The Ignatius Cycle

David Ignatius says that in retrospect we should have done more to cheat on Iyad Allawi's behalf in the January 2005 elections. Atrios seems to think he can debunk this talking point by simply noting that, in fact, the US intervened massively on his behalf, but the Serious point is that we always could have intervened more massively.

That Ignatius feels it makes sense to keep writing about this without any mention of the big lobbying campaign under way on Allawi's behalf at the moment is pretty stunning. Of course, when Nouri al-Maliki first came to power, Ignatius hailed this as brilliant progress. That's because Ignatius seemed, during Zalmay Khalilzad's time in Baghdad, to just write whichever columns Khalilzad wanted. During an earlier period, when Robert Blackwill was running the Iraq desk at the NSC, what we mostly heard from Ignatius was about the transcendent genius of Robert Blackwill. Here's an exemplar of the genre from October 2004:

The paradox of Bush is that when you examine his actual policies in Iraq over the past six months, they appear to reflect precisely the sort of learning from experience that the president refuses publicly to acknowledge. The key architect of Iraq policy today is probably Robert Blackwill, a thoughtful former diplomat who serves on the staff of the National Security Council -- not the neoconservatives in the Pentagon such as Paul Wolfowitz, who urged the president to war. Wolfowitz's idealism has been replaced by Blackwill's calculating pragmatism, at least for the moment.

Today Blackwill is one of Allawi's lobbyists. The point in all of this isn't to be an apologist for Maliki. Back when Allawi first took office in 2004, the Ignatius' of the world hailed this is a brilliant solution. They were wrong. Back when Allawi was booted from power in January 2005 in favor of Ibrahim Jafari, folks proclaimed this a great success and said Bush's Iraq policy had been vindicated. They were wrong. Back when Jafari was ousted in favor of Maliki, people proclaimed this, too, as a crucial step in the right directed. They were wrong. Now Maliki's the problem and Allawi -- again! -- is the solution. But they're still wrong, shuffling the personnel roster in Baghdad in this way isn't helping.

Comments

In other words David Ignatius is the Michael R Gordon of the Washington Post and is to be trusted as much as, say, Judith Bugs Miller, Steno Sue Schmidt or JimmyJeff Gannon..........

Posted by Mark C | August 30, 2007 8:44 AM

What argument can Ignatius possibly be making? Is he really suggesting that, due to Iranian influence, less "moderate" candidates were elsected, and that this has created problems for us? Or maybe that those crafty Iranians somehow backed particularly fractious candidates in order to render the Iraqi Government ineffective?

"Meddling" in the election is clearly meaningless, since the Iraqi Government itself is largely irrelevant. And it's difficult to detect an unreasonable level of anti-Americanism in the Government, anyway.

Ignatius' article is nothing more than mindless war propaganda.

Posted by AndyS | August 30, 2007 8:55 AM

The one valid thing Ignatius pointed out in his entire career as a Serious persona is that a distinction should be made between truly cooperative contacts between Saddam's intelligence and AQ, and the kind of dancing around that all intelligence services can and should do to keep tabs on everyone.

But yeah, he's been pretty hacktacular for most of his career, AFAICT as a _Post_ subscriber.

Posted by liberal | August 30, 2007 9:03 AM

Well, apparently Moqtada al-Sadr just ordered Jaish al-Mahdi to lay down their arms for the next 6 months. So maybe Maliki's job is safe again.

Just in time for Petraeus's presentation. Could he have handed Bush a better propaganda tool? I mean, if it's for real, it's certainly a boon to Iraqi civilians and American troops, but the timing... How the hell are we ever going to get out of Iraq?

Posted by brooksfoe | August 30, 2007 9:10 AM

Have you noticed that every thing the CIA wasn't allowed to do would have always been a brilliant success? The missile attack that didn't get oked in time would have killed Osama. The propaganda campaign we didn't do would have elected Allawi. If only our intelligence services had as good a success rate in the operations they did do.

Posted by HoraceCo | August 30, 2007 9:32 AM

brooksfoe: Moqtada is in for the long haul; his family has always been in for the long haul.

Can we just say that Ignatius is a whore, and we're now just arguing over whether he's a cheap whore or an expensive one?

