Plan A

Kevin Drum, talking about Ricardo Sanchez, mentions the idea that "the Wolfowitz/Feith/Rumsfeld plan to immediately draw down to 30,000 troops and essentially abandon Iraq is pretty well known, though never officially acknowledged by the Bush administration to the best of my knowledge."

Clearly -- both in retrospect, at the time, and in advance to anyone with any sense -- this was a pretty stupid plan and couldn't possibly have worked. But given that the alternative hasn't worked either, wouldn't it possibly have been better if Bush had just listened to Rumsfeld? I've suspected for a while that a lot of pro-war Democrats basically expected that outcome -- "the war" would be a "success," and then there would be the giant postwar mess that average Americans didn't care much about because it didn't involve U.S. troops, and then guys like Ken Pollack would point out that they'd written articles saying that successful reconstruction "will likely require a presence of as many as 200,000 troops" for "one or two years" and claiming Bush ineptly screwed things up.

Comments

I mostly agree... but when you write that "the" alternative hasn't worked out I have to wonder.

There was more than one alternative, wasn't there? There's the policy we got, and there was also a view that the U.S. should have made a much larger commitment of troops in the first year - with troop to population ratios that looked more like what we did in the former Yugoslavia.

For a time, there was a debate about whether that would have worked. Given all the poison that we've seen pouring out over the past few years, perhaps that debate is now over; maybe even if we had more troops on the ground to restore order we would have seen a slow-motion civil war emerge. But is that now pretty much established?

I grant that, in some respects, this is an academic question - there wasn't significant political support for such a policy in 2003-2004. But it is important for deciding just what it is we learned from our experience.

Posted by TedL | May 4, 2008 10:03 AM

Gee, Matthew, as a pro-war Democrat, what the fuck WERE you thinking? Did you think that "the war" would be a "success" and then there would be the giant postwar mess that average Americans didn't care much about because it didn't involve U.S. troops?

Guess you were pretty confident there wouldn't be a draft to keep the peace in a "post-war" Iraq.

I guess Harvard doesn't teach its undergraduates anything about the American intervention in the Philippines, British adventures in south and east Africa or French adventures in Algeria.

What DO they teach people there, anyway?

Posted by calipygian | May 4, 2008 10:04 AM

What's funny (not in a hah hah sense, but in a "those Dems are sure fucked up sense) is that, to the extent that this "defense" of the Dems is accurate (and it sure as hell wouldn't surprise me), it makes the Dems even more darkly evil than the almost satanically evil administration. I mean, it's bad enough to rape a country and kill innocents in support of geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East, but how much worse is it to support such abominations for merely political reasons?

That's one reason why, of all the commenters on this blog, Petey is by far the biggest moral monster, narrowly beating out Chris Ford. Even Al and Fred are comparative bastions of morality compare to the odious Petey.

Posted by LarryM | May 4, 2008 10:13 AM

LarryM: "That's one reason why, of all the commenters on this blog, Petey is by far the biggest moral monster, narrowly beating out Chris Ford. Even Al and Fred are comparative bastions of morality compare to the odious Petey."

I wouldn't go that far... but yeah, there's a reason Petey was Edwards 2004's #1 supporter now turned Clinton 2008's #1 supporter.

Posted by Korha | May 4, 2008 10:20 AM

First, calipygian said. No reason to be reading other people's minds when you can report what your own said.

Second, if "pro-war Democrat" means "voted for the AUMF," it's pretty clear that the vote involved political calculation involving not being portrayed as weak or soft on defense.

Third, I think it's important to remember Tommy Friedman's "suck on this" approach to post 9/11 foreign policy. I think that kind of temperate, long-term thinking was share in the foreign policy establishment of the time.

Seriously, Matt, what were you thinking? What made you think this was anything other than a disaster in the making? Did you believe in candy and flowers, with Chalabi ruling over a ethnically diverse populace singing joyous choruses of "It's a Small World After All"?

Posted by jayackroyd | May 4, 2008 10:23 AM

I was an anti-war Democrat from the beginning, and that's basically what I expected to happen: Saddam would be overthrown, the Bush administration would pick some convenient point to declare "victory" (or maybe "Mission Accomplished") and offer to hand the whole thing off to NATO or the UN or someone, and then when everything went to hell it would be someone else's problem, which the American people would gladly go along with. Or else NATO or the UN or whoever would tell the U.S. to go to hell, in which case it would be their fault for not helping us, they loved Saddam anyway because of his corrupt oil deals, etc. and the American people would gladly go along with that too.

Posted by Ted | May 4, 2008 10:23 AM

And on the immorality of the Democrats, using the occupation for political purposes, it is pretty clear from stuff Schumer has said that the leadership is not willing to fight a battle to end the occupation if the Republicans do not provide significant, concrete support for doing so.

After the 06 midterms he expressed confidence that the troop presence would be reduced, because of pressure from the republican legislators who would see the risk of being out of office, given the 06 results, if they didn't act.

They haven't. They own the war. As Lousiana and Mississippi have just demonstrated, because of that, no seat is safe. The Democrats supine response to lockstep republican voting is deeply immoral, and political. They could have stopped this by forcing a spending confrontation. But they preferred to rack up political capital with the populace.

