The Lost Year

James Fallows reminds us of his fall 2004 piece on Bush's lost year -- the twelve month period during which we could have been putting al-Qaeda out of business, but instead found key resources (most of all, the precious resource of attention) diverted to gearing up for war with Saddam. He remarks:

It is an old story, and it is the fundamental case against Iraq. Not that it was a good idea, poorly executed, that in the right circumstances might have made us safer. Rather, that it was exactly the wrong idea, from the start, because it distracted us from the enemy who had really harmed us, and whom we had a reasonable chance of containing and crushing, and toward an unnecessary fight guaranteed to multiply the number of enemies we faced worldwide. It should be possible to make the case that clearly.

Then again, it should have been possible to make the case in 2004.

I think it's worth saying that it wasn't magically "impossible" to make this case in '04. Indeed, from time to time John Kerry made it. And those tended the most effective moments of his campaign. As in the first debate:

Jim, the president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate. In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq, he just said, "The enemy attacked us."

Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaida attacked us. And when we had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, 1,000 of his cohorts with him in those mountains. With the American military forces nearby and in the field, we didn't use the best trained troops in the world to go kill the world's number one criminal and terrorist.

They outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, who only a week earlier had been on the other side fighting against us, neither of whom trusted each other.

That's the enemy that attacked us. That's the enemy that was allowed to walk out of those mountains. That's the enemy that is now in 60 countries, with stronger recruits.

The problem was that this line of attack, though accurate, politically effective, and reflecting the thinking of some of the people in Kerry's circle wasn't clearly the position Kerry had actually taken back in late 2002 and early 2003. Thus, this point got tangled up in the song and dance about flip-flopping and for it before he was against it and the point couldn't consistently be placed at the center of Kerry's critique.

Comments

The problem is that this line attack was always simply not reality based. We didn't have "Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains". That's just a flat out lie. And we didn't have any significant number of "American military forces nearby and in the field". That's a lie also. And the fundamental point is that it was impossible to put our troops in Tora Bora in the significant numbers that it would take and in the time frame necessary to trap OBL. The Left seems to have this idea that we could magically teleport a gigantic number of troops to Tora Bora. But, sorry Reality Based Community, magical teleportation doesn't exist. Out here in the real world it would take a long, long time to get a huge number of troops to Tora Bora. And it only takes a couple of days for OBL to go to Pakistan.

Posted by Al | August 28, 2007 7:47 AM

It's also true that war tends to generate its own enthusiasm, for awhile. Our defeat of the Iraqi armed forces was spectacular enough, and was followed enough positive developments, to create the illusion of success. Iraq still looked like a victory in 2004. Kerry couldn't quite overcome that, though the vicious and viciously unfair attacks against his war record did a lot of damage as well. In future years, if Republicans have any shame at all, they will be ashamed of 2004.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | August 28, 2007 8:18 AM

Well personally, I have my doubts about exactly how politically effective this "it distracted us from the real enemy" line is, although it appears to be somewhat popular among the candidates. The main problem with that line now, as it was in 2004, is that it is very hard to make the case to ordinary Americans that Iraq has significantly damaged the fight against al Qaeda when there have been no significant terrorist attacks inside the United States since September 2001. If I'm John Q. Voter, I'm thinking "well, if its was a distraction, it doesn't seem to have been a very harmful one."

So as a political approach to take to the Iraq War I would call this the "Distraction Dodge."

The distraction dodge also seems to require for its efficacy a rhetorical effort to build al Qaeda into the collossal Islamofascist global scourge and bogey man favored by the far right. Exactly how much should we have spending on this fight? Should we have been apprehending, imprisoning and interrogating more Islamists around the world? By presenting Iraq as a diversion of needed resources from the real enemy, the distraction dodge suggests that the world is swarming with evil bad guys who are getting away, and that we needed hundreds of billions of dollars to track down. Is it?

So forget al Qaeda and "the real battlefield". Suppose there never was an al Qaeda. Isn't it still clear enough that it is just criminally stupid and barbaric to invade a country that poses no real threat to you, killing several thousand of your own soldiers in the process, inflicting mutilating injuries of tens of thousands more of those soldiers, and killing hundreds of thousands of people in that other country who never did anything to you?

And isn't it enough to point out that the only reason this stupid and barbaric administration was able to muster public support for this operation is because they either grossly failed to assess the real situation in Iraq, or lied to the public about that situation, or both?

