, that's in part because of being out of power. The GOP was the same way when the Dems controlled the government.

I don't necessarily think the Dems will come into office with some great solutions. But, what I do think is that, at the margins, they will at least be different from the Republicans, ie, less influence by hard-right religious fundamentalists, less reliance on pure military solutions (and, yes, I acknowledge that the Bush Administration has moved away from that, in part out of necessity and in part because of Condi Rice, but the damage has already been done), more willingness to acknowledge the need for conservation and address global warming, less obsession with mindless tax cuts. I'm not saying that their policies will be coherent, but at least the themes will be different and that's important.

As for Iraq, the comment that Gore might have taken us into Iraq as well is interesting because the argument against him used to be that Gore would have just sat on his ass after 9/11. I find it hard to believe that Gore would have invaded Iraq under the same circumstances because, whether you favor the war or not, it's pretty obvious that Iraq was much more of an obsession with the neocons and Cheney/Rumsfeld than with the people that would have been in a Gore administration.

And I agree with Chris P that there are things the Democrats do and have proven to do better than the Republicans and one of those is to better mobilize government to deal with problems when necessary. New Orleans would most likely have been a disaster regardless of who was in office, but I suspect FEMA would have been more up to the task.

Posted by: Marc at May 22, 2006 10:58 AM

Marc,

Funny about Gore. Not that she is an authority on this but I got to ask Madeline Albright about this when I got thru on the Alan Colmes show one night driving home from work.

I asked her in being objective and having insider info as to whom Gore may have had in Cabinet, what she thought may have happened after 9/11.

She said, knowing how much the Clinton Adminstration was obsessing with Bin Laden, it's inconceivable that Gore would have sat around after 9/11. She feels he would have taken action in Afganistan but that Iraq would not have really come into serious discussion since the intelligence and events of the time didn't force any real consideration of Iraq in the issue of Al quaeda. It had to be a somewhat preconceived idea, as you say, for an administration to want to look there.

But she wouldn't speculate as to what Gore would have done if weapons inspections had yielded any positive prood of WMD. But that case, full UN support would have been much easier to obtai and more nations would have been willing to take action.

I believe that assessment. I also think a non-neocon Republican like McCain would have done sam as Gore would have.

Posted by: John at May 22, 2006 11:48 AM

John,

Very good points. I too think it's inconceivable that Gore (or anyone) would have taken no military action. As a politician, it would have been impossible post 9/11 for any president to do nothing (or to look at is a simply a crime involving a criminal investigation as some on the left wanted.) Some actions are simply hardwired into the office--no American president,regardless of party, would allow major attacks on cities without a military response. And great powers are even less likely to do it. Pacifists simply do not get elected president.

Posted by: Marc at May 22, 2006 01:30 PM

Chris P,

That was an interesting article-- I've forwarded it to some acquaintances in DynCorp and to a contact who served rather high up in the CPA for a rebuttal. I suspect they're going to argue that it's one-sided, but I want to hear their precise reasons why.

What I found telling was this passage:

Mr. Bremer said he repeatedly pushed for more trainers during the summer of 2003 but was told that no foreign countries were willing to send large numbers of police officers, and that DynCorp was unable to find Americans.

"DynCorp was not producing anybody," Mr. Bremer said. "We were doing the best we could with what we had."

As this indicated, the law enforcement training supervisors-- even paying salaries of $134,000 and more-- could not even get a hundred American and European law enforcement officials to volunteer to train the Iraqi police. This obviously casts serious doubt on any plan to utilize 5,000 (Department of Justice) or 6,600 (Bremer) trainers-- and at the very least, such proposals must be greeted with a healthy skepticism and the question about where those trainers would have come from.

But more importantly, it speaks to the very problem of the US Government's improper configuration and inability to provide the capabilities needed to conduct stabilization and reconstruction operations in failed states and states of concern. Because the federal civilian service (both civil and foreign) cannot be compelled to go on any assignments, the nation is forced to rely only upon the contributions of those who volunteer for hazardous duty. Worse still for the nation, those volunteers seem to be few and far between.