Posted by jayackroyd | May 4, 2008 10:50 AM

> I was an anti-war Democrat from the beginning,
> and that's basically what I expected to happen:
> Saddam would be overthrown, the Bush
> administration would pick some convenient point
> to declare "victory" (or maybe "Mission
> Accomplished") and offer to hand the whole thing
> off to NATO or the UN or someone, and then when
> everything went to hell it would be someone else's
> problem, which the American people would gladly
> go along with.

Which is essentially said in letters to my three congressmen asking them to vote against the AUMF at the time. But the Radical Right has now pounded home the meme that "no one predicted battle victory followed by chaos/insurgency at the time", and most of the traditional media is too shamefaced to be able to dissent from that meme, so it is becoming conventional antiwisdom.

But I will also point out that it was win/win for Cheney/PNAC: a subservient Iraq would serve their goals, but pure chaos in the Middle East also serves their goals. So I don't think Cheney at least is unhappy with what has come to pass.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | May 4, 2008 10:51 AM

Actually, I'm not too familiar with this chain of events. If quick withdrawal was the original plan, what happened to it and how did it get derailed? Was Cheney not on board? Bush? And for what: democracy promotion, oil, terrorism, something else? What did the Bush Administration think it had to gain by keeping a large troop presence in Iraq?

Posted by Korha | May 4, 2008 10:56 AM

Gee, Matthew, as a pro-war Democrat, what the fuck WERE you thinking?...Guess you were pretty confident there wouldn't be a draft to keep the peace in a "post-war" Iraq.

Well, I've been reading poor Matt's blog for quite a number of years now, and I strongly recall that the huge change in Matt's War thinking occurred exactly when talk began about a draft being needed to attack and occupy Iran, and Matt started saying how much he really hated the idea of being drafted into very unpleasant occupation duties...

And unlike during the Civil War, we probably wouldn't allow wealthy trust-fundees to just hire personal "stand-ins" for the army...

Posted by RKU | May 4, 2008 10:57 AM

CO

In a recent dead tree Atlantic column by Goldberg (being wrong, rewarded again and again) he quotes Feith as saying instability in Iraq would not necessarily be a bad thing. As long as there is no legitimate government, the US can justify its military presence. And if there ever were a legitimate government, the US would be booted out in no time.

I don't think handing the keys over to Iran was the plan, though.

Posted by jayackroyd | May 4, 2008 10:57 AM

Well, I've been reading poor Matt's blog for quite a number of years now, and I strongly recall that the huge change in Matt's War thinking occurred exactly when talk began about a draft being needed to attack and occupy Iran, and Matt started saying how much he really hated the idea of being drafted into very unpleasant occupation duties

That's really false. My thinking started to change when U.N. inspectors were on the ground in Iraq and the administration was itching for war anyway. That's when I (belatedly) realized that all my shrill friends were right, and Bush was probably lying about everything, and my "sophisticated" argument that Daschle, Gephardt, Clinton, Albright, Holbrooke, Biden, etc. wouldn't be going along with this unless the secret intelligence was really sound was incredibly silly and naive.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | May 4, 2008 11:00 AM

(via tristero at Hullabaloo) Here are the "nine experts on military affairs" that the NYT op-ed page selected to look back on the 5th anniversary of Mission Accomplished to suggest one problem and one solution.

Nathaniel Fick, Anthony H. Cordesman, Frederick Kagan, Paul D. Eaton, L. Paul Bremer III, Danielle Pletka, Richard Perle, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kenneth M. Pollack

A few former officers and a group of academic war supporters. No "experts" who were expert enough to oppose the Iraq War from the outset. What a disgraceful effort from the NYT op-ed page.

Posted by joejoejoe | May 4, 2008 11:02 AM

Note: Cordsman is smart, Gen. Eaton served in the Iraq War, Fick is a young literary Marine, the rest couldn't invade a Dairy Queen and leave with a small vanilla cone.

Posted by joejoejoe | May 4, 2008 11:09 AM

Unless they were living in caves, people who opposed the war, any protestations of concern for the welfare of Iraqis aside, were quite willing to fund Baathist despotism until the end of time, along with all the other despots of the Persian Gulfs.

There aren't any blood-free hands, belonging to anyone who has aspired to a standard of living greater than that enjoyed by a typical human being, prior to the 19th century. Anybody reading this on a computer has been a happy participant, for his or her entire life, in the theft of oil belonging to people of the Persian Gulf. Dick Cheney just doesn't lie to himself as much.

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 11:12 AM

That's really false.

Matthew is correct here. And really Matthew does himself a bit of a disservice when he refers to himself as a supporter of the war at the time, because by the time the war actually started he wasn't. He deserves criticism for his initial stance, especially since the point at which liberal anti-war voices could have made a difference was at the time of voting on the AUMF, and, of course, from a non-interventionist perspective he deserves criticism for clinging to the hegemonic consensus, but he really was one of the first of the liberal hawks to see the light on Iraq.

Posted by LarryM | May 4, 2008 11:16 AM

The very worst thing about the "sophisticated" argument, even if Cheney's worst wet dream about Iraq were true, even if Saddam had a nuclear weapon, even if he had a way to deliver it (I mean beyond MiG-21s converted to "killer drones" launched from rust-bucket merchant ships from just outside our territorial waters), is that a crude nuclear device going off in our country would destroy our democracy as we know it.

