Incompetence Again

Perhaps people are bored with this question, so I'll put the main discussion below the fold, but Jacob Weisberg has an article out on the "Incompetence Dodge" issue in which he kindly links to the piece Sam and I wrote on this some time ago. As Weisberg says "What makes this backward-looking conversation more than academic is its implications for American foreign policy beyond Iraq." He disagrees with my take on this, but it's not really clear to me from his article why he disagrees with me other than that he seems to think that if he agrees with me that means he must be an "isolationist" and he doesn't want to be an isolationist.

Weisberg:

The difference between Kosovo and Iraq isn't between a country that wanted peace and one that didn't. It was a matter of better management and better luck. To assume that American intervention can't work ignores the relative success of recent "wars of choice" in Bosnia and Kosovo (leaving aside the more debatable propositions of Somalia, Haiti, and Panama).

Like many observers, it's not clear to me that Weisberg is aware of the situation in Kosovo. The difference between Kosovo and Iraq isn't the difference between a peaceful country and a non-peaceful one, the difference is that we don't really care about violence being perpetrated against Kosovar Serbs. See here for a March 2004 report on anti-Serb violence in Kosovo. Just last week, the NATO peacekeeping force decided it needed a surge of troops to the north of the province to bring security to mostly-Serb areas. The point here isn't just to carp, but that one needs to understand what actually happened in the past to draw lessons from it. Intervening in Serbia's war against Albanian separatists in Kosovo succeeded in kicking Serbian military forces out of Kosovo, establishing Kosovo's de facto independence, and putting it on a path to de jure independence at whatever moment the international community decides they're willing to accept it. It didn't succeed in turning Kosovo into a stable liberal democracy or in establishing harmony between its ethnic groups.

Back to Weisberg:

Rumsfeld's Pentagon and Cheney's White House simply rejected the idea of planning for a hostile occupation. They disregarded basic counterinsurgency theory, which suggests that you need to send 20 troops for every 1,000 civilians to ensure order and that the occupiers need to operate with a light hand to win hearts and minds. In Iraq, that would have amounted to something like 450,000 troops, if you exclude friendly Kurdistan.

Now as we noted in the article, the United States Army lacks the capacity to sustain a multi-year foreign deployment of 450,000 soldiers. Not even close. Even if you can't on some help from the Marines and the United Kingdom, you're nowhere near the neighborhood. What's more, as we also noted in the initial article, the fact that people keep making this argument even though it would be very simple to check and see whether or not 450,000 soldiers were available is telling. It's also worth noting that the liberal hawk CW on this point is purely post hoc. In 2003, Kenneth Pollack and Daniel Bynum argued (PDF) that "By leading a multinational force of initially at least 100,000 troops with a strong mandate to act throughout Iraq, the United States and its coalition partners will have an excellent prospect of ensuring the degree of security necessary for a successful transition to democracy."

Beyond this, it's not clear that the Bosnia and Kosovo precedents from which the 20:1,000 ratio and general optimism about nation-building are drawn are all that relevant. Kosovo I discussed earlier. In Bosnia, what peacekeepers did was take ethnic populations that had already been physically separated and essentially helped police the boundaries between them. The goal in Iraq was to build a unified, pluralistic liberal democracy. We haven't succeeded in doing that in Bosnia or in Kosovo, so neither Bosnia nor Kosovo can be considered evidence that we could have succeeded in Iraq. Relatedly, Weisberg argues:

As Iraq descended into mayhem, a disengaged president continued to put forth the absurdist goal of establishing liberal democracy in a catastrophically damaged country where it had no root.

This is no fair. Establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq was absurd but it was the mission. You can't argue that the mission wasn't doomed to failure and only failed because of incompetence, and then cite as an example of incompetence the national leadership's pursuit of the mission objectives. Yes, yes, a smarter, wiser president could have invaded Iraq and made things turn out less bad. The question on the table, however, is whether "competent" execution of the invade-occupy-democratize plan could have achieved the goals of the plan.

Comments

Weisberg, the little AIPAC junketeer, is arguing in bad faith. Expose him for his connections to the people who started this war instead of granting him a debate.

Posted by brendan | January 4, 2007 11:00 AM

Aside: (leaving aside the more debatable propositions of Somalia, Haiti, and Panama)

Panama is "debatable"??? I would count it as an unqualified success. How is it debatable?

On the main point - establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq in three and a half years was the mission? Who are these people that thought that Iraq would be Belgium by 2007? I'd like to see a citation.

The mission was to get rid of Saddam and his WMD programs (mission accomplished) and the put Iraq on a sustainable path toward liberal democracy. We're not there yet, as a result of greater than expected violence, but you're not going to be able to judge whether we established a liberal democracy in Iraq for another 10 or 20 years. In the meantime, it is impossible to say whether the project has been a success or a failure.