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | August 30, 2007 9:35 AM

pseudonymous: I don't doubt Moqtada will ultimately make his play for power, and I'm sure there will be blood in the streets. But if he's in it for the long haul and is willing to play things this cool, then it seems that we will be in it for the long haul too. Thousands more American troops will get picked off in a slow bleed, for nothing, and it will remain almost impossible to get a political consensus for withdrawal over here. He's boiling our frogs just slow enough.

Posted by brooksfoe | August 30, 2007 10:05 AM

A few more reminisces from the Allawi-Blackwill-Ignatius menage a trois.

http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/3646

Posted by Eric Martin | August 30, 2007 10:12 AM

A technical note: I enjoy as always your Dylan-esque use of italics, but think that they're not as effective in this font as in the font before.

Posted by Kit Stolz | August 30, 2007 11:04 AM

David Ignatius: human spam.

Duly added to killfile.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | August 30, 2007 11:22 AM

Ignatius seems determined to prove Greenwald's points about the irredeemable corruption of the foreign policy clerisy. The depressing thing is that the debate on the intertubes about this has had no echo at all among the Dem presidential candidates. You can still read WAPO oped pieces that begin with the Hiatt doctrine - that all "serious" politicians, including all of the leading Democratic presidential candidates, have agreed that we can't completely withdraw from Iraq - and proceed downhill. Of course, the argument refers to itself to justify itself - if this opinion is believed by a 'consensus' of the governing class honchos, who are the peons to question it? In a sense, Allawi is Chalabi plus farce. While Chalabi was a relatively mild mannered criminal, confining himself to white collar felonies involving stealing millions from banks, Allawi revels in the hit man criminal style. And that both are D.C. darlings says everything about the fantasy Iraq that Bush & co. - plus the Democratic presidential candidates - want to install. It is a lot like Marcos' Phillipines, a place where the U.S. military could feel at home, multinationals could fleece the nation with a minimal sum set aside for bribes, and elections could be choreographed to trick not the natives - you can't trick them - but the American people. Ideological photo ops, if you will.

Unless that whole mindset is crushed, Iraqs will keep happening.

Posted by roger | August 30, 2007 11:44 AM

I seem to remember many anti-war pacifists predicting that after the invasion, Bush was going to install another dictator. While this didn't happen (couldn't happen with Bush's rhetoric), it might have cut down on the violence, at least for a while.

Posted by Peter K. | August 30, 2007 11:52 AM

That Ignatius feels it makes sense to keep writing about this without any mention of the big lobbying campaign under way on Allawi's behalf at the moment is pretty stunning.

Well, of course he didn't mention it, because it's a press campaign also, and one that's obviously gotten him to jump on board.

See, it's now OK to back a coup to install Allawi, because the elections he couldn't win were tainted. The Iranians cheated and we, tragically, didn't cheat back. So an Allawi coup is just like a mulligan!

Frankly, I don't see how installing a dictator with no constituency on the ground in Iraq would reduce violence. Isn't that the kind of thing that makes people angrier and more violent? It's not like peeling the label of "democracy" off of a government somehow makes it stronger or more capable of controlling a country.

Posted by Jake H. | August 30, 2007 12:11 PM

Peter K., how could it have cut down on the violence? If the Bush administration still stripped the country of a police force and an army, a dictator would have made no difference. It is an odd and underplayed part of the 2003 narrative that the U.S. relied almost entirely on Iraqi exiles for their sense of Iraq. To have cut down on the violence, the first thing the U.S. should have done, vis a vis Iraqis, is find non-exiles to work with, such as Moqtada Sadr. The reliance on exile groups even now - as for instance in the current rule by DAWA, a party formed outside of Iraq and nourished in Iran - has given Iraqis a pretty clear sense of the American indifference to Iraqi sensibilities. Although, to be fair, the idiotic conduct of the occupation has made many more Iraqis familiar with the life of exile than Saddam ever did. Maybe this was some subtle revenge of the exiles now in power in Baghdad.

Posted by roger | August 30, 2007 12:20 PM

Peter K: I seem to remember many anti-war pacifists predicting that after the invasion, Bush was going to install another dictator.

I remember, no seeming about it, a Canadian military blogger* predicting the same thing. It didn't and doesn't take being a pacifist to be anti-war, particularly anti-this-war. And it takes a wilful ignorance of modern American foreign policy to rule out the idea that the U.S. might install a dictator after overthrowing another government.