Cheney's world view (and your "sophisticated argument" world view) assumes that all that stands between the Constitution and Brutal Anarchy is a truck-delivered 10kt nuclear strike in the heart of DC.

That reveals a lot about the psychology of our elites and much of our population - that our democracy is so fragile that a 9/11 type event has the potential to break it. In that sense, Cheney and Bin Laden have the same sense, and that sense is shared by "the Liberal Hawks". All the lies lead one to conclude that the American government acted out of weakness and not out of strength in Iraq.

I do not share that sense and I think it is a fundamentally cowardly world view.

The lies, exaggerations and mis-statements regarding Iraq and 9/11 all assume one thing - that in a world where a nine year old kid can't take the NYC subway without his mother being charged with child endagerment, the American people are too stupid, immature and frightened to stand up for their rights and for what is right in times of crisis.

And the Liberal Hawks bought into that hook, line and sinker.

I prefer not to think of America and Americans like that. Maybe I'm wrong.

Posted by calipygian | May 4, 2008 11:18 AM

> Unless they were living in caves, people who
> opposed the war, any protestations of concern for
> the welfare of Iraqis aside, were quite willing to
> fund Baathist despotism until the end of time,
> along with all the other despots of the Persian
> Gulfs.

Ah, the utter lack of concern for unanticipated side effects stemming from manly Direct Action(tm) and beehive-stirring so dear to the black hearts of the Radical Right. How are things working out for women in Iraq right now? That's 50% of the population I think.

And what, exactly, _is_ the Bush Family's relationship with the Saudi Royal Family?

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | May 4, 2008 11:20 AM

will, you don't intimidate me in the slightest with your 11:12 comment: i was totally prepared to allow life to go on in iraq exactly the way it had been and it doesn't make in the slightest a moral monster. the notion that if you don't believe that it is incumbent upon us to enter into the moral quagmire of making war because there are despots in the world is exceedingly childish. (and dick cheney, a true thug, does lie to himself, all the time. he believes he is a civilized man.)

but i posted not to respond to will allen's childishness, and not even to wonder why it is that some poor souls feel better because they can express their moral superiority over matthew, but to note that it's not true that there was no public acknowledgement of the plan to go down to 30K troops. there was a pentagon analyst (whose name keeps escaping me) who testified to congress right after the invasion and revealed that the war was being planned/budgeted on an intent to go to 30K troops in september.

Posted by howard | May 4, 2008 11:23 AM

callipygian, you may wish to educate yourself about various very high government officials in FDR'S Administration, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, calling for an essentially genocidal attack on the Japanese population. These proposals were well received, and the only thing that prevented it was the U.S. lacking the means.

There is nothing quite as bloodthirsty as an enraged population which controls a powerful military.

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 11:26 AM

@Will Allen - Yes, Iraq today is a HELLUVA lot better now than under Saddam. Lets imagine an America that is as good as Iraq is today:

http://www.juancole.com/2004/09/if-america-were-iraq-what-would-it-be.html

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, including in the capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco?

What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria?

What if all the reporters for all the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National Guard units?

There are estimated to be some 25,000 guerrillas in Iraq engaged in concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities?

Hells YEAH! Sign me up! Much better than under Saddam!

Posted by calipygian | May 4, 2008 11:28 AM

The irony of someone who puts forth the notion that photons traveling through fiberoptic cable, transmitting nary a threat, might, in some imagined circumstance, be "intimidating", while accusing others of childishness, is almost amusing.

Keep lyin' to youself, howard, ya' ol' phony, you.

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 11:34 AM

Will - and why exactly did an American population, enraged by the 9/11 attacks, want genocidal retribution visited upon Iraq?

Just curious...

I guess it didn't have anything to do with a sophisticated propaganda campaign waged by the White House in conjuction with powerful business interests who used the American people's thirst for revenge for their own cynical ends.

Nah...

Posted by calipygian | May 4, 2008 11:36 AM

callypygian, you apparently have consumed a hallucinogenic agent, and thus have concluded that I made a claim which pertained to your pointless cut and paste. Let me know when the effects have worn off, and I'll be happy to engage you.

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 11:40 AM

First, on the Republican side, there were different kinds of pro-war conservatives, and they had different kinds of reasons for supporting plans for only minimal postwar commitment to Iraq.

Some of them actually believed that the whole thing would be so easy that no major postwar stabilization operation would be necessary. The traumatized Saddam-hating natives would shout, "Hail, America!", hand us the wicked witch's broomstick, and we would be on our merry way to Iran and Syria.

Some of them weren't so optimistic, but just didn't care much about any postwar calamities that Iraq might suffer. The point of the war was to send a violent, shocking and awe-inspiring message to America's enemies. The more postwar suffering and deprivation, the better. The war was a punishment, not a rehabilitation project. It was supposed to hurt.

You might say, "Wouldn't turning Iraq into a anarchic basket case provide conditions for the breeding of more terrorists?" to which some on the right would have countered that the latter is a liberal theory of the causes of international terrorism. The vindictive right's theory was "evildoers + state sponsorship = real capability and global reach." They were believers in the omnipotence of state power, and were also in up to their brainpans in Laurie Mylroie-style conspiracy theories about Iraqi support for terrorism. The only reason we had to worry about some Islamic terrorists, they thought, was that those terrorists had significant state sponsorship. If we smashed up all of the offending states, you might be left with a certain number of angry jihadists, true enough. But without their state sponsors, it was thought, these characters would be reduced to a fuming and incompetent rabble of impotent bumpkins.