Posted by Al | January 4, 2007 11:02 AM

Part of the reason I think this keeps coming up is that lots of liberals never believed that democratization was part of the plan, and assumed from the start that America's goal would be a stable, Saddamless Iraq, of whatever type of government. For the incompetence dodge argument to be more convincing, I think you need to show that even that much more modest goal (which many of us took to be the "real" goal) was unachievable (been a while since I read your original piece, so apologies if you've already done this).

Posted by ogged | January 4, 2007 11:05 AM

Matthew, you are are course 100% correct. Unfortunately, the very real incompetence of the occupation makes it almost impossible to convince people of that fact unless they were already predisposed to believe it. We can point to the abundant evidence that the Iraq venture was doomed from the start until we are blue in the face, but since the occupation was managed so poorly, people who want to believe otherwise will be able to reply (truthfully) that Iraq wasn't a fair test.

Which is beyond depressing, for reasons which should be obvious.

Posted by LarryM | January 4, 2007 11:06 AM

"Perhaps people are bored with this question, so I'll put the main discussion below the fold"

I don't think it's boring at all, but you're still viewing the issue through weirdly restrictive blinders.

-------

"Intervening in Serbia's war against Albanian separatists in Kosovo succeeded in kicking Serbian military forces out of Kosovo, establishing Kosovo's de facto independence, and putting it on a path to de jure independence at whatever moment the international community decides they're willing to accept it. "

Right. In other words, the Kosovo mission succeeded in accomplishing its policy goals.

"The goal in Iraq was to build a unified, pluralistic liberal democracy."

Right. And the WH didn't produce the means and the strategy to accomplish its policy goals. That's why they've "lost the war".

Failing to match your means and strategy to your policy goals is the definition of incompetence in warmaking.

Posted by Petey | January 4, 2007 11:15 AM

I agree with ogged. This is a point that Chait has also made. We already knew in 2003 that you couldn't believe most of what Bush said, so it wasn't totally unreasonable to believe that Bush's real goal was to replace Saddam with a better tyrant.

Also, I do think there was a window of opportunity in the first few months after the invasion, such that a competent occupation could have produced a stable result. Even in the best case scenario, however, the invasion still wouldn't have been worth the cost, which would still have run to the hundred of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of innocent lives.

Posted by Jim W | January 4, 2007 11:15 AM

Obviously the neocons have learned nothing from this disaster.

Posted by Marv Toler | January 4, 2007 11:16 AM

Love these droppings from people like Weisberg. "See, Iraq would have worked fine, if only they'd done it competently, like send 500k troops."

Cheney and Rumsfeld, of course, were ideologically invested in specifically not sending large numbers of troops or "nation-building". Therefore, the only way this war could have been competently executed was if Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld weren't in command. In which case, it wouldn't have happened.

In so far as that's the argument, I guess I agree. The only way to win is not to play.

Posted by John | January 4, 2007 11:17 AM

"For the incompetence dodge argument to be more convincing, I think you need to show that even that much more modest goal ... was unachievable"

Yup.

And I don't think you can reasonably show that, which is why I think the Matthew/Sam thesis applied broadly is ultimately untenable.

Posted by Petey | January 4, 2007 11:18 AM

well, al, if we're going to play mission definition games, that the mission was accomplished years ago. bush told us so.

and of course the plan that supported the mission was that we would have 30K soldiers in iraq by september, 2003.

and bush's actual words have nothing to do with putting iraq on a "sustainable path toward liberal democracy;" they've been about creating a US ally that holds elections.

in reality, there has never been a "mission." there have been sales pitches, there have been perceptions of missions by members of the inner circle, there have been justifications, but there is not now and never has been a mission.

in this sense, i also disagree with matthew on the specific matter of what was the mission: there was none, in a singular sense. i do agree in the broader sense: other than a "mission" to overthrow saddam and leave, which was always achievable, there was no "mission" we could have invented that would have been achievable that passed a rational cost-benefit analysis.

the problem the likes of weisberg is having is their reliance upon over-simplifications: there is a bunch of room between "never use US force anywhere, indeed, reduce the level of US forces and become much more isolationist" and "the bush doctrine." somehow weisberg doesn't grasp this, which may explain why i don't bother with slate anymore: it's run by a very foolish person.

Posted by howard | January 4, 2007 11:23 AM

well, that's right, Petey: we don't get to set up a parallel reality.

that said, you need to decide what your point is. if your point is that the "mission" was (or should have been) to set up a liberal democracy, show us how it could have been competently executed. if your point is that the "mission" was to set up a "stable iraq" that was run by someone less awful than saddam, show us how come the chalabai gambit - which was intended to do precisely that - failed on account of incompetence rather than delusion.

as i said to al, there was no mission in iraq that could have been achieved on a rational cost-benefit analysis. the long-term lesson to draw is that you apply rational cost-benefit analysis when you're about to risk blood and treasure.

Posted by howard | January 4, 2007 11:28 AM

Re: "...which may explain why i don't bother with slate anymore: it's run by a very foolish person."