Today, most of the Iraqi law enforcement trainers are coming from the ranks of the US Army (and not even military police, but rather officers and senior sergeants from all sorts of branches)-- likely because the government can compel them to go-- but it is unfortunate that the rest of the nation (especially the rest of the nation's federal employees) have decided to sit this one out because they either don't agree with the mission, hate Bush (and don't want to do anything that would benefit him, regardless of the costs on American interests), and/or simply don't want to expose themselves to danger for their country.

In fact, we're seeing this with the State Department and the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. After the successful experience, State demanded to be in charge of PRTs, which actually made sense because PRTs have a nation-building mission and State is the government's lead agency for nation-building. But so few foreign service officers have come forward and volunteered for service, that the Department has been forced to hire from the outside and make regular US civilians "temporary" members of the State Department in order to meet their requirements.

I'm not giving the President a free pass here-- he absolutely should have done more to sell the war's merits and asked for sacrifices from the American people-- but the reflexive belief that things could or would have gone otherwise doesn't fully appreciate the role of the federal bureaucracy and its inability to do what we need it to do in an unconventional war such as this one.

Posted by: Bobby at May 22, 2006 03:08 PM

Bobby, you don't have to say it for me, but in case anyone is missing the connection, I would bet that Bobby connects this point to his other thesis about the problem of having a military that sometimes is guilty of designing its structure to fight the types of battles it prefers to fight instead of structuring itself for the sorts of conflicts the 21st century is likely to bring.

That's a long-winded way of saying that the military would do well to channel more resources towards policing and force training. Not going to happen overnight, and not pointing fingers. Just saying that if democratization is a genuine priority, we need teachers and trainers. Otherwise, the notion that we'll be able to expedite getting our folks out of harm's way is bs.

Posted by: bk at May 22, 2006 03:50 PM

Don't expect the Democrats to do what you want them to. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Any idea proposed by a Democrat would be ripped to shreds either by the Republicans for the benefit of independent and moderate voters or by the far left. Besides, when the country seems so entirely mad at the GOP the thought arises that you just don't want to get between the two.
Just let it happen.

By the way, the FAR LEFT IS their base.

And why would you even think a Democrat would EVER cut spending? You have to remember that with Democrats the most important thing is to have government always growing as fast or faster than the number of poor people in the country.

If the Republicans in the House stay where they're at on immigration and NOT budge from there, they will RETAIN the House of Reps.. If they cave to the pressure of Bush and the Senate compromisers, they'll lose the House.

The Senate Republicans are going to get backlashed. Whether they lose control depends mostly on what the expections are just before the election. If Democrats have a full head of steam going into the election, they'll fall short by a seat or two. If Republicans seem on the rebound, they'll lose it by one seat. The element of surprise will likely dictate.

That is, unless the GOP puts together some basteredized form of immigration reform that allows for, "earned legalization."

Then the GOP will lose BOTH Houses narrowly but in SPECTACULAR fashion.

Posted by: Cavalier829 at May 22, 2006 05:15 PM

Bobby, you don't have to say it for me, but in case anyone is missing the connection, I would bet that Bobby connects this point to his other thesis about the problem of having a military that sometimes is guilty of designing its structure to fight the types of battles it prefers to fight instead of structuring itself for the sorts of conflicts the 21st century is likely to bring.

Guilty as charged, Brian! And to elaborate, I just think there's a tendency for people to look at the political leadership and exaggerate the amount of influence that the political appointees wield over the federal bureaucracy. Especially with the military and the State Department (but to a lesser extent with all the federal agencies), there is often a strong, pre-existing organizational culture that is highly resistant to some changes directed by the political leadership-- especially when they know that (by design) those political leaders aren't going to be around for more than a few years. The military, foreign service, civil service, et. al., all have their own bureaucratic cultures and this sometimes works in favor of an Administration and it sometimes works against an Administration-- but it always exists, and to pretend that the politicos have complete control over their domains is rather absurd-- and very much naive.

Using FEMA as example, sure, there were the political appointee Michael Browns... But more than 95% of the organization are civil servants who have been there since long before this Administration and will continue to be there long after Bush and Cheney leave the stage. To put all the blame on the shoulders of Brown is not just inappropriate, it's downright foolish-- it leads Americans to think that just changing riders will lead to a massive shift in capability, and that is rarely the case. I just think the average American doesn't realize how strong bureaucratic inertia is in the ranks of the federal government, and how resistant the organizational members are to change.

