Thus Spake the Neocons
The January 2007 edition of Vanity Fair magazine features an article by David Rose concerning comments made by several neo-conservatives during his interviews with them. Those interviewed come down hard on the administration blaming it for the many problems we face in Iraq.
Richard Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, said with regard to Iraq that, “The unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President Bush. The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn’t get made in a timely fashion and the differences were argued out endlessly---at the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible---I don’t think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty.”
Kenneth Adelman said, “I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since the Truman era was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly dysfunctional.”
David Frumm, the President’s speech writer, said in his interview, “I always believed as a speech writer that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And, that is the root of, maybe everything.”
Tough comments all those above, yet I ask myself could they be on the mark with their criticism? If decisions were slow in coming and if issues were tied up with the President’s advisors for months on end before any decision could be reached---if the President wasn’t really committed----all of that is simply intolerable. And if true, it yet again demonstrates how lackadaisical and blundering the government can be in handling problems.
The only way to lose…
In a Newsweek article of November 6, 2006, Fareed Zakaria quoted President Bush as saying, “My view is that the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done.”
Zakaria asks, “If you think that Iraq’s tumult is a product of its culture, religion and history, ask yourself what the United States would look like after three years of 50 percent unemployment. Would there not be civil strife in Manhattan, Detroit, Los Angeles and New Orleans?”
Let me answer that question----there would definitely be chaos, civil strife and violence in America under such conditions. Carry out the logic to Iraq and one can easily conclude that there is a civil war going on in Iraq which plays on the misery of the people and it is all about one faction or another gaining control of the country. It is a war between terrorist groups. It is a war we do not know how to fight.
The loss of life and the waste of our national wealth for lack of decision making would be criminal
Now back to the comments in Vanity Fair—if the criticism is right and the administration is glutted and unable to reach vital decisions in a timely fashion, it could be that we allowed this mess to occur through our inept decision making process. The loss of life and the waste of our national wealth for lack of decision making would be criminal. The internal destruction of Iraq for our ineptness is shameful and evil.
Having served two tours in the Pentagon, I know that bureaucratic sluggishness can occur. Why? Because fighting within a bureaucracy is common and sluggishness is a weapon used in the fight. The people in the government’s machinery will contend with each other by not cooperating with other agencies, withholding information, slowing down processes and the flow of ideas and stonewalling events and decisions. And we pay the taxes to pay the wages of these bureaucrats.
…just maybe Iraq slipped down the tunnel of civil war and self destruction while the administration dithered
If the people quoted in the Vanity Fair article are right, just maybe Iraq slipped down the tunnel of civil war and self destruction while the administration dithered. In fact, we did the dither dance in a big way. Anyone should have known we didn’t have enough troops in country when the terrorist violence began. We needed at least 100,000 and maybe as many as 300,000 more soldiers at that time to put a stop to it and that is my guess and not the government talking. But let’s assume the 300,000 idea was an idea that was conjured up within the halls of power in Washington, DC. Can you imagine how the administration would have handled the idea? Maybe we bring back the military draft? Oops, can’t do that---think of the next election. What do we do?
A little more dithering please as the planners say---let’s study the issue a little more---what does the State Department say? How about DOD? Better ask Carl Rove and have 15 more meetings to discuss the problem. Probably, the issue would have been put on the back burner until later. Well ladies and gentlemen, it is later and today we suffer trying to make difficult decisions as to should we stay in Iraq or should we depart from Iraq and if so when and how?
Our world does not tolerate a vacuum
Having gone into Iraq and effectively removed an infrastructure that was, to say the least, inconvenient to US interests, we failed to replace it with a functioning improvement. Our world does not tolerate a vacuum. Unfortunately, we are living with the consequences of that fact and will continue to do so until we have seen to it that the needs of the Iraqi people—in addition to those of the United States—have been met.
The January 2007 edition of Vanity Fair magazine features an article by David Rose concerning comments made by several neo-conservatives during his interviews with them. Those interviewed come down hard on the administration blaming it for the many problems we face in Iraq.
Richard Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, said with regard to Iraq that, “The unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President Bush. The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn’t get made in a timely fashion and the differences were argued out endlessly---at the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible---I don’t think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty.”
Kenneth Adelman said, “I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since the Truman era was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly dysfunctional.”
David Frumm, the President’s speech writer, said in his interview, “I always believed as a speech writer that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And, that is the root of, maybe everything.”
Tough comments all those above, yet I ask myself could they be on the mark with their criticism? If decisions were slow in coming and if issues were tied up with the President’s advisors for months on end before any decision could be reached---if the President wasn’t really committed----all of that is simply intolerable. And if true, it yet again demonstrates how lackadaisical and blundering the government can be in handling problems.
The only way to lose…
In a Newsweek article of November 6, 2006, Fareed Zakaria quoted President Bush as saying, “My view is that the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done.”
Zakaria asks, “If you think that Iraq’s tumult is a product of its culture, religion and history, ask yourself what the United States would look like after three years of 50 percent unemployment. Would there not be civil strife in Manhattan, Detroit, Los Angeles and New Orleans?”
Let me answer that question----there would definitely be chaos, civil strife and violence in America under such conditions. Carry out the logic to Iraq and one can easily conclude that there is a civil war going on in Iraq which plays on the misery of the people and it is all about one faction or another gaining control of the country. It is a war between terrorist groups. It is a war we do not know how to fight.
The loss of life and the waste of our national wealth for lack of decision making would be criminal
Now back to the comments in Vanity Fair—if the criticism is right and the administration is glutted and unable to reach vital decisions in a timely fashion, it could be that we allowed this mess to occur through our inept decision making process. The loss of life and the waste of our national wealth for lack of decision making would be criminal. The internal destruction of Iraq for our ineptness is shameful and evil.
Having served two tours in the Pentagon, I know that bureaucratic sluggishness can occur. Why? Because fighting within a bureaucracy is common and sluggishness is a weapon used in the fight. The people in the government’s machinery will contend with each other by not cooperating with other agencies, withholding information, slowing down processes and the flow of ideas and stonewalling events and decisions. And we pay the taxes to pay the wages of these bureaucrats.
…just maybe Iraq slipped down the tunnel of civil war and self destruction while the administration dithered
If the people quoted in the Vanity Fair article are right, just maybe Iraq slipped down the tunnel of civil war and self destruction while the administration dithered. In fact, we did the dither dance in a big way. Anyone should have known we didn’t have enough troops in country when the terrorist violence began. We needed at least 100,000 and maybe as many as 300,000 more soldiers at that time to put a stop to it and that is my guess and not the government talking. But let’s assume the 300,000 idea was an idea that was conjured up within the halls of power in Washington, DC. Can you imagine how the administration would have handled the idea? Maybe we bring back the military draft? Oops, can’t do that---think of the next election. What do we do?
A little more dithering please as the planners say---let’s study the issue a little more---what does the State Department say? How about DOD? Better ask Carl Rove and have 15 more meetings to discuss the problem. Probably, the issue would have been put on the back burner until later. Well ladies and gentlemen, it is later and today we suffer trying to make difficult decisions as to should we stay in Iraq or should we depart from Iraq and if so when and how?
Our world does not tolerate a vacuum
Having gone into Iraq and effectively removed an infrastructure that was, to say the least, inconvenient to US interests, we failed to replace it with a functioning improvement. Our world does not tolerate a vacuum. Unfortunately, we are living with the consequences of that fact and will continue to do so until we have seen to it that the needs of the Iraqi people—in addition to those of the United States—have been met.