I agree. I'm glad Matt Y has the patience to read the foolishness not only from Slate, but also Peretz, NRO, Krauthammer, etc., and occasionally report on it, so that I don't have to.

Posted by Jim W | January 4, 2007 11:31 AM

"You can't argue that the mission wasn't doomed to failure and only failed because of incompetence, and then cite as an example of incompetence the national leadership's pursuit of the mission objectives."

Why on earth can't you argue that?

The WH didn't match their war aims with a strategy and means to accomplish those war aims. Why on earth is it troublesome to define that as incompetence?

Posted by Petey | January 4, 2007 11:33 AM

And Al and Petey reliably step in to prove my point.

The fact is, it is crazy to say that the mistake we made was not going in with 400,000 troops, as those troops just weren't there (of course that doesn't stop people from making that argument). But there are plausible (wrong, deadly, tragically wrong, but plausible) arguments that you could have had a successful mission with the number of troops that we had. I'm not the person to make that case because I don't believe it for a second, but a case exists.

Really, though a bigger disconnect IMO is this. Al, deluded in so many ways, is smart enough to realize that even a best case scenario would have taken many years to build anything resembling a democracy in Iraq. And many war supporters admitted this even from the start. Of course, that fact undercuts the whole Iraq-the-model delusion, but lots of war supporters never really bought that rationale anyway. Some were just more honest than others in admitting it.

None of this is to defend the people who got into this mess, who hopefully will burn in Hell for all eternity. I just tend to think that the argument that Matthew is making here, while important to make, is not one that is going to change many minds. OTOH, the great majority of the American public, who don't spend the time that most of us do thinking about this stuff, will hopefully have a visceral (and correct) adversion to this sort of adventurism, in the near term at least, after years of bad news from Iraq.

But if that happens, it's not going to be sophisticated arguments like Matthews which carry the day. Just like it wasn't the elaborate fantasy arguments of the neocons that convinced the public to support the Iraq war in the first place.

Posted by LarryM | January 4, 2007 11:34 AM

But let's say that the real goal was to replace Saddam with a pro-american Saddam (which is probably close to the truth); then, since it's impossible to show that that project was doomed to failure, ¿liberals should embrace the idea of invading other countries to impose their own brand of criminal dictators? The thing is that the "democratize Irak" was the only war goal that liberal hawks could really support; make that goal disappear and the question is ¿why bother with a war?; ¿to find nonexistent WMDs? ¿to destroy equally nonexistant Irak-AlQaeda ties? ¿to replace an old Sunni butcher with a new Shiite butcher?

Posted by Carlos | January 4, 2007 11:38 AM

"that said, you need to decide what your point is."

My point is that the Matthew/Sam thesis is not a particularly good model of reality.

Posted by Petey | January 4, 2007 11:39 AM

Who are these people that thought that Iraq would be Belgium by 2007?

Actually, I think there's a better chance that Belgium will be Iraq by 2010.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 4, 2007 11:46 AM

People forget that the Bush administration's initial goal was to establish "secular" democracy in Iraq. There was no chance for that.

The U. S. was completely unprepared to occupy a hostile Arab nation. First, The U. S. establishment had very little understanding of the situation in Iraq--especially the Shiite and Sunni political structures that subsisted under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Thus, the Bush administration could not have been prepared to act effectively in relation to sectarian factionalism even if they hadn't been addicted to wishful thinking.

Second, neither American generals nor ground troops had any training in occupying a large, potentially hostile population. As a result, the military adapted aggressive American police and Israeli occupation tactics with the inevitable outcome of increasing Iraqi antagonism and fueling the insurgency.

Failure was baked into the cake from the beginning.

Posted by Ric Caric | January 4, 2007 11:49 AM

Not sure if everyone has seen these videos of the US military in Iraq or not, but they are pretty amazing: Hopefully our 'surge' will not include too many of these types...
http://minor-ripper.blogspot.com/2006/12/winning-hearts-and-minds-part-three.html

Posted by Minorripper | January 4, 2007 11:50 AM

Even in the best case scenario, however, the invasion still wouldn't have been worth the cost,

I disagree with that, JimW. In the best-case scenario, there might have been a stable, federalized and at least partially democratic government in Iraq which would in fact have had a positive effect on the entire Mideastern political climate.

But that was a best-case scenario. By definition, your best-case scenario is not the most likely scenario. The other scenarios ranged from "barely worth the cost" to "not worth the cost" to "makes things considerably worse" to "catastrophic" to "catastrophic and genocidal" to "catastrophic and genocidal and increases the chances that a US city will be nuked within 10 years", which is where we're at now -- and I still don't think this is the worst-case scenario yet. The invasion was stupid because it was an unbelievable risk, with more bad possibile outcomes than good ones, where the only real certainty was that the US would kill tens of thousands of people. One of the many reasons why you shouldn't be the one to start killing people is that the benefits you hope to gain through their deaths are always uncertain, while the absolute evil of their deaths is certain, and hangs on your neck.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 4, 2007 11:57 AM

brooksfoe,

Right, I agree with you're saying. I meant that the best case scenario of what plausibly could have happened would have involved us spending hundreds of billions of dollars and killing tens of thousands of people. In my opinion, that would not have been worth it even if, after a few years, Iraq turned out to be as stable as it was when Saddam was in power.