These views about all-encompassing importance of centralized state power also influenced those who thought postwar reconstruction would be easy. Some thought all you needed to do was use the newly privatized Iraqi oil business to create a small, elite ruling class of wealthy technocrats, owing their positions to US power - whether Chalabi and his little gang, or someone else - and the latter would be able to take care of the submissive and superstitious masses without much trouble. Mixed in with all of this were a lot of Israeli-influenced theories about the "Arab mind". Arabs were said to be an inherently cowardly, shame-driven and submissive lot, who were impressed by nothing so much as sheer power, and could be driven into a state of depressed paralysis by the infliction of humiliation.

Posted by Dan Kervick | May 4, 2008 11:42 AM

Will -

You are dumb.

Posted by calipygian | May 4, 2008 11:43 AM

Peyote or mushrooms, calipygian?

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 11:44 AM

Will Allen - I'm sure the Japanese people love your definition of restraint. They had two atomic bombs dropped on their country. The only means we lacked to deliver our retribution were ICBMs, a problem we solved by kicking Japan off of every island in the Pacific except their own and THEN dropping the bomb on them with a conventional bomber flown from Tinian.

Whatever your definition of bloody hands or complicity in crimes, the NYT should have bloody handed Sunni dictator loving leftists or whatever you call them on to balance Richard Perle. If you reached into a bucket full of Americans equally divided on whether the war was a good idea or not in October '02 the odds of coming out with 9 war supporters like the ones published on the NYT op-ed page would be less than 1%.

Posted by joejoejoe | May 4, 2008 11:47 AM

Will - let me know when you become a human being and not a smug, condescending, Cheney-ass-licking, bastard and I'll be happy to engage you.

Posted by calipygian | May 4, 2008 11:52 AM

joejoejoe, you apparently are of he belief that the summer of 1945 fits the description "in the wake of Pearl Harbor". That's really not how I view that phrase. If the U.S. had been able to build 50 atomic bombs, and the means to deliver them, by the summer of 1942, it is likely that at least 25 Japanese cities would have been incinerated in one fell swoop.

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 11:56 AM

Well, you're showing improvement calipygian. Good luck!

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 12:03 PM

Will Allen - Silly me! How could I have viewed our war with Japan as a response to Pearl Harbor? Thanks for straightening me out.

Posted by joejoejoe | May 4, 2008 12:11 PM

joejoejoe, why is reading the thread so monumentally difficult? I never claimed the our war with Japan was not response to Pearl Harbor. I stated that in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack (I'm very sorry I didn't write "immediate wake") many high officials in FDR's Administration called for the complete destruction of, as they frequently put it, "the Japanese race". These statements were for the most part well received, and the only reason they weren't acted upon in 1942 is because the U.S. lacked the means in 1942 to completeley destroy the Japanese people.

I wrote this in response calipygian's take on the probable effect of the nuclear destruction of an American city, which I thought demonstrated a profound ignorance of history. Clear enough?

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 12:22 PM

> The vindictive right's theory was
> "evildoers + state sponsorship = real
> capability and global reach."

There was/is also the element of "the United States needs to prove it is a bigger bully to inspire more fear", which is a constant drumbeat on the Radical Right.

Exactly how borrowing $1 trillion from the (still Communist) People's Republic of China to beat up on a weak country, and doing a very poor job of it [*], helps the US inspire more fear I am not quite sure.

Cranky

[*] For the record, I do not refer to the Army/Marine's performance in the first 6 weeks. As expected they did a very professional job of achieving exactly the goals set out for them. I expected no less at the time.

Posted by Cranky Observer | May 4, 2008 12:24 PM

Will Allen's insane description of events is typical of his tribe of warmongers. He couches his assault in humanitarian terms in spite of the fact that he is perfectly willing to have the Iraqis murdered simply for not having the government he wants. After all, their oil isn't just a natural resource they happen to have, it is also a resource he believes the United States has a right to control. Any time Will Allen uses humanitarianism as a shield, he's just lying.

Will, you total fucking moron, the Iraqis are far worse off than they were before your tribe started dropping bombs on their heads. The rate of violent death has skyrocketed. The government is a disaster. You and your tribe are responsible for this. You voted for the worst possible candidate - twice. The blood of hundreds of thousands is on your hands.

Even if your thick-headed and abusive claim that everyone has blood on their hands was true, it still doesn't absolve you for your complicity in making things much, much worse, you evil fuck.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | May 4, 2008 12:46 PM

Yeah, meathead, and you were quite willing to have them murdered, until the end of time, to keep the price of oil as low as possible, by funding the despot best able to get the oil extracted. You just favor lying to yourself about it, because, in the final analysis, there is nothing nearly as important to you than your self-regard.

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 1:04 PM

If that theory is true, then a lot of pro-war democrats are even more naive than I thought.
It was pretty clear from the get-go that Bush intended to establish a permanent, massive, US military presence in Iraq. The plans for that embassy and the military bases didn't get drawn up overnight. That military presence was never going to involve only 30,000 or so troops. It was always going to require several times that number.