Of course, understanding that organizational process helps explain why-- almost alone among my fellow military officers-- I actually don't think the world would have come to an end if Senator Kerry would have been elected to the White House.

Posted by: Bobby at May 22, 2006 07:13 PM

Bobby,
I am reading Cobra II and it seems clear that Iraqi reconstruction, law enforcement and civilian administration was hampered from before the start of battle by the "anticipated" lack of safe ground conditions by most experts that examined the US plan. Building contractors and other desired personnel refused to work in less than Bosnian conditions.

It also appears that Franks did not give much regard to phase IV (post war) planning and that almost every crack military team to work on logistics felt troop numbers were insufficient to accomplish the entire mission. On the eve of battle, Trainor writes Rumsfeld declared that Iraqis will police themselves. He declared it was ludicrous to think it would take more troops to remove Saddam than would be needed to secure the peace. Rumsfeld micromanaged everything from the moment Bush gave him the green light to remove Saddam. Rumsfeld seems to have ignored Centcom's own studies suggesting 275,000 troops would be needed to secure the peace (which concurred with Shinseki's independent estimate). Where was all the opposition within the military against greater troop levels?

Iraq was recognized by the military as being far different than Afghanistan. Zunni and others were working on a plan for years. Most variants involved significant troop size. The land commander and creator of Cobra II, McKiernan (who rejected Macgregor's force size concepts for Iraq) constantly warned that insufficient troop levels could not secure post war goals. His own small staff even discovered that Rumsfeld had no plan to secure the suspected wmd sites once hostility started or a plan and troops to secure them. The CIA had no master lists of where all the sites were despite a last minute NIE that posited Iraqi wmd and the means to deliver them. The very reason for going to Iraq was ignored.

Abu Graib, insurgents raiding unanticipated thhousands of Fadayeen munitions sites and loss of civil order were administration calls that stemmed from absurdly poor micromanagement and faulty assumptions including the outright dismissal of numerous documented military statements of concern. Cobra II (the plan) clearly relied on sufficient law enforcement by Iraqis and coalition partners as well as using the Iraq army to help maintain humanitarian and civil control. Am I nuts or did Rumsfeld blow this operation? Is Trainor’s accounting accurate? If the blow back from arrogant mistakes leads to retreat from Iraq and a nuclear Iran, Centrists have every reason to hold Republicans to the fire. Blow back can be worse than a period of failing to act.

On the other side, the Democrats for the greater part reject the argument for removing Saddam. They boo McCain and Bob Kerry at NYU while other New York Democrats see such youthful anger as anti-centrist as much as anti-conservative. These students do not agree with the basics of preventative force regardless of the criteria and find more common ground with the anti-war conservatives than with Biden or Clinton. They complained for the last few years about the lack of US border security, the need for international consensus as the criteria for pre-emption, and the sanctity of international law. Now they fight border fences, the consensus against Iran and self-defense for Israel. Meanwhile Al Gore is doing decent stand up comedy and Dean gets barbs from Jon Stewart. They can laugh wistfully as South Park defends what liberals once thought was important.

Posted by: maxtrue at May 22, 2006 07:59 PM

Max,

I am reading Cobra II and it seems clear that Iraqi reconstruction, law enforcement and civilian administration was hampered from before the start of battle by the "anticipated" lack of safe ground conditions by most experts that examined the US plan. . . . Rumsfeld micromanaged everything from the moment Bush gave him the green light to remove Saddam.

Well, that's definitely what we in the military want you to take away from this operation: that any failure was derived from Rumsfeld's "micromanagement" and that the military itself did everything it could possibly do, and did it more or less free of mistakes. That, in turn, will allow us to sweep all the lessons learned from this war under the rug, so that we can then go back to focusing precisely on what we want do (fight exclusively conventional wars on linear battlefields) rather than what the nation needs us to do (be capable of fighting on unconventional asymmetric battlefields). That is, in fact, precisely what the Army got away with when we came out of the Vietnam War: we lost because of the political leadership and the failed strategy, you see, and not because of the Army that won every tactical battle (it didn't matter that the tactical battles didn't support the strategic objectives). We're trying the same bait and switch today, although the presence of milblogs is making it more difficult because the company grade officers who have been through the campaigns aren't allowing the military leadership to get off so easy this time.