Posted by Jim W | January 4, 2007 12:09 PM

For the incompetence dodge argument to be more convincing, I think you need to show that even that much more modest goal (which many of us took to be the "real" goal) was unachievable (been a while since I read your original piece, so apologies if you've already done this).

Or you could argue that the more modest goal--a dictator other than Saddam--wasn't worth attaining under the circumstances in which there are far more annoying dictators in the world. Nor is it clear that that would be any easier to achieve than democratiziation--the form of government isn't the problem preventing peace, the sectarian divisions are. The instability of changing between dictators might be sufficient for civil war to erupt.

And the "many of you" who took that more modest goal as the "real" goal were not in any kind of majority--there's just been too much put forward as the "real" goal in Iraq for that concept to have had any meaning. WMDs, oil, future attacks on Iran, future attacks on Syria, future attacks on Saudi Arabia, democracy--we'll never know what the real mission was as opposed to what the current mission has become.

Posted by Consumatopia | January 4, 2007 12:10 PM

In a sense, and not intentionally I'm sure, Petey and Al are providing support for Matthew's argument. Matthew is talking about a particular version of the imcompetance dodge - that promoted by the liberal hawks. As to them, as I said, Matthew is 100% right.

But Al and Petey aren't liberal hawks, and they aren't neocons. They are part of the largest group of war supports, who didn't really buy the Iraq-the-model argument, except perhaps as a rhetorical club to beat their opponents witn. These people suppoted the war because: (1) fear of WMD, not so much as they existed when the war started, but as they might have been developed once the sanctions regime collapsed, (2) as a way to get us out of Saudi Arabia, (3) they wanted a base for the United States in the ME to intimidate and, if necessary, fight our enemies, and (4) they wanted to knock a weak country around to intimate other nations in the region.

Now I have to find this case not only an insufficient justification for war, but morally reppellant. But if that's why you supported the war, there is nothing about the past few years which is going to change your mind. While even in terms of most of those goals the war has been a disaster, I think it's entirely reasonable to argue that those goals were quite achievable absent incompetance.

Posted by LarryM | January 4, 2007 12:14 PM

The WH didn't match their war aims with a strategy and means to accomplish those war aims. Why on earth is it troublesome to define that as incompetence?

The key is to emphasize that it's the aims that were wrong, not the strategy and means--that there was no possible strategy and means to accomplish the particular aims we had.

Whether you want to call that "incompetence" is irrelevant, because that's not the kind of incompetence that people Matthew is arguing against are complaining about strategy and means while defending the aims.

Posted by Consumatopia | January 4, 2007 12:15 PM

I made the above post and realized I skipped the paragraph that tied it together. Al and Petey support Matthew's argument, utimately, by agreeing (implicitly) that the Iraq-the-model vision was bullshit from the start.

Posted by LarryM | January 4, 2007 12:16 PM

"But Al and Petey aren't liberal hawks, and they aren't neocons. They are part of the largest group of war supports..."

So if I think the Bush administration is incompetent, that means in your mind that I must support the war? Wow.

Posted by Petey | January 4, 2007 12:25 PM

Matt, I had not read your Incompetence Dodge piece until just now. What a terrific article. I would have to agree with those calling you the best foreign policy writer in the U.S. barring, perhaps, Jim Henley. I tend to be non-interventionist when it comes to foreign policy, but you are, slowly, convincing me that a restrained sort of humanitarian interventionism is at least plausible. My chief sticking point is on how to restrain humanitarian interventionism, since the impulse can be coopted by hawks for other purposes. I can't wait for your book.

Posted by Joseph Strummer | January 4, 2007 12:27 PM

"Whether you want to call that "incompetence" is irrelevant, because that's not the kind of incompetence that people Matthew is arguing against are complaining about strategy and means while defending the aims."

So, if I'm parsing you correctly, you're saying that it doesn't matter that Matthew's argument is wrong because the people he's arguing against are wrong...

Posted by Petey | January 4, 2007 12:38 PM

The culprit here isn't incompetence, and it isn't neglect, and it isn't an unwillingness to "really do it". The culprit is American messianism. This is a lesson that we seem totally unable to learn: America's strength--military, cultural, diplomatic-- is limited. We aren't capable of doing everything. It is simply incredible that a country that has proven incapable of policing or maintaining it's own borders thinks that it can march into the birthplace of civilization and remake it in it's own image.