Posted by flory | May 4, 2008 1:19 PM

flory, what puzzles me is what game Rumsfeld was playing, unless it was simply providing a means for him to claim that he wanted a different path, no matter what inevitable horrible outcomes came to pass. He's probably a sophisticated enough liar to forever obscure whatever his true intentions were; I wouldn't put it past him to have kept more than one journal.

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 1:33 PM

joejoejoe

You need to get your facts straight about World War II. I learned a lifetime of history lessons from the "War" series. I think the most startling fact was that even after the second atomic bomb was dropped, the Japanese government was still "considering" the option of surrender.

It is hard to fathom the mindset of the Japanese and culture during World War II. However, with each battle, the Americans learned certain facts about the Japanese military. The act of surrendering was tantamount to humiliation and death. On the island of Saipan, the Japanese military forced thousands of civilians to kill themselves rather than giving up. You had Japanese commanders committing suicide after losing a battle, and suicidal pilots diving into American ships.

Both the civilian and military leadership knew that the invasion of Japan would kill not only hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, but millions of Japanese civilians would die. One of the most telling segments focused on an American POW in Japan. After the first atomic bomb was dropped, his Japanese guards told him to dig his grave. Once Nagasaki was devastated, his military captors walked away, and he was free.

Posted by EWard | May 4, 2008 2:10 PM

The problem with your answer fuckwit is that you are quite willing to have them murdered, until the end of time, to keep the price of oil as low as possible, by funding the despot best able to get the oil extracted.

The difference is, that your despot is George W. Bush and his murderous regime is far more brutal by virtue of its indifference to the welfare of the Iraqi people.

You can't win this argument dipshit. There is no objective standard by which you can claim that the Iraqi people are better off after your brutal pogrom than they were before. Iraq now has all of the problems it had under the status quo and has an even more devastated infrastructure, a 16%+ displacement rate, and a massive violent death rate.

That is the Will Allen gift to the Iraqi people.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | May 4, 2008 2:11 PM

Well, if I'm wrong that the main "inflection point" in Matt's war-concerns came just when he began complaining about his fear of getting drafted for an Iran War, then I'm wrong. It was several years ago, and my memory might certainly be playing tricks on me...but it's also possible that Matt's memory might be doing the same to him!

On the other hand, as "Hack" endlessly points out, these days Matt seems to be extremely "cautious" in denouncing the worthless Democrats in their endless AIPAC-bought sabre-rattling on Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons threat. This might---or might not---have something to do with the fact that talk of a draft having disappeared over the last couple of years.

On a slightly related point, Calipygian's point is a very good one:

That reveals a lot about the psychology of our elites and much of our population - that our democracy is so fragile that a 9/11 type event has the potential to break it.

Consider that all during the 1970s and 1980s, there was a vast and highly organized wave of highly organized terrorist activity in the leading countries of Western Europe, which included the assassinations of national leaders in Germany and Italy, a near-miss at killing the entire political leadership of Britain, and numerous terrorist bombings of public places. With the exception of the one (admittedly huge but totally isolated) 9/11 attack, nothing remotely like that has happened in America, but the national hysteria among our NYC/DC political/media elite is utterly disproportionate.

Or consider the pre-WWI era in Europe, during which top national leaders of numerous major countries were regularly being assassinated in organized plots, but life generally went on without America's totally bizarre domestic "anti-terrorism" hysteria.

And although I'm not a historian, my strong impression is that the Roosevelt Administration pretty deliberately provoked the Japanese into attacking in WWII, so although the resultant mass hysteria certainly extended to the public---e.g. anti-Japanese views in CA---I'd hardly think it applied to Roosevelt or his chief advisors.

Posted by RKU | May 4, 2008 2:32 PM

Will: Peyote or mushrooms, calipygian?

“When Rabbit said, `Honey or condensed milk with your bread?' he was so excited that he said, `Both,' and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, `But don't bother about the bread, please.'”

Figuring true plans of the Administration concerning Iraq is perhaps a futile pursuit. For certain reasons, Administration -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and assorted hanger-ons -- wanted the war. There were also sceptics, like Powell and Shalikashvili. The sly trick that the sceptics attempted was to present careful plans that would render the invasion impossible. E.g. estimate that we need 200k troops, and calculate that there is no way we can get that many from the current force structure.

Busheviks invented a trick to finesse the finesse of the sceptics: planning was basically outlawed. If you tried to plan, you were out of the loop. Voila! Besides, how complicated it can be to take control over a piddling country that was, until then, run by an incompetent tyrant? One cannot help but do a better job. Planning is for wussies. At least, in this case, it was only wussies who were planning.

Perhaps some of you will recognize this quotation: "Nie strashny nam ni priessa ni vietier" (basically, it from a ballad about the king who decided to invade an alien country, so he got a blessing of his wife, "Hit them hard, or you will get a reputation of a pacifist", collected the troops, announced "We are not afraid of media and elements" and off they went. That's leadership. Then they returned with an enormous bag of gingerbread, minus some sad soldiers who were not happy anyway. Americans somehow lack popular sarcastic songs.)

Posted by piotr | May 4, 2008 2:37 PM

Hey, Meathead? How many screeching voices do you hear in your head? Here's a news bulletin; George Bush will have no power in eight months, so you can probably reduce the Thorazine dosage by next winter.