Fallows is a brilliant reporter and an intelligent analyst. But he's no politician. The politcs of war and peace is not all about debates on strategery. Bring this thing down to earth for people. Point to pictures of coffins, grieving families and mutilated soldiers and say this was not necessary at all!. Don't say that we should have had all of these coffins and grieving families and mutilated soldiers, but we should have incurred the losses chasing more phantom bad guys around the world.

Posted by Dan Kervick | August 28, 2007 8:21 AM

It doesn't seem "reality based" to me to argue that shank's mare and donkeys can outrun fighter jets, attack helicopters, and B52 carpet bombing. That crowds of men on snow can't be seen by night vision googles on said helicopters or on Predators.

That what is essentially a group of bandits can outmaneuver the world's major superpower.

For years.

And what's the deal with Pakistan? We should have simply told Musharaf that we were in pursuit of the group who attacked NYC. And that if he got in the way, his head would be on the stick as well.

Posted by Don Williams | August 28, 2007 8:23 AM

Re "The problem was that this line of attack, though accurate, politically effective, and reflecting the thinking of some of the people in Kerry's circle wasn't clearly the position Kerry had actually taken back in late 2002 and early 2003"
--------
That's because Kerry -- like several Democratic leaders -- is a whore for the Israel Lobby who in 2002 was more worried about whether Haim Saban was going to fund his political career than whether Kerry was sending our soldiers into another Vietnam morass.

The Democratic Party needs to make a choice: Is it going to represent the common people of this country?? Or is it going to serve a few billionaires while lying to --and betraying -- the common citizens?

Going once. Going twice...

Posted by Don Williams | August 28, 2007 8:30 AM

Another problem here is that the "outsourcing" bit is (i) too clever by half, (ii) so obviously a canned, poll-tested line that it conveys total phoniness and (iii) puts off the upper-middle-class liberals on Wall Street and elsewhere who are in favor of free trade but skeptical about the Iraq enterprise.

Posted by y81 | August 28, 2007 8:46 AM

It should be noted that the DEMOCRATIC wing of the Democratic Party was gearing up in early 2004 to fight George Bush -- by backing Howard Dean.

But in focusing on the Republican enemy in front of us we forget to watch our rear -- and were shot in the back by the Israel Lobby.

By billionaire S Daniel Abraham's barrage of TV Attack ads in the Iowa primary that put up pictures of Bin Laden and said Dean was too soft to fight terrorism.

By former AIPAC chairman and Dean's OWN CAMPAIGN ADVISOR Steve Grossman telling the news media that Dean should pack it in if Dean didn't win the Wisconsin primary -- the night BEFORE the primary.

So instead we got John Kerry --a candidate who was hopelessly tongue-tied because he had sold his ass to so many interest groups he couldn't tell you the time of day without making 20 caveats. A man who voted for the Iraq invasion before he voted against it.

The Israel Lobby once more dragged the Democratic Party over the cliff to defeat, condemned us to suffer 4 more years of Bush/Cheney -- and condemned another 2000 American soldiers to death.

But ,hey, they took care of Israel. Or at least they think they did.

Posted by Don Williams | August 28, 2007 8:49 AM

You have to remember that the US was facing an existential threat in 2001.

James Jeffords stopped caucusing with the GOP, and delivered control of the Senate to the Democrats. In 2002, mid-term elections threatened to cement that change, and perhaps deliver the House to the Democrats as well.

Something had to be done -- and the war in Iraq was it. The run-up to the war delivered the midterms, the war itself the 2004 elections.

Mission Accomplished!

Posted by Davis X. Machina | August 28, 2007 8:50 AM

"The problem is that this line attack was always simply not reality based. We didn't have "Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains". That's just a flat out lie. And we didn't have any significant number of "American military forces nearby and in the field". That's a lie also. And the fundamental point is that it was impossible to put our troops in Tora Bora in the significant numbers that it would take and in the time frame necessary to trap OBL. The Left seems to have this idea that we could magically teleport a gigantic number of troops to Tora Bora. But, sorry Reality Based Community, magical teleportation doesn't exist. Out here in the real world it would take a long, long time to get a huge number of troops to Tora Bora. And it only takes a couple of days for OBL to go to Pakistan.