Rumsfeld seems to have ignored Centcom's own studies suggesting 275,000 troops would be needed to secure the peace (which concurred with Shinseki's independent estimate).

Again, I think this argument-- that an extra 125,000 troops would have magically allowed us to "secure the peace"-- is a complete illusion, designed to further insulate the military leadership from rightfully deserved criticism for not implementing the right kinds of operations. We had 500,000 troops in Vietnam and still failed to "secure the peace" because the units weren't executing the right kinds of tactics-- we had a fraction of that force in the Philippines, but succeeded because the units were executing the right kinds of tactics. Again, I maintain that the key factor correlating with success in an unconventional war is the strategy and tactics (and someday I'll write the paper to demonstrate it), and not simply 125,000 more troops conducting the same "large-scale operations based on maneuver" that are unlikely to yield productive results if we had 750,000 troops on the ground. Don't expect Generals Shinseki or Zinni to ever concede that point, though.

Where was all the opposition within the military against greater troop levels?

Well, SOCOM commander General Wayne Downing would have been one of them. He maintained (and incidentally, still does) that he could have achieved a greater success utilizing a strategy heavily based upon US special ops directing indigenous forces supported by the US Air Force's incomparable fire support (think something like the opening months of OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan). When his proposal was rejected-- in 2002-- he resigned.

Generals Richard Myers and Tommy Franks are also on record for stating that we did not need a larger force in Iraq. They're partially right, but only so long as the troops we did have were executing the right kinds of operations-- which they weren't, and so they're also partially wrong.

The CIA had no master lists of where all the sites were despite a last minute NIE that posited Iraqi wmd and the means to deliver them. The very reason for going to Iraq was ignored.

Well, you mean the very stated reason for going to Iraq was ignored. I am on record as supporting George Friedman's argument that the reason we went to War in Iraq was not because of WMDs, connections to Al Qaeda, or oil, but because we needed to influence the intelligence and security services of terrorist-supporting regimes of the region, such as Abdullah's Saudi Arabia and Qaddafi's Libya, into cooperating with us against the jihadists. Your point actually supports the Friedman thesis.

Am I nuts or did Rumsfeld blow this operation? Is Trainor’s accounting accurate? If the blow back from arrogant mistakes leads to retreat from Iraq and a nuclear Iran, Centrists have every reason to hold Republicans to the fire. Blow back can be worse than a period of failing to act.

Aside from arguing that Rumsfeld isn't the only one to blow this operation-- I think there's blame enough to go around for all of us involved in the decision and subsequent execution (think the series of mistakes made by the Confederate Army at Gettysburg)-- I'm not disagreeing with you here. If the lesson learned from Iraq is that we made tons of mistakes, and that we need to implement solutions to those mistakes so that future operations more closely resemble, say, Afghanistan than, say, Iraq-- then I think things turn out okay for us. On the other hand, as you suggest others are prone to do, if the lessoned learned from Iraq is that we need to stay away from these kinds of operations regardless of what that means for international security, then one can safely say that the Bush Administration would have led us into an egregious position. And I will worry about what the future holds for us, if that's the case.

Posted by: Bobby at May 22, 2006 09:09 PM

Bobby, allow me to defend Dyncorp for you, even though it goes against my instincts:

The proposal was sweeping but not unprecedented. In Kosovo, one-tenth the size of Iraq, the United Nations fielded about 4,800 police officers. In Bosnia, 2,000 international police officers trained and monitored local forces.

...

DynCorp, the Texas company that was to provide the trainers, had already located 1,150 active and retired police officers who had expressed interest about serving in Iraq.

...

Officials at the State and Defense Departments blame one another for the police plan unraveling.

"We and DynCorp were ready to go by June," said a senior State Department official involved in the police training effort who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to comment. "But no money was provided for this purpose."

