The past week saw a lot of “what did I get wrong”-type articles about Iraq and they frequently put me in the mind of the incompetence dodge. I note that one frequent way in which people argue for the proposition that poor execution, rather than an underlying flawed concept, are at the root of the Iraq disaster is to simply observe that mistakes were made in Iraq. For example, here’s my colleague Jeffrey Goldberg:
What the world is confronting five years after the invasionâ€â€the mess that Gen. David Petraeus is attempting to clean up todayâ€â€was almost entirely preventable. It’s not only my encounters, inside Iraq and outside, with senior figures of the Bush administration that have convinced me of this; the investigations conducted by George Packer, Tom Ricks, Bob Woodward, and Michael Gordon, among others, have unearthed thousandsâ€â€literally thousandsâ€â€of mistakes made by this administration, most of which were avoidable.
What I wonder is what kind of evidence could disprove this line of reasoning.
Well, first of all, the reason that you saw those is that they were commissioned by Slate. Second, you’ll notice that this is exactly the criticism that conservatives have regarding socialist utopian thinking, which has given us dysfunctional public schools and a failed welfare state, and points to similar failures in . . . oh, I don’t know . . . say, state-provided healthcare.
The fundamental difference is, that we seem to be winning in Iraq, and within 5 years, whereas the track records, both here and abroad in a vast variety of configurations for the social “welfare” programs that you would like to see expanded, demonstrates very little improvement. However, the ultimate incompetence dodge is the one that peddles fraud as nevertheless representative of truth, because reality sometimes obscures the underlying meaning, to those who cannot see beneath the surface–and we’ve seen quite a bit of that, thanks.
Tom Maguire has related thoughts.
They’re really like ocd-obsessed with rehashing the past. Mostly cause they’re frightened of any perception of Iraq as a strategic victory, and they’re also thinking their guy may be in charge in a year or so. But Baracky will no more be able to disown Iraq than he can punch his hateful grandmother in her racist bitch face though.
It’s cause they really hope if Baracky can be perceived as inheriting a failure, he’ll have permission to create one. That’s not how the world works.
As soon as we figure out how to get hindsight right up front, wars will be flawless! As long as it’s Democrats waging them.
I think Obama could probably make the blame stick to Chimpy for the fiasco that would immediately follow a precipitous pull-out, but the real trick would be trying to stretch that already-thin fabric of culpability over the loss of credibility, chaos and Iranian hegemony that would fall out in the medium- and long-term. Obama’s no idiot…he has to