Posted by Al | August 28, 2007 7:47 AM "

Al, if this is true, then really, what was the point of going into Afghanistan. If we would completely fail no matter what to capture bin Laden due to unfortunate logistics, doesn't that mean we should never have invaded in the first place if we couldn't have succeeded? Tell me Al, considering you believe that 1,000 on horseback can outrun the American Air Force, were you for or against that war? Considering how you seem to believe that willpower alone will give us a liberal democracy in Iraq, knocking other people for their lack of supposed realism is an exercise in self-parody.

Posted by Reality Man | August 28, 2007 9:48 AM

Kerry couldn't quite overcome that, though the vicious and viciously unfair attacks against his war record did a lot of damage as well. In future years, if Republicans have any shame at all, they will be ashamed of 2004.Posted by Alan Vanneman

The "poor John Kerry, who Loves and Supports the Troops as he Was a Hero Himself" story line got pretty tattered, pretty fast. He left his safe sanctuary of Massachusetts, which has the 3rd lowest rate of volunteering for the US military -and he was not called out on his lies - out into that portion of America where Vets are respected.

And those people don't take well to people that fly into Paris while still a commissioned Navy officer and toast enemy NVA and VC at a luncheon, or who lied about his exploits, or who make up medals to get out of Vietnam. Or who was reviled and detested as a treacherous sleaze by his fellow officers.

John Kerry was invited to sue each Swift Boat Vet that accused him, by those former officers, so that they could finally see those portions of John Kerry's naval records that have been concealed for 35 years. The nature of his original discharge, his full SF-180.

Kerry refused.

It is now part of the aproved Democrat and MSM narrative that Kerry the Hero was smeared. That doesn't make it the truth.

What the Swift Boat Vets did was redeem the valor and honor Kerry and his Lefty ilk stole from Vietnam Vets. They heightened public awareness of Kerry's long record of sliming the soldiers over the years, and wrecked his 2004 chances and his 2008 comeback attempt ("Study and work hard, otherwise you could end up being stuck in Iraq!") The Swifties partially rehabilitated the Vets from Hollywood and the Lefty-Jewish dominated MSM 35 year-long depiction of them as heavily minority,hapless drug-addled losers committing mass atrocities and 1st being outsmarted by the morally superior VC, then living in substance-abusing homeless criminal misery beset by "flashbacks".

When the leaders of the Swifties now speak at Veteran's meetings, they get standing ovations for helping reclaim the Vietnam Vet's honor and valor Kerry&Co stole from them. Even the more "liberal Democratic" Vets now believe the Swift Vets did everyone who served in Vietnam a huge service for their reputations by taking on Kerry.

My advice to Democrats is to drop it. It did no good trying to reclaim the seditious Copperheads as misunderstood, good Democrats after the Civil War.

And to stop using their Lefty-Jewish assets in the MSM to try and turn "Swift-Boating" into a false metaphor for actions like honorable, high ranking Navy officers testifying under oath about "War Hero Kerry", simply being slander and partisan lies.
Their charges were not refuted.

But, the effort to "get" Bush on his Reserve service introduced us to "fake, but accurate" forged documents. And the public to realizing the Lefty-Jewish concept that news facts and documents do not have to be authentic if they serve the "justice and progressive path" of the proper narrative. That entertainment products should help indoctrinate the masses in "correct beliefs".

And the public is now buying less of their product, knowing that the news and the entertainment is now loaded with hidden agenda...

As Evan Thomas of "Newsweek" said of the innocent Lacrosse players and why guilt was assumed by the Kefty-Jewish dominated media - "The facts were wrong, but the narrative (we attempted to follow) was absolutely correct."

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Posted by Chris Ford | August 28, 2007 9:49 AM

Wow, Chris Ford gets weirder and weirder with every post. He's starting more and more to sound like a weirdo living alone in the woods writing a manifesto.

Posted by Reality Man | August 28, 2007 10:00 AM

What the Swift Boat Vets did was redeem the valor and honor Kerry and his Lefty ilk stole from Vietnam Vets.

Who knew that becoming lying Republican attack dogs could redeem the honor of Vietnam vets?

Posted by Col Bat Guano | August 28, 2007 10:13 AM

great post again Matt. Especially this:

"I think it's worth saying that it wasn't magically "impossible" to make this case in '04. Indeed, from time to time John Kerry made it. And those tended the most effective moments of his campaign. As in the first debate . . ."

HOWEVER, the problem was only partly fliflopping. The equally big problem was BAD political advice by Bob Shrum, who told Kerry to run on "kitchen table issues." The choice of John Edwards as VP candidate in 2004 was also a grave mistake as he lost the slot from which effective national security attacks could be launched.