Mr. Miller, the former National Security Council official, said Mr. Bremer never made the need for field trainers a major issue in Washington.

I think the problems we faced during the first few years were coming from the same source of the many other screw ups we had: the ideologues that planned the war. If the war was to go forward, certain things had to be assumed about post war Iraq and one of these was that it would be an easy reconstruction. So, people like Doug Feith threw out all the plans for reconstruction based on info from the Office of Special Plans and Chalabi instead of the CIA.

I'm not giving the President a free pass here-- he absolutely should have done more to sell the war's merits and asked for sacrifices from the American people-- but the reflexive belief that things could or would have gone otherwise doesn't fully appreciate the role of the federal bureaucracy and its inability to do what we need it to do in an unconventional war such as this one.

The president should have worked to sell the war more on it's merits and less on bullcrap. In this case the federal bureaucracy was right! They anticipated the need for additional police trainers and the chaos post war and were shut out by political appointee's. Granted, a great deal of the responsability for the current mess is due to mistakes made by both the military and career civil servants. However, incompetent political appointee's have had a far greater impact due to wishful thinking and general idiocy. I recall that in the initial months after the invasion the Iraqi economy was managed by six guys in their early twenties whose sole qualification was that they applied for the heritage foundation.

How exactly is this the fault of bureaucrats?

Also:

State is the government's lead agency for nation-building.

Not in Iraq it isn't. The DOD has been in charge of this from the get-go. For all the problems that the state department has, management of Iraq isn't one of them.

Posted by: Chris P at May 22, 2006 09:44 PM

Bobby:

Using FEMA as example, sure, there were the political appointee Michael Browns... But more than 95% of the organization are civil servants who have been there since long before this Administration and will continue to be there long after Bush and Cheney leave the stage. To put all the blame on the shoulders of Brown is not just inappropriate, it's downright foolish-- it leads Americans to think that just changing riders will lead to a massive shift in capability, and that is rarely the case. I just think the average American doesn't realize how strong bureaucratic inertia is in the ranks of the federal government, and how resistant the organizational members are to change.

However, a group of political appointees who are competent can have a great deal of effect on a disfunctional organization. Just like any other organization, good leadership is incredibly important to successful performance. Crappy superiors can coast for a while on the performance of their professional underlings, but during serious challenges they always show their failures. After taking over FEMA in 1993 James Lee Witt took an organization that many were calling for dismantling and turned it into one that won widespread praise only a few years later. That is the impact that political appointee's who view government as something other than a combination jobs program and networking opportunity can have.

If it were just Brown at FEMA being incompetent, that wouldn't be as much of a problem. However, his predecessor at FEMA was just as much of a crony, and this administration has taken appointing political appointee's to a whole new level. It's the K Street project for federal agencies.

As for the military responsability, you are right that they have managed to divert most questioning of the war to their political leadership. This is another product of the demonization of criticism of the military as anti-american. At the same time I think the ideas' proposed by SOCOM to deal with Iraq would have backfired badly. For one thing, if we dealt with the situation similarly as Afghanistan we would have been supporting Kurdish Peshmerga and shiite militia forces. The Kurds would likely have made the turks and Iranians rather angry and probably would have moved up the recent skirmishes between these three powers. As for the shiite militias, our support of them would have left them far more powerful than they are today and impossible to disarm. This would speed up the disintegration into sectarian strife.

Posted by: Chris P at May 22, 2006 10:03 PM

Bobby,
First, though you are the expert here, I do not see what objection there would have been for closing the door on the Syrian border with more troops. They would have been fairly inconspicuous and an additional asset to send Assad a message if one assumes Friedman's reason for our pre-emption.

I do not see why forces for the unexpected would have been wrong-headed or old thinking. Fedayeen munitions sites created to contain Shiite and Kurdish militias needed containment. The oil infrastructure needed security. The DOD was given the job of phase IV and I do not see how SOCON could secure the peace once it was clear the Iraq army was lost and the police gone. Weren't these civilian decisions? Perhaps you can site some clear military mistakes that signify important strategic errors.