Keep lyin' to yourself, spittle-boy (or girl).

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 2:46 PM

if i remember correctly, pre-war, rumfeld really thought that he could have the troops in and out by october. however, between the fact that the wmd search was taking longer than expected and bremer's actions with de-baathing and disbanding quickly left that idea untenable. Sanchez's book states that rumsfeld had NO plan for reconstruction. hench, the clusterf#ck that followed.

as i sidebar, i've noticed that while dough feith, during his current book tour, said that bremer's actions took him by surprise, fred kaplan is his new book states that feith typed up the orders and told bremer to sign them. i'd sure like to get to the bottom of that dispute.

Posted by dj spellchecka | May 4, 2008 3:01 PM

Poor Will, he's unable to argue on the facts, so he claims all those able to see what a bloodthirsty bastard he is are insane. Not much of a technique, but when you are trying to argue for brutalizing the Iraqi people, you don't really have much to start.

So, bloodthirsty Will, explain how George W. Bush's departure makes any difference? Will Iraqis suddenly have electricity? Will their infrastructure magically be restored? Will they have homes?

Face facts you braindead thug - you helped murder Iraqis so you could steal their oil. No amount of pretending moral equivalence with those of us who opposed your genocidal plans will change that.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | May 4, 2008 3:41 PM

Well, regarding Iraqi casualties, let's consider a few numbers.

The anti-Iraq people endlessly touted the claim that Saddam's regime had murdered 300K people, which---since they totally lied about everything else---is probably enormously exaggerated. But even so, since he was in power for about 30 years, that comes to just 10K victims per year.

On the other hand, detailed surveys have indicated that we've already caused the deaths of well over 1M innocent Iraqis, or probably around 20-30 times Saddam's rate of killings.

Offhand, a factor of 20 or 30 seems pretty large to me, but maybe I'm missing something...

Posted by RKU | May 4, 2008 4:04 PM

RKU, you are missing the bloodlust that is the natural right of all apologists for George W. Bush's slaughter of Iraqis. Notice how the greatest proponents of the conflict can't address the issue of what's happening now in Iraq? Note how those mindless thugs keep trying to claim that they were right because doing nothing was bad? They don't want to talk about what their "let's do something, anything, even if it is much, much worse than doing nothing" attitude has wrought. That's because they don't care about the Iraqi people - it is all about sticking it to those they consider outside their little tribe of warmongers.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | May 4, 2008 4:42 PM

Matt: "My thinking started to change when U.N. inspectors were on the ground in Iraq and the administration was itching for war anyway."

And what do you have to say about IRAN NOW?

Nothing.

I thought so.

You're a ball less wonder, Matt.

You can't answer my two questions on Iran - or Dan Kervick's three - without blowing your cover as a "liberal internationalist" and screwing your book sales.

You're a hypocrite, Matt, like Josh Marshall.

Personally, I'd shoot myself if I were as intellectually dishonest.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 4, 2008 4:45 PM

Joejoejoe: "the rest couldn't invade a Dairy Queen and leave with a small vanilla cone."

He wins the thread.

Reminds me of the line in one of Steven Seagal's movies where a henchmen asks Kris Kristofferson if they should take Seagal out, and Kris says, "You couldn't take out a Big Mac and fries!"

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 4, 2008 4:49 PM

RKU makes an important point: The US has never experienced chronic terrorism to the degree many other countries have.

And in fact, if it did, our "democracy" would be over in 24 hours.

The rest of the world distrusts its states because it has histories of those states behaving badly to their citizens. This includes all the major "democracies" such as Britain, Germany, Italy, France, etc., let alone the second tier and Third World countries.

It does not include the US, where we have this mythic fantasy that "our state" can do no wrong, certainly not to its own citizens.

And that's totally wrong, and a dangerous mindset when faced with either internal or external terrorism. Because ANY action the US government takes when attacked will then be justified to the citizenry no matter how much damage it does to that citizenry, the economy, civil rights, etc.

This was demonstrated by 9/11 with clarity. The over-reaction was insane, the acceptance by the population equally so.

Now fast forward to the upcoming war on Iran. We won't have to fast forward far since that war will occur in the next three to six months.

At some point, Iran, having determined that the US is going to keep attacking it no matter what until the Khuzestan oil is seized and regime change effected, Iran will eventually unleash the asymmetrical war option which they excel at.

They will send a hundred or more agents to the US equipped with the barest essentials for terrorism: some hand grenades, AK's with plenty of ammo, and plenty of Semtex.

Those hundred agents could bring the US to its knees within three to six months.

The list of easy operations that could be done by a few men to shut down at least ten or twenty major cities in this country is long. I don't have space here to list them all, but essentially all it requires is killing a few Americans in the right places. A few car bombs, a few snipers, a few massacres of crowds - that is all it takes - as long as it becomes CHRONIC, not just once.

Terrorism is effective only when it is CHRONIC. 9/11 was an aberration. The sort of terrorism experienced in Turkey or Italy in the 1970's is systemic. It cripples.

Engage that sort of terrorism in the US and the public will be screaming for martial law by the end of the week. And the administration will respond. Your civil rights will evaporate. Your Constitution will be eviscerated. You will have National Guard troops on every street corner - and they will be totally useless. The economy will collapse. Your taxes will rise even further - and they will go directly to the oil companies and the military-industrial complex.

