Assumptions and Conventional Wisdom

The Times today reviews a book highly critical of the way the war in Iraq has been executed by a writer for the New Yorker. The book is Assassin's Gate by George Packer, and the review is by Fareed Zakaria, who I think is very smart, very worth reading. I've read the first chapter of the Packer book, which I wanted to look at for the same reason I read Zakaria; although I often disagree with him -- if you don't read smart people you disagree with, you'll go very stale, very quickly.

But that said I was quite disappointed with the review, because I found it chock full of some of the things that have become sort of conventional wisdom from the "but the war was so badly executed it may not even have been worth it" school of thought, repeated over and over and over so often that they really aren't thought about, or thought through, or reconsidered any longer.

But some of those items deserve to be challenged.

Let's look at a few:

Part of the problem was the brutal and debilitating struggle between the State Department and the Defense Department, producing an utterly dysfunctional policy process. The secretary of the Army, Thomas White, who was fired after the invasion, explained to Packer that with the Defense Department "the first issue was, we've got to control this thing - so everyone else was suspect."

This is of the "anyone who disagreed with the party line got fired" assumption. And that may well be true, but it elides the fact that there were a few other, er, issues, shall we say, between Secretary White and Secretary Rumsfeld. I'm sure he's a wonderful and quite competent man, but things had just reached a head between them, even if you want to suggest that Iraq was the straw that broke the camels back, and we shouldn't rewrite history to the point where we suggest there were no other issues. Aside from White's relationship with the Enron Corporation, which was become a real liability for the administration, there's the whole Crusader episode. When it first happened, (Army folks basically working with members of Congress to subvert the Pentagon position on cancelling the Crusader) Rumsfeld defended White, said he was sure he'd had nothing to do with it. But it did suggest he wasn't exactly in control over there, doesn't it?

My point is that the relationship was, let us say, fraught independent of the war, so to suggest, as that wording, let's face it, does, that it was the war and only the war that led to his leaving the Pentagon, well, probably oversimplifies things quite a bit.

Then there's this:

SO the Army's original battle plan for 500,000 troops got whittled down to 160,000. If Gen. Tommy Franks "hadn't offered some resistance, the number would have dropped well below 100,000," Packer says. At one point, Franks's predecessor, Anthony Zinni, inquired into the status of "Desert Crossing," his elaborate postwar plan that covered the sealing of borders, securing of weapons sites, provision of order and so on. He was told that it had been discarded because its assumptions were "too negative."

These media reports that have the SecDef slashing the number of troops, while Franks heroically stands up to him, are really a bit overplayed. It was Franks' job to provide a plan, Rumsfeld's job to complain about it, Franks' job to in turn to put his foot down. In other words between the two of them they were supposed to come up with something in the middle. We don't want civilian "micromanaging" of the military -- but we also don't want the military just allowed to do whatever they want with no civilian oversight. There has to be a happy medium, in both senses, both in terms of outcome and in terms of process. The one person who never seems consulted on whether this worked the way it should have is always Tommy Franks, who essentially describes Rumsfeld as a major pain in the ass, and implies that some of the rounds of questions probably could have been skipped, but who generally suggests that the process worked the way it should have. Frankly, people who believe there should have been more troops from the outset seem sometimes to blame Rumsfeld because they don't want to blame Franks -- that's not politically correct.

Given Turkey's refusal to permit the 4th Infantry Division to stage through there, it isn't likely more troops could have been available for the initial attack anyway. If there's a real argument, it's that after the fall of the regime, additional troops weren't sent in to ensure security, but that isn't a critique of the process used to develop a war plan.

Deep in the review Zakaria writes this:

Was all this inevitable? Did the United States take on something impossible? That seems to be the conventional wisdom today. (My emph.)

But I think that's likely more a reflection of who he's talking to than the real likelihood of success.

That said, if that crowd really has simply decided that the Iraq project is simply "impossible," then they've also decided there is absolutely no justification for continuing on, because there is no justification, to steal a phrase, for asking a man to be the last man to die for a mistake.

And that's very, very bad.

Comments

[Papa Ray]

I think it is safe to say that most of the lessons learned by the Military AND the Administration[s] during the VN conflict were forgotten or thought "not to apply".

Trouble is most of them did.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

[Charlie (Colorado)]

You mean like the one about how you can win the war on the ground and lose it when the press takes up the propaganda war against?

[SMSgtMac]

As a military thinker, Fareed Zakaria is a fine Ivy League-trained political scientist and journalist. To the sarcasm challenged, that means he's an excellent candidate for the Forlorn Hope.

[Pierluigi DiFrancesco]

Papa: Respinning Santayana, the only lesson we learn from history is that we don't learn any lessons from history.

Charlie: Yeah, that one. Plus, you don't disband a 400,000 strong army after you've kicked the hell out of them unless you plan to a)kill them, b)imprison them, or c)give them something else to do besides join an insurgency.

SMSgtMac: He serves on the board of the Trilateral Commission. I mean how much more does it take to prove the guy is a nutjob?

[SMSgtMac]

Oblique Trilateral Commission reference as credentials for MILITARY expertise? Now THAT'S funny sarcasm!

[SMSgtMac]

"He serves on the board of the Trilateral Commission" as some sort of oblique inferrence of military credentials? Now THAT is sarcasm!

[SMSgtMac]

So nice I said it twice. Interesting: It looked like the first post got lost and then it 'came back'. Pick whichever phrasing you prefer. No prizes will be awarded.