I understand the need for transforming the military, but certainly, Afghanistan is not Iraq. We refrain from arming the present Iraq army, let alone militias for fear of fueling sectarian violence. The warlords of Afghanistan are not marching on Kabul. Pakistan is sanctuary for the Taliban in a way that Iran and Syria are not a refuge for Iraqi insurgents. I do not see how a lighter strategy could work, unless we simply decapitated Saddam and watched a civil war begin. If the result was a more radical regime after a horrible slaughter, what signal would that send those borderline regimes or the internatinal community?

I do agree the real reason for invading was the administration's desire to "influence or change" the relationship of regimes and the terrorist/intelligence/wmd network. This force-induced behavioral modification is sustainable provided the results are measurable victories based on adaptive strategies that can outfox and anticipate our adversaries. The leverage we apply to move or remove questionable regimes must not sacrifice the needed leverage we must bring to bear on the Russians and Chinese who will try to exploit anti-American sentiment to create a world of mini-cold wars. I believe the Centrist warning to Bush prior to Iraq was just this concern.

If Russia and China are serious obstacles to peace and the hegemony of Democracy, then perhaps the US needs two forces: one, to fight conventional wars against soldiers and machines and another to pre-empt, prevent and intervene to contain the terrorist/genocidal/wmd/criminal network.

I can only wonder how those T-72s were lying in wait for Mattis (Russia?). Conway almost got a seersucker in his ass. Lesson learned for Iran?The 200 top Iraqi most-wanted all escaped shock and awe. Poor contingencies for possible wmd deployment. A centric-network with ground forces out of the digital loop. No, the military doesn't look perfect despite the General Tenor of Cobra II. Note the first friendly fire incident. Calling the military group evaluating Iraqi civilian death from strikes "Bugsplat" is a bit callous.

"Generals Richard Myers and Tommy Franks are also on record for stating that we did not need a larger force in Iraq. They're partially right, but only so long as the troops we did have were executing the right kinds of operations-- which they weren't, and so they're also partially wrong."

McCain had a biting comment about Myers. Franks stated we went to war with Hybrid. Cobra II (the plan we used) did require a larger force than 140,000. Franks told Bush we'd have a "lord mayor" in every town. His job was to remove Saddam and the record doesn't show him putting much effort into post war planning. I still do not see how one removes Saddam without occupation. And without securing stability, how does one exit or entice investment?

If you destroy the unity required to contain adversaries while investing a trillion in an eventually failed experiment, you do not send a message to regimes except "arm" to make the cost to high for American prevention. And Friedman's idea is about preventative force, not really pre-empting threats which striking Iran would be. I presume invading Iraq did not send a signal that positively modified their behavior. Had there been security and less allied rancor, Iran would be facing a more united front.

I too am worried that the binary oscillation could not have come at a worse time.

Posted by: maxtrue at May 23, 2006 12:24 AM

Chris P,

The president should have worked to sell the war more on it's merits and less on bullcrap. In this case the federal bureaucracy was right! They anticipated the need for additional police trainers and the chaos post war and were shut out by political appointee's.

Okay, agreed that we absolutely needed more police trainers (and I will go so far as to say that even Bremer's 6,600 figure was woefully too few), but then the question becomes where would they come from? I think it's admirable that the Justice Department identified a need for 5,000 law enforcement trainers to accomplish our objectives in Iraq. Question two is why weren't they advocating a task force comprised of Justice Department personnel that could go overseas and provide precisely this mission? More on this in a moment.

Not in Iraq it isn't. The DOD has been in charge of this from the get-go. For all the problems that the state department has, management of Iraq isn't one of them.

Yeah, that's kind of the problem. The State Department is the legally-mandated lead agency for nation-building operations, but in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, East Timor, Bosnia, Somalia, etc., strategic and day-to-day authority has always been wielded by the military. There's a reason for this, and it has a lot to do with State's improper configuration to conduct the kind of foreign policy that Presidents Bush and Clinton expected of the Foreign Service-- even now, the Foreign Service is filling its Washington and European postings, while farming out its Iraq and Afghanistan missions to the "Excepted Service" (civil servants who serve for a term appointment only, not the career Foreign Service or civil service). And there's little in a FSO's career development-- when s/he is management, consular, political, economic, or public diplomacy-- that would give him/her the experience required to lead a nation-building operation. I've been inside both the military and State now, and I can tell you that it is a mess.