Rely on your law enforcement and counterintelligence to capture and kill the Iranians? Sure.

Unlike Al Qaeda, whose maximum force including all national franchises is maybe 18,000, Iran will never run out of terrorists. They have 125,000 IRGC, 400,000 regular Army, and anywhere from 400,000 to 11 million Basij militia they can draw on to recruit and train terrorists and send them over here (and into Iraq, by the way). Smuggling people into the US is not that hard. The drug smuggling operations can be piggybacked, and they have an excellent operational record.

Yes, the US national psyche is extremely fragile. Within a year of Iran unleashing terrorism on the US, the US will be dropping nukes on Iran and truly starting a "clash of civilizations."

And then the REAL terrorist wave will start, fueled by every Muslim nation on earth. The US will have to build a "Berlin Wall" or "Israeli Wall" around the entire North American continent to keep them out. Not to mention that any US citizen - military or not - outside US borders will be a target.

All this just so Bush's oil cronies and Cheney's military-industrial complex cronies can make a buck.

This is what you're looking at coming this year.

And Matt can't comment because it's Iran and he's already looked stupid on Iraq.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 4, 2008 5:15 PM

I was 1000% against the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It never was really a war. It was the mighty US military in mobile operations against the Flintstones for Gods sake.

I had no clue how it would be bad after Saddam slipped away, as he was sure to do. I only knew it would be bad. In any case I never imagined us leaving as the opportunity to establish gigantic air bases in the Gulf was just too tempting to pass up. To the extent I thought about it I thought they would keep the Army intact and keep the Sunnis in charge, once they denounced Saddam of course. That is the only way you can ever stabilize such a place. Make the new boss the same as the old boss. After all they know how to keep a lid on. Besides, the Shia are really our most reliable bogey man, save the nutty Osama. Our Saudi friends hate them, the Turks too, and I could go on.

Well the old guard were swept aside with the disbanding of the army and the entire governmental structure. Nobody has yet claimed the responsibility for that decision. To make it year 1 in Iraq like some mad conservative version of the Khemr Rouge.

So I was totally wrong on the details big and small, except it's a mess and we have those gigantic bases. Oh, and one other thing. Piles and piles, mountains of dead bodies. That was always part of the plan. Revenge.

Posted by rapier | May 4, 2008 5:57 PM

And yet there is a class of moron for whom those dead bodies rapier mentions means nothing. A particular kind of sick monster who cannot imagine why anyone would be upset at the hideous waste of human life. The kind of moron who would vote for George W. Bush over his far more qualified opponents and then claim that those who oppose the slaughter are the morally corrupt ones.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | May 4, 2008 8:03 PM

I'm not sure what Matt's position on Iraq is.

He's told us dozens of times that the presence of US troops is the cause of violence in Iraq. It's clear that, on that view, if the US leaves, the violence will end.

So why was the Rumsfeld plan unworkable? It's essentially doing 5 years ago what Matt's been screaming for for three years.

Posted by Thomas | May 4, 2008 8:51 PM

Meathead, you've been stealing the Iraqis' oil, and having them murdered, for your entire life. You are just too dishonest to admit it.

Posted by Will Allen | May 4, 2008 9:53 PM

Shithead, you can't defend your assault on the Iraqi people. You set in motion a plan to murder hundreds of thousands of them. There is no moral equivalence between us.

You are still stealing their oil and you are helping murder them right now. Good job.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | May 4, 2008 10:45 PM

I will give my idiot opponent one thing: knowing that he cannot defend his support for brutalizing the Iraqis he doesn't even bother.

Were it defensible, he would, of course, be too stupid to do it. But it is obvious to even the thickest of observers (that would be my opponent) that it is not. That's why he keeps lying about the motivations of those who opposed the senseless slaughter of the Iraqis.

Posted by Not as stupid as Will Allen | May 4, 2008 11:17 PM

Thomas: "He's told us dozens of times that the presence of US troops is the cause of violence in Iraq. It's clear that, on that view, if the US leaves, the violence will end."

That's an oversimplification, if not an outright falsehood.

It's not just the "presence of US troops" that has caused the violence - it was the WAR AND the incompetence of the subsequent administration (de-Baathification, etc.) AND the lack of any sort of "stabilization" plan (which Matt admits probably would have merely meant a slow motion civil war anyway) AND the heavy-handed way the US handled relations with and between the Iraqis as an occupier.

The violence caused by the presence of US troops is the violence directed against those troops. The violence caused by the Sunni-Shia civil war was caused by the other factors just mentioned - and may have been inevitable (or not) anyway.

There was an article in Asia Times that clearly demonstrated how it was the US handling of things like Fallujah and subsequently the "Surge" in Baghdad that directly contributed to the initiation of the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad by the Shia of the Sunni in 2006 and 2007.

The problem with having only 30,000 troops in Iraq by end of, say, 2003 or 2004, would have been that the Sunni insurgency - which was inevitable - would have been more effective early on due to the limited number of US combat troops available. With 30,000 total troops in Iraq, the number of US combat troops - which would have been only around 5,000 - would have been quickly out-numbered by the Sunni insurgents. That would have been a disaster, and immediately led to a massive "post-invasion invasion" by more US troops. That would have accelerated the violence against US troops to even higher levels than we saw in 2007 and earlier, probably.