I think We Clark would have been the right guy for the job.

Posted by Armando | August 28, 2007 10:32 AM

Al's good post - The problem is that this line attack was always simply not reality based. We didn't have "Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains". That's just a flat out lie. And we didn't have any significant number of "American military forces nearby and in the field". That's a lie also. And the fundamental point is that it was impossible to put our troops in Tora Bora in the significant numbers that it would take and in the time frame necessary

The Left, obsessed with pushing to the public that Osama is the Moby Dick of all Jihad, the CEO of all Islamic terror - also face a credibility problem in that people are moving away from THAT as well as not reality-based. Not just the Lefty theory that getting Binnie at Tora Bora would have been an "easy cakewalk", but that the do away with the "single evildoer" or give him to ACLU lawyers - theory of eliminating all conflict - is crap. Conflict is about Policy and Ideology not any individual.

And those that prefer simplistic personalization theory to understanding more complex realities of why war happens - can blame Bush for that, too. As Bush was as dumb as the Lefties in brushing aside all that confusing "ideology stuff" and personalizing foreign affairs and security.

Russia was OK, because he had met Putin, and knew his soul.

Saudi Arabia was great because he personally knew Prince Bandar. But N Korea was evil because he didn't like Kim il Jong - and knew this one single man was bad for "all those good NORK" guys..

Al Qaeda would be defeated, Bush said in 2001, as soon as bin Laden, "wanted Dead or Alive" was brought to justice...

It wasn't radical Islam that was the problem, it was that One Guy. Islam is the Religion of Peace that was just "hijacked" by the CEO of Evil...

The Victory in Iraq would be complete, Bush said, as soon as we round up "that one man behind it all", Saddam, and all the "dead enders" would stop their resistance because they would be "leaderless" without Saddam.
Of course that didn't happen. The Ba'athist insurgency quadrupled in size with Saddam's capture and his only sons getting whacked.

Then we heard how the AQ threat would end when the "indispensible leader", Zarqawi, was captured or killed.

Didn't happen.

Then Bush and lawyer-loving Democrats tell us all how important Saddam's trial was, and how the lawyers in robes were the absolute moral authority that all Iraqi's would worship as they decreed Saddam's fate and ushered in "the new democratic, peaceful Iraq, where rule of law and Court majesty is paramount". Nonsense. It was just victor's justice, outcome known well ahead of time. His execution with "the democratically selected People's Representatives" chanting the name of Sadr the Thug out wasn't exactly persuasive in showing "the wonderful new Iraq".

Nor did Saddam's execution have the slightest effect on the insurgency.

What HAS had an effect is shifting Sunni ideology and US troops now chasing and whacking AQ and insurgents instead of putzing around waiting for Iraqis to debate the "new Constitution" and such.

Despite all that, the Lefties still press their "Osama is the Moby Dick!!" line, and moan about how if only he was captured as fast as Saddam was, that all Jihad would stop and that locals would love the US once they saw our ACLU and Courts in action!

So important is the "Bush failed to get bin Laden!" theme to the Lefty partisan attack strategy that the magic young lad of guilty white liberal's dreams - Obama - articulately explained how he would attack nuclear Pakistan if that is what it took to "get" Moby Dick.

(That would have been huge if Rudy had said it, because people would have thought Rudy was actually serious. Pakistan settled back down as soon as they realized that Obama was in the ball-less anti-war pacifist section of the Dem Party, mentored by longtime "peace any any price" Lefties like Jan Schadowsky and David Israel. That Obama wasn't serious and as soon as he learned of the downside and casualties he would take on such a quest for Moby Dick, he'd slink away from his tough talk.)

Al was correct. The Tora Bora charges are a partisan crock. We now think he was no longer there when the heavy bombing started. Survivors that were interrogated said they last saw Binnie 5 days before the Americans began the full attack. We didn't have the troops to block anymore than two of the 12-15 passes leading back to Pakistan. We didn't have the intelligence to insert a blocking force - we had no idea if Bin Laden and the leaders were still at Tora Bora (we now believe they were not when the main attack started), we did not know the enemy strength that was on either side on any blocking force. We did know that AQ and the Taliban had longer range rifles and mortars than our guys did...With 20-20 hindsight, we could have tried our luck in two passes and pulled off 1/5th to 1/6th of our air assets pounding the main force at Tora Bora to cover them - but at the expense of lowering the amount of destruction on the main body of the enemy for the hope that "the CEO of all evil" as Dems say....was still there.