And we are trying to fix some of those things. The President tasked Ambassador Carlos Pascual to form the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization-- a great concept-- but he's currently having to fight a bureaucratic turf war with other agencies who would rather keep his office down to 50 employees so they don't find their own human and fiscal resources diminished. It remains to be seen how that will turn out. Then, too, before his departure, Colin Powell was instrumental in pushing the establishment of an Active Response Corps-- what some are calling Foggy Bottom's "Special Forces"-- and his successor has been outspoken in demanding that Foreign Service Officers understand they must be much more active in their positions, and not merely reporting on local affairs (as their own job description indicates they would prefer to do).

At the same time I think the ideas' proposed by SOCOM to deal with Iraq would have backfired badly. For one thing, if we dealt with the situation similarly as Afghanistan we would have been supporting Kurdish Peshmerga and shiite militia forces.

Well, I don't think you're giving General Downing much credit here-- think a little outside of the box and take a page from what he did in Afghanistan, and I think an alternative solution might have presented itself. I think what he might have done would have been to allow the Peshmerga to have de facto control over Kurdistan (which, by the way, they have today anyway), the various Shi'a militias to have control over their regions (which, by the way, they have anyway), and to have struck a bargain with some faction of the old Sunni-dominated Baathist Army to become the warlord(s) controlling the Sunni Triangle. Once in place, this would have enabled a Karzai-like central government to slowly work at eroding the power of these warlords, replacing the security provided by these regional warlords with central government military and security forces once they had completed their training cycle. It is, of course, a moot point-- and things could well have spun out of control into the scenario you describe (the likelihood, I suppose, probably being a direct reflection of one's optimism/pessimism overall)-- but the point is that an argument can be made that General Downing's plan might have been superior to the Franks/Myers plan, not to mention the Zinni/Shinseki argument that 125,000 more troops would ahve magically brought order and security. I'll be seeing General Downing next week at a conference at West Point, and I'll see if I can't get him to answer some of these hypotheticals.

Posted by: Bobby at May 23, 2006 01:10 AM

Max,

If Russia and China are serious obstacles to peace and the hegemony of Democracy, then perhaps the US needs two forces: one, to fight conventional wars against soldiers and machines and another to pre-empt, prevent and intervene to contain the terrorist/genocidal/wmd/criminal network.

LTC John Nagl-- probably the Army's premier expert on counterinsurgency, if such a things exists-- was actually making this argument years ago, back when he was a captain and I was a cadet. It wasn't new then, and it's actually starting to make something of a comeback now. I personally think the trick is in how we train our junior leaders to fight-- coming away from AirLand doctrine and adopting Effects-Based Operations would, in my mind, better prepare them to fight in both types of conflict. But the military itself-- even among those who recognize the need to be able to fight third- and fourth-generation warfare-- is quite split on how to go about developing this capability.

I still do not see how one removes Saddam without occupation. And without securing stability, how does one exit or entice investment?

Well, you go about it the way I described in my reply to Chris P (above). You pretty much make a deal with the devil and allow the emergence of regional warlords to (temporarily) control their respective areas. Then, while they're securing their area, the central government (which is pretty much a figurehead, initially) starts working to erode their authority through a variety of political maneuvers and institutional reforms. Slowly, the central government's legitimacy will get extended into the provinces, especially as the multi-ethnic military and security forces complete their training, and come "on line," until these regional warlords find themselves marginalized and have to either retire out to pasture or to actively join the central government (as Ishamel Khan and Rashid Dostam have both done in Afghanistan).

Of course, while you're doing this, you're going to be violently attacked by your critics who will likely charge you with making a corrupt bargain and supporting a puppet regime. But short-term unpopularity is sometimes the price you have to pay for a viable, long-term strategy, and I'd venture to say that if Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had been the CPA chief instead of Bremer, a more sophisticated and nuanced strategy (such as I just described) might have more likely been employed.

And Friedman's idea is about preventative force, not really pre-empting threats which striking Iran would be. I presume invading Iraq did not send a signal that positively modified their behavior.