We haven't pacified or democratized Iraq because that is a project beyond our capabilities. And it isn't close. When Iraq does come around-- and I pray it is sooner than later-- it will happen because Iraqis will make it happen. They are the ones who have the ability to do it.

When are we going to learn this lesson? Korea didn't teach us it, Vietnam didn't, September 11 didn't, Iraq hasn't... when are we going to get over ourselves?

Posted by Freddie | January 4, 2007 12:38 PM

I think the "incompetence dodge" argument that some commenters here are missing is this. (1) The "less modest goal" of democratization was simply unachievable even if this administration weren't in power. (2) The "modest goal" of ousting Saddam and replacing him with a illiberal regime that was sympathetic to the United States was achievable, but undesirable.

This comment, incidentally, is not intended to evaluate this argument, but only to clarify it.

Posted by BG | January 4, 2007 12:50 PM

"When are we going to learn this lesson? Korea didn't teach us it, Vietnam didn't, September 11 didn't, Iraq hasn't... when are we going to get over ourselves?"

When we got totaly stomped like Germany. Heck, France and Great Britain still show a little vestigial imperialism. Not to speak of Russia. Of course we should work very hard to change American Exceptionalism into something less destructive, but I am not optimistic.

So since Iraq or Vietnam adventures are going to happen again, what is the cost effective strategy to avoid the worst outcomes?

Matt says we didn't have the resources to do a competent job in Iraq. Since we are not going to avoid more Iraqs, the rational step may be to increase the resources.

Posted by bob mcmanus | January 4, 2007 1:05 PM

"The mission was to get rid of Saddam and his WMD programs (mission accomplished)"

Wow! Bush is soooooooo competent he accomplished half of this before he even took office!

Posted by Njorl | January 4, 2007 1:16 PM

All this talk about having enough troops to complete the mission is silly. The mission was to get rid of the threat of Saddam's WMD. Because Saddam had no WMD, the required number of troops to accomplish this mission was zero. We sent waaaay more troops than needed. Now that we know we're finished (and indeed, were finished before we even started), we should bring the troops home and thank them for an unnecessary job well done.

Posted by dj moonbat | January 4, 2007 1:36 PM

I thought the original Incompetence Dodge article was brilliant. To dodge the painful admission that they were wrong, Liberal hawks argued incompetence. Since the article, lots of conservative hawks have started doing the same thing.

The Incompetence Dodge applies equally well to conservative hawks, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Along with the Liberal Backstabbing dodge and the Blame-the-Victims dodge, it is part of a broad pattern of denial. Conservatives have floated, and will continue to float, pretty much any excuse they can dream up to deny responsibility for their disaster.

Posted by Jalmari | January 4, 2007 1:45 PM

I think it is false to say that the level of insecurity - nice word for mass murders - that we see in Iraq today was inevitable. I opposed the invasion, but I recognized that Saddam Hussein's fall would be good for the Iraqis - I thought a much better way would be to condition that fall over time - detente with Iran in 2003 being the first step in a number that could have been made to increase the pressure on Saddam to the breaking point.

What was truly sad was that, once the invasion happened, the response in the U.S. was either triumphalist or silent. The anti-war movement dried up almost instantly, when it was needed most. It was obvious from day one that the occupation was poison and that the U.S. goal - beyond knocking out Saddam Hussein - was the odd one of both democratizing Iraq and impressing on the country policies that were violently against Iraq's interest (such as revamping the economy to favor America's pro free trade policies, making the oil fields available to American oil companies, etc.). Plus of course the truly insane idea that Iraq would be some kind of ally of Israel. So basically, the plan was to have a democracy in which people would overwhelmingly vote for what they didn't believe, didn't want, and was against their self interest.

This is why the triumphalism was so terrible: the U.S. had nobody to block them in Iraq in 2003. Unlike the Gulf War I, in which the coalition allies really did have some political power (France, after all, forced Bush I to reverse his course about Northern Iraq), the U.S. - and, really, that small sector in the U.S. that includes the Cato Institute and the AEI, as well as the CEOs of various Pentagon-welfare supported industries - were unchecked.

Even Chalabi, the man who was able to accrue less than one percent of the Iraqi vote in the last election, would have been better than that. There are many differences between Iraq and Kosovo, but the chief one, from the U.S. point of view, is that the U.S., in Iraq, was trying to support its hegemonic position in a context where it was already gone. It was gone when the Soviet Union fell, and the great anti-communist coalition that the U.S. could rely on in the Middle East quickly hollowed out. In Kosovo, which is in the European context, the U.S. has long accepted a lesser status.

Iraq was a disaster waiting to happen not only because of Bush, but because of the whole post-Cold War mindset in D.C. that hypnotized itself with the idea that the U.S. is the "indispensible" nation. That idea is nonsense. It isn't.