The only way the Sunni insurgency - and subsequently the Shia insurgency of Sadr - could have been significantly delayed or controlled would have been to have at least 500,000 troops in Iraq. The proper ratio is 20 troops per 1,000 citizens - essentially one platoon per neighborhood (and I might add, a platoon TRAINED in proper COIN technigues - which the US did not and does not have). Do the math for 25 million Iraqis.

There was no way the number of troops actually used would have worked, and no way 30,000 could have worked. A complete abandonment of Iraq - almost no US troops left - would simply have meant a re-assertion of Baathist rule, or a Sunni-Shia civil war early on, or a nationalist coalition rule - all of which would have eliminated the possibility of the US getting its hands on the oil.

And that wasn't going to be allowed - because getting the oil WAS one of, if not the only, goal of the Iraq war.

It's pointless to talk about Iraq if one can't acknowledge the absolute truth of the fact that a major reason for the war was Iraqi oil (and war profiteering). Trying to deal with the situation in terms of some nonsense about "Saddam was a bad guy", or "WMDs", or "vital national interests" (which means oil in euphemistic terms) is just stupid. And yet most of the discussions done by "pundits" degenerate to that level of stupidity because they can't and won't acknowledge the criminality of the US state.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 5, 2008 1:49 AM

When I was in grade school, we were given the task of writing a paper on what we would do if we could do one thing and not be able to die. I wrote that I would overthrow Hussein and help Iraq become a democracy. However, I understood back then that doing so according to my whims would require some sort of magic. I was around 13 or so at the time. Somehow I had a better understanding of how war works before I had ever even gone on a real date than professional conservative writers. It's all well and good to talk about ending Hussein's tyranny, but such things do not exist in a bubble. Will Allen is using the same logic vulgar Marxists used that if one was against economic exploitation and imperialism but failed to back the international communist revolution that one was de facto in favor of things like the Opium War. To reach a certain goal, you need a reasonable mechanism at hand that will allow you to reach your ends.

I've seen some decent numbers that, broadly defined, the number of Iraqis who died because of Hussein's actions is around 1.3 million. However, the political death rate before our invasion was comparatively low to now. There were two peaks in political murder during the Hussein years: the genocide against the Kurds (which is irrelevant to any pro-war argument because the No-Fly Zone meant that Hussein had not effectively been in control of Iraqi Kurdistan for about a decade by 2003) and the killings of the Shi'ites who rebelled in the wake of the first Gulf War. Both of these events took place well before 2003. What was primarily killing Iraqis until the beginning of the war was the sanctions regime, which we were rather responsible for and could have fixed to make it less deadly. Fixing that would have been a lot more realistic than trying to make a diverse, oil-rich society without a clear national identity in a nation younger than Paul Newman into a liberal pluralist democracy on any time table that wouldn't drain the blood and treasure of the US until we became a global second fiddle to China.

Posted by Reality Man | May 5, 2008 3:40 AM

Meathead, you are still stealing Iraqi oil, and having them murdered, but it is just one more thing you lie to yourself about because, again, there is nothing in the world more important to you than your self regard. There is literally nothing you won't tell yourself to protect it.

Reality Man, you can try to dodge it, but the reality is that if you are a despot's customer (and please, oh please, don't mke me explain fungibility again), you carry responsibility for the despot's actions, just like Pablo Escobar's customer's carried responsibility for Escobar's actions, which is why using cocaine has always been wrong, regardless of the idiocy of the War on Drugs. If your society is the world's largest oil consumer, you carry huge responsibility for the actions of the Baath Party, the House of Saud, etc., and no amount of self deception will change that.

Now, if somebody wishes to state that stealing Iraqi oil, and killing Iragis, using the Baath Party as a proxy, for decades on end, with the death rate eventually made lower via a totalitarian control of the population, again, for decades on end, was the best possible outcome, fine, that's certainly within the realm of possibility. That somebody should just plainly state so, instead of professing concern for the Iraqi people, because otherwise they sound like someone who consumes vast amount of crack, while expressing concern about the awfulness of drive-by shootings. Well, at least the crackhead has the excuse of physical addiction.

Posted by Will Allen | May 5, 2008 9:01 AM

the only reason they weren't acted upon

In my experience, some people call for impossible retribution precisely because it IS impossible. Makes 'em sound tougher than tough.

Posted by BobN | May 5, 2008 1:40 PM

What Allen doesn't comprehend is that people are responsible for their own actions, never anyone else's.

And consuming oil does not mean supporting some Arab regime. As the right wing nuts like to point out, oil comes from a lot of places - and the average driver doesn't control where he gets his oil.

So it is sufficient to oppose an Arab regime, or the war to "liberate it" for oil.

Spreading responsibility around to everybody means nobody has responsibility.

Which is exactly what Allen wants to establish - so he can exculpate himself and his right wing creep associates.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 5, 2008 4:19 PM

Yes, Richard, and when your actions enrich people whom you know will be able to engage in more bad acts as a result of their enrichment, you are in part responsible for their bad acts. Just like if you rent a car to someone you know is drunk.

You aren't very bright, are you?

Posted by Will Allen | May 5, 2008 4:33 PM