Actually, it did... At first. Initially (that is, through mid-2004 or so), we saw numerous changes in several of those regimes' behavior-- most especially with Qaddafi's Libya, Abdullah's Saudi Arabia, and Musharraf's Pakistan (although, in fairness, Indian threats to nuke Pakistan off the map did a lot more to influence their decision to choose a closer alliance with America), but even the Teheran and Damascus regimes-- initially-- mitigated their behavior somewhat. But then, when the military proved incapable (at least, thus far) of subduing the insurgency, the mullahs in Teheran and Assad in Damascus became quite emboldened to re-continue with their previous line of work-- after all, in their minds, the US wasn't so big, bad, and powerful after all. That has been the secondary effect of our less-than-perfect counterinsurgency methods. The tertiary effect has yet to be seen, and the long-term effect (the establishment of democracy in the Middle East, if we're successful) could yet put the Iranian and Syrian regimes back on the defensive. That all remains to be seen.

Posted by: Bobby at May 23, 2006 01:39 AM

You are on the mark Bobby,.

I wonder what technological grails both armies would need: rapid transport and air lift capacity including fuel cells (just think of the all electric sub), stealth, unmatched air superiority (scram etc.),laser, rail and other anti-flying object systems, communications, intelligence, robotics, anti wmd technologies (force protection and EMP hardened hardware) etc. Perhaps what we are buying should have dual use.

A rapid strike force could utilize the cream of the conventional force technology. You could have a capability to launch multiple 10,000-40,000 troop-sized operations and set up SOCON like strategies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East if you can avoid getting bogged down in an Iraq for decades. Such a transformed force would still leave a major conventional fighting force to wage a major war plus a second conventional force great enough to deter aggression on the other side of the world. 375,000 for Shinseki's war in Iraq/ 20,000 in Afghanistan/ 400,000 world wide. Still, I don't understand the numbers. I assume there are at least 700,000 soldiers and support to spread around of the 1.4 million in the armed forces at a given moment. When I see such a strain with 140,000 in Iraq I wonder what major war and a half could we fight. Would a two force DOD require more soldiers and more guard?

Nagl was right and I think this reality should end the fight within. The key (after cost) of course would be how assets would be allocated and how the separation would occur between and within the branches -who controls intelligence etc. Presently it seems the transformed force would act quickly under executive control while greater conventional deployments would fall within the Congressional review. Today’s army might become tomorrow's Global Strike peacekeepers.

Perhaps we might create regional alliances and introduce our forces under more geopolitically correct banners. Somolia and other conflicts might see us acting quietly to assist Warlords and governments with much more force than in the past. Foreign Affairs suggested the SOCON approach (minus the low troop numbers) months ago in Iraq and I posted the link here. Iraq might not be Afghanistan but it sure isn’t Viet Nam. Arm the sides and get them to the table. If we are out there alone with some Brits we draw too much political fire because our decapitations cause short term violence and are not sure to produce positive results. Our rivals eat that stuff up. Then we might be seen as simply causing an enduring misery for oil etc.even it makes us safer (which it may not). Of course, a terrorist blast in Berlin or Tokyo could change this picture. Certainly, our military planners did not count on such lack of international support. Blow back now could create a rearmed Germany and Japan in twenty years, yet more militancy from them in support of us is what we might need now to move Russia and China. We have two global risks/threats requiring two forces.

Your last point about Iraq is most nagging because I still believe that with our forces doing the right things and a few more to do what was left undone they could have turned this picture into a much better state. We could have then moved forces to bases where new deployments could be staged. Turkey and the US could have balanced the Kurds and watched the borders while the Shiites and Sunnis vetted steam. Again, the lack of a coalition and international support made us more responsible for everything and got us caught between Cobra and SOCON.

I am not sure why Iran or Syria should feel at ease. Don't we have more than enough troops and materials to slip into the region to deal with them? This administration has little to lose politically. Remember, Bush has said he will give our generals whatever they need to fight terrorism......Again the numbers. If we don't have the forces why is everyone lying? What would you say is a good read about the state of our forces, their availability and size as well as their capabilities to contain emerging threats. What view puts what you have been saying and watching together?

Posted by: maxtrue at May 23, 2006 06:06 PM