Posted by roger | January 4, 2007 1:48 PM

Petey, if you were opposed to the war, then there are really three possibilities: you thought it would achieve something but didn't feel it was worth achieving, you didn't see the point, or you thought someone other than bush could have executed the war in a way that would achieve something.

only in the third case is the competency issue even relevant.

so why were you opposed to the war? since you're hammering on the notion that it could have achieved something, i assume you belong in the third category, but in that case, what is it that you think could have been achieved in the platonic universe?

Posted by howard | January 4, 2007 1:55 PM

"since you're hammering on the notion that it could have achieved something"

No. I'm hammering on the notion that the primary incompetency of the WH was the failure to match war aims to strategy and means.

And once your war aims become divorced from your strategy and means, nothing else matters. The thing is going to end badly. The war aims could be noble or ignoble, but they don't matter since they won't be achieved.

And I'm also hammering on the notion that Matthew is using the anti-incompetency argument as a proxy for a larger argument against military interventionism that really isn't connected in the slightest to the anti-incompetency argument.

When you tie yourself tightly to unconnected proxy arguments to make your point, you inexorably begin straying further and further from reality.

"so why were you opposed to the war?"

For a pretty wide ranging number of reasons, which could be most briefly summed up as that it seemed batshit crazy in terms of our national interests.

Posted by Petey | January 4, 2007 2:26 PM

The fact that the quantity of soldiers that might have allowed success is unsustainable seems maybe to kill two birds with one stone, no? Certainly at this point having put in several hundred thousand focused on security in Baghdad and then being forced to leave after a year, with confidence that a full effort had been made, seems preferable at least to four years of steadily trickling casualties and stupidly insufficient forces. Since Rumsfeld expected to get out after a few months, I doubt anyone would have been listened to who cautioned about preparing for a multi-year occupation. The force was small because they didn't want to bear the political burden (and wanted to prove personal theories), not because of sustainability.

Of course this wouldn't matter if the goal was impossible anyway, but its ambivalance about that question in both parties that's causing the endless inertia right now.

Posted by Andrew | January 4, 2007 2:29 PM

Alright Petey, you were against the war, good for you. It doesn't change the fact that you're wrong, Matthew is right, and you actually lend his argument inadvertant support. Here's the deal:

(1) Liberal hawks supported the war in large numbers, in large part, at least ostensibly and IMO in many or even most cases sincerely, based on the moral argument that we should remove Saddam and bring democracy to Iraq.

(2) Those liberal hawks are tying to keep alive the notion that we should use our armed forces to bring democracy to places like Iraq. In order to rescue this project from the Iraq fiasco, these people trot out the incompetance dodge.

(3) Matthew is arging specifially against this position. While people accross the political spectrum now agree that the Bush administration is incompetant, the incompetance dodge, at least as the term is used by Matthew, refers mainly (and in this instance entirely) to the arguments of the liberal interventionalists.

Now you agree that Matthew is correct that the democracy project was doomed from the start. In terms of Matthew's argument, that gives away the whole game. Saying that other, lesser, goals could have been achieved but for the incompetance of the Bush administration is rather besides the point.

Posted by LarryM | January 4, 2007 2:33 PM

"Since Rumsfeld expected to get out after a few months"

So it is reported. I don't believe it, mostly because I don't accept the standards of evidence that seem prevalent today. If three unnamed sources, two named subordinates, Rumsfeld himself swears on a stack of Bibles I no longer consider it sufficient evidence.

What did the transport ships do?

History and truth have just disappeared.

Posted by bob mcmanus | January 4, 2007 2:40 PM

"Matthew is arging specifially against this position ... the incompetance dodge, at least as the term is used by Matthew, refers mainly (and in this instance entirely) to the arguments of the liberal interventionalists."

So because you're opposed to liberal interventionists, and because Matthew is arguing against liberal interventionists, the specifics of what is being said don't matter.

Or put another way, When you use a word, it means just what you choose it to mean, neither more nor less.

Somehow, I think you'd be right at home amongst the neocons, LarryM.

Posted by Petey | January 4, 2007 2:52 PM

Says Petey:

The WH didn't match their war aims with a strategy and means to accomplish those war aims. Why on earth is it troublesome to define that as incompetence?

Okay, call it incompetence if you want. But the broader issue here is one of figuring out what lost us Iraq, so we know what kind of mistake to avoid making in the future. Even for an administration that would have done a very competent job of managing Iraq after taking over, would it have been a mistake to invade? In other words, was the Iraq mission doomed from the start, so we shouldn't even push for something like that no matter how competent an administration we have, or should we try to do the Iraq thing in the future again when we have a better administration?

If the reason Bush couldn't provide a strategy and means to match his war aims was that no such strategy and means was available, Matthew wins the argument. If there was such a strategy and means, Matthew loses. I'm fairly sympathetic to Matthew's position.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | January 4, 2007 3:02 PM

...it was the mission

Actually, democracy was only a part of the mission. Having a goal of democracy lubed the passage of the idea through Congress. Al is right, it took decades to evaluate US intervention in Korea and it will take decades to evaluate the invasion of Iraq.