Which he apparantly wasn't. The most accepted story is that he and others like al-Zawahiri were in Kandahar when the US retaliated. Many mid-level AQ leaders were whacked there. Binnie and al-Zawahiri bailed for the mountains and sanctuary of the Pashtuns - but did not select Tora Bora as a good sanctuary since that location was well known to the Russians and Northern Alliance from past battles there. al-Zawahiri never went close to the place. Bin Laden had the balls to stop there on his way to his sanctuary of more remote Waziri villages to tell the AQ defenders at Tora Bora that "the Americans would soon likely attack them in force, the bombs falling for the past week were just the beginning, that they could beat the infidels when they came, but everyone who died defeating them and the Uzbeck apostates would go to Paradise, best of luck, see ya!, yadayada".

Posted by Chris Ford | August 28, 2007 10:50 AM

Erratum - David Axlerod is the peacenik Lefty advising Obama, not David Israel.

Posted by Chris Ford | August 28, 2007 10:54 AM

al, now that chris ford has entered our lives, all is forgiven!

but you're wrong, too: bush simply didn't care enough about afghanistan and capturing bin laden. whether or not we could have been sucessful at Tora Bora is unknowable, but it's certainly knowable how we stripped away key forces, intelligence assets, and attention from afghanistan to iraq.

Posted by howard | August 28, 2007 11:06 AM

Okay, I don't have a link to back this up, but, in fact, I believe Kerry WAS making this argument as early as the first part of '03. I distinctly recall a New Yorker article where Kerry articulated exactly the case he did in the debate -- it sticks in my mind because it was the first I'd heard anyone suggest that (and I know it was no later than January '03, as I discussed it at a family gathering prior to the Iraq invasion).

The problem was, it was impossible to break through the "Afghanistan was a complete and wonderful triumph" spin from the press. And,as others are pointing out, even though that spin was finally cracked, it still feels like 20/20 hindsight if you're only hearing the contrarian view now.

Posted by demtom | August 28, 2007 11:22 AM

It doesn't seem "reality based" to me to argue that shank's mare and donkeys can outrun fighter jets, attack helicopters, and B52 carpet bombing. That crowds of men on snow can't be seen by night vision googles on said helicopters or on Predators.

Yeah, it does seem intuitively obvious that in open conflict, victory should go to the side with overwhelming technological superiority. And yet.

Posted by Senescent | August 28, 2007 4:17 PM

As usual Chris Ford misrepresents why it is important to track down Osama bin Laden. It is not out of some misguided sense that Osama is the Dr Evil of jihadists; it's simply because he was the leader of the organization that actually attacked us, unlike the rest of the radical Islam that Chris the jihadist is so eager to fight with (even the parts that are at war with each other). Knowing that about Osama, a reasonable person (which Chris the jihadist clearly isn't) would conclude that getting Osama (either by capture of killing) should be a top priority of the war on terror.

BTW, Chris, the insurgency in Iraq has not decreased due to the surge. The Sunni Iraqi militias are still opposed to the Shite-dominated Bagdhad government; what has happened is that the Sunni for the time being have decided to prioritize their military efforts on getting Al Qaeda. However, it is extremely naive of you to believe that the Sunni insurgents in Iraq will not resume fighting against the Bagdhad government and the Sadr militias once they have finished dealing with Al Qaeda. After all, one of the side benefits of fighting against Al Qaeda is that the US military supplies you with arms, and not the crappy Soviet-era kind that the Baathists were used to, but arms made through good old-fashioned American industrial capitalistic know-how. You really think that these Sunnis aren't going to take this weapons and use them to ramp up the insurgency at a later date?

Moreover, you clearly agree that the priority of our military efforts should be to destroy Al-Qaeda. Why do you insist on limiting our efforts to AQ in Iraq, especially since both the Sunni & Shia in Iraq are ready & able to destroy Al Qaeda by themselves now? Shouldn't logic dictate that we have the Iraqis concentrate on destroying AQ in Iraq, while we resume our focus on destroying AQ in Afghanistan, like we should have done in the 1st place? Remember, we didn't follow AQ to Iraq; AQ followed us there.

Posted by eltoro | August 28, 2007 5:16 PM