*http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/

Posted by Nell | August 30, 2007 1:49 PM

I seem to remember a Seymour Hersh story about the CIA funding Allawi's campaign to the tune of $40 million in cash.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Posted by Just Asking | August 30, 2007 2:16 PM

I seem to remember many anti-war pacifists predicting that after the invasion, Bush was going to install another dictator. While this didn't happen (couldn't happen with Bush's rhetoric), it might have cut down on the violence, at least for a while.

Selective memory is AWESOME!

Here's what actually happened after the invasion:

Jay Garner was installed as the Director of the Office of Reconstruction for Iraq. He wanted to have elections within 90 days. Here's what he said: Garner said "I don't think [Iraqis] need to go by the U.S. plan, I think that what we need to do is set an Iraqi government that represents the freely elected will of the people. It's their country… their oil."

Soon after that, he was replaced by Paul Bremer, who, as the puppet of the Pentagon, controlled all facets of the reconstruction, from money (which was shoddily controlled), to disbanding the Iraqi Army.

Bush, despite the rhetoric, only signed on to elections after Sistani insisted on them, well ahead of the American schedule.

In other words, the Americans DID install a nearly unaccountable strong man (albeit a comparatively benign one) in Bremer and his reign was a disaster.

It might not be what your select "anti-war pacifists" had in mind before this idiotic folly, but if the prescription was to install a strong man who could have kept the public order -- what was the point of getting rid of Hussein again?

Posted by Jay B. | August 30, 2007 2:26 PM

Found the Hersh article and linked to it below. No $40 million mentioned but Hersh claims that an off-the-books operation did manipulate the election.

Posted by Just Aksing | August 30, 2007 2:26 PM

Well, of course he didn't mention it, because it's a press campaign also, and one that's obviously gotten him to jump on board.

Actually, he does mention it in the penultimate paragraph, but as evidence Allawi is not getting support from the US administration:

Some commentators see Allawi's recent decision to hire a Washington public relations firm as a sign of the Bush administration's support, but the obvious is probably the case. If Allawi had U.S. government backing, he wouldn't need the lobbyists.

Not so much too clever by half as just not too clever.

Posted by KH | August 30, 2007 2:55 PM

Sorry, the Ignatius quote should read:

but the opposite is probably the case

instead of:

but the obvious is probably the case.

It's far from obvious.

Posted by KH | August 30, 2007 2:58 PM

Ignatius column is preposterous "stabbed in back" agit-prop, the spook version. Allawi got something like 12% of the vote, even with the CIA's backing and his manipulation of the Iraqi gov't's limited influence on his own behalf. No amount of spin is going to make him the 'legitimate' democratic victor.

Posted by AJ | August 30, 2007 3:01 PM

To make myself clearer, Ignatius' inference from the fact that Allawi has bought lobbyists' services to the conclusion that he lacks official US government support is belied by the many instances in which major, ackowledged clients of the US government have spent large amounts of money on private lobbyists. Ignatius surely knows this, or once did.

Posted by KH | August 30, 2007 3:18 PM

These are the sort of arguments you get from "Serious" people who have never had an inkling of the concept of intellectual honesty - or even the ability to remember what they said last week.

There is no intent here to be correct - only "Serious."

It's like Dan Ackroyd telling John Belushi in "The Blues Brothers": "It's not lying. It's just...bullshit."

As for being in Iraq for the long haul, Glenn Greenwald's latest column basically says that's true: Iraq is a fair accompli. We will be there well past 2009. It's over as far as any kind of "anti-war" action is concerned. Nobody has the power or the will to force Bush to pull out.

In fact, as Greenwald says, nobody has the power or will to prevent Bush from now escalating to Iran.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 30, 2007 3:22 PM

The Ignatius post struck me as more of a hit piece on Pelosi and Rice then about Allawi. Typical neoconservative meme: American interests suffered because we took the womanly course of non-confrontation.

It is funny they'd blame Pelosi. Is it really plausible that Bush in January of 2005, two months after reelection and at the peak of his political power allowed Pelosi a say on Iraq policy?

Posted by BJC | August 31, 2007 2:05 AM