Those purple-fingered Iraqi masses didn't think democracy was "Absurd". It was a few insurgents who are trying to subvert the idea. In the contest between the purple-fingered and the insurgents, Whose Side Are You On?

Posted by Warren | January 4, 2007 3:14 PM

i can't for the life of me figure out what petey's 2:26 is supposed to mean. presumably it means that he thinks that the war could have succeeded and just doesn't want to tell us that, which is why he is making up some silly version of matthew's basic argument, which is that the war could not have succeeded.

Posted by howard | January 4, 2007 3:18 PM

Petey,

When one person doesn't understand your argument, you can justifiably conclude that that person has a problem with reading comprehension. When a whole host of people don't understand it, perhaps the problem is with you. Your latest response to me makes no sense at all; I have no clue what you are taking about.

As for your comments regarding the means used by the Bush administration not matching the ends, I'm sure that you are right and I'm sure that Matthew would agree. Matthew would take it a step further and say that the ends (democratization) were impossible to achieve by any means (or at least any means that were in the realm of the possible, and that were proportionate to our national interests). Do you disagree with this? If so, it would be nice to see some, you know, arguments in favor if it.

Or to take this from another direction, do you agree with the points made by Weisberg? You don't seem to be coming from that direction; quite the contrary. If you disagree, why, and in what sense is your disagreement incompatible with Matthew's?

Posted by LarryM | January 4, 2007 3:33 PM

Goddamit, Neil. You always catch me when I'm halfway out the door with something that demands a considered response.

"Okay, call it incompetence if you want."

I don't think I'm merely playing semantic games here.

"But the broader issue here is one of figuring out what lost us Iraq, so we know what kind of mistake to avoid making in the future."

Yup. What lost us Iraq was having war aims that weren't matched with our strategy and means. We should avoid that in the future.

"Even for an administration that would have done a very competent job of managing Iraq after taking over, would it have been a mistake to invade? In other words, was the Iraq mission doomed from the start, so we shouldn't even push for something like that no matter how competent an administration we have, or should we try to do the Iraq thing in the future again when we have a better administration?"

Now we're launched into counter-factuals.

We could've gone in with a 'small war' strategy where we grabbed Saddam, left the army in place, turned the country over to some of the high ranking officers who co-operated with us during the initial days of the invasion, and split reasonably quickly. Think of it as Panama writ large.

We could've gone in with a 'big war' strategy where we found a way to raise more domestic troops and/or made concessions to raise a real international coalition, and committed ourselves to a long, costly, and labor intensive occupation to do nation building. Think of it as Kosovo writ large.

Would either a competent 'small war' or competent 'big war' have been a good idea?

These are not uninteresting counter-factuals. But I think much more interesting lessons can be learned by looking at the actual Iraq war, which mismatched 'big war' aims and strategy with 'small war' means.

"If the reason Bush couldn't provide a strategy and means to match his war aims was that no such strategy and means was available, Matthew wins the argument. If there was such a strategy and means, Matthew loses."

No. Really and truly, no.

If a President is unable or unwilling to summon the strategy and means to achieve his desired war aims, it's utter incompetency not to alter the war aims.

It's useful to remember that we were at war with Iraq prior to George Bush taking office. Bill Clinton fought a low grade war with Iraq for the entire duration of his administration, which combined very modest war aims with the sustainable means to achieve those aims.

This matching of aims with strategy and means made the Clinton Iraq war competent. And once the competency bar is crossed, it's possible to have an interesting and non-counter-factual discussion about whether the war was in America's national interests.

Similarly, the mismatching of aims with strategy and means made the Bush Iraq war incompetent. This is the first lesson to be learned from the past four years. And it's a lesson very much worth learning, as it's the exact same lesson we once learned from Vietnam.

Posted by Petey | January 4, 2007 3:41 PM

Well Petey, I'm getting your position a bit more, but you're coming no closer to a coherent criticism of Matthew's argument.

Matthew isn't making his argument in a vacuum. He is responding to a particular argument that is repeated again and again to try to rescue a particularly pernicious point of view - the point of view of the liberal interventionists. And nothing that you are arguing comes to grips with Matthew's critique.

As you say in your latest post ("We could've gone in with a 'big war' strategy ..."), one could envision a strategy that, if competently executed, that perhaps, maybe, with a lot of luck and a ten to twenty year commitment, could maybe have achieved the democratization goal. But that strategy wasn't on the table, and isn't on the table, and shouldn't be on the table for a variety of very good reasons. Moreover, there are compelling reasons to belive that even that strategy would not have been successful. And as even you seem to agree, such a strategy wouldn't make sense, even assuming success, from any kind of reasonable cost benefit analysis.

Now if the liberal interventionalists were in fact arguing that such a "big war" strategy should have been undertaken, then indeed Matthew's critique would be (somewhat) misplaced. But I don't hear many people making that argument. Certainly the Weisberg article doesn't. Oh, yeah, he does make the insufficient troop argument, but he doesn't take that argument to its logical conclusion, which involves, inter alia, the draft and a massive increase in the defense budget. That option, thankfully, isn't on the table.

Or to put the whole thing in fewer words: your strategy/means argument is a lesson that we might and should take from the Iraq fiasco. But it is not inconsistent with the lesson that Matthew wants to draw, which is that we shouldn't be trying to bring democracy to nations at the point of a gun. In my opinion, and I imagine Matthew's, the latter is the more important lesson. But even if you disagree with this, as clearly you do, there is no reason why we shouldn't learn both lessons.

Posted by LarryM | January 4, 2007 4:11 PM

You know Petey, I think that I now see the basic place where you go wrong. Matthew isn't arguing that the Bsh administration wasn't incompetant; he is arguing that even absent such incompetence, democratization wasn't going to happen.

I don't think that you and he are disagreeing on that point, except in the rather esoteric sense that you can imagine a fanatasy strategy that (despite the fact that it wasn't a strategy that anyone avocated, wasn't one that was in the realm of the poossible, and wasn't one that even you in fact are advocating) might have achieved the goal.

Posted by LarryM | January 4, 2007 4:17 PM

Warren, it depends on what you mean by "democracy," doesn't it? If democracy merely means straight up majority rule and the majority can do whatever the hell it wants, then we're on track for victory. Of course, there's no reason at all for the Sunnis to buy into that vision of democracy; hence the insurgency.

Posted by AlanC9 | January 4, 2007 4:27 PM

"you're not going to be able to judge whether we established a liberal democracy in Iraq for another 10 or 20 years. In the meantime, it is impossible to say whether the project has been a success or a failure."

Maybe it's a success that hasn't happened yet?

Posted by CJColucci | January 4, 2007 5:39 PM

LarryM largely beats me to the punch, but let's go further.

the "small war" strategy was rumsfeld's strategy. it failed. we don't have to speculate. and it didn't fail due to incompetence, it failed because the idea that you could surgically remove a dictator who had ruled callously in favor of one ethnic group in a multi-ethnic society where his ethnic group was a minority had no chance of success. (btw, bob, i know you don't believe, but that was the congressional testimony, supported by additional evidence, in the summer of 2003: that we would be down to 30K troops by september. and as several of the recent books have shown, the planning effort consisted of a plan a - install chalabai - and there was no plan b.)

the "big war" strategy couldn't have existed since we didn't have an army of sufficient scale to carry it out, a point matthew makes over and over. again, competence has nothing to do with it.

the same is true of vietnam: there was nothing for the US to "win" there.

if the war seemed "batshit crazy" in terms of our national interests, then competency matters not a whit. that's why it's hard to make out petey's position: he claims that the war made no sense, and yet thinks the problem isn't that the war made no sense, it's that there was a mismatch of strategy and goals.

these are not consistent positions.

Posted by howard | January 4, 2007 5:58 PM

Not sure if everyone has seen these videos of the US military in Iraq or not, but they are pretty amazing: Hopefully our 'surge' will not include too many of these types...
http://minor-ripper.blogspot.com/2006/12/winning-hearts-and-minds-part-three.html

Posted by MinorRipper | January 4, 2007 8:40 PM

In the New York Review Mark Danner makes an interesting case. He says that we were pursuing two stratagies at once. One was the Rumsfeld strategy: topple Saddam and leave. However, the neocons in the Pentagon wanted the broader, create a transforming democracy, goal, and they had a direct line to Bremer. The result was actions that only made sense in the context on the broad goal (if then). However, the broad goal was impossible, for reasons that have been amply presented here.

A this is really an elaboration of the exact way in which the Administration is incompetent, it might perhaps be a little OT, but I thought it was interesting anyway.

Posted by Jonathan | January 4, 2007 9:05 PM

With regards to "The Mission" it is quite clear:

We either grab the Islamic world by the ear and drag it into the 21st century or we are all screwed.

Posted by Tommy Shanks | January 5, 2007 7:37 PM

So the Bush administrations policy has a fundamental conceptual flaw: It is fighting an ad hoc network by trying to kill those it believes are part of the network. But this ad hoc network is feed by a fundamental belief, which is: The US is evil, it is out to kill Muslims, and it is therefore the duty of good people to destroy this evil killing machine. Now, to defeat this network we need to fight this fundamental belief, not to kill those who hold it, because this would just demonstrate that the belief is correct. Every time we win, we lose.

Hence my conlusion: the US response is flawed at a deep, conceptual level that no amount of perfection in the execution can remedy. Understanding this elementary truth requires conceptual thinking far beyond beyond what anyone in the present US administration has demonstrated, so I must conclude we could very well lose the war.

http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2006/12/24/the-empires-of-the-future-are-the-empires-of-the-mind/

Posted by enigma_foundry | January 7, 2007 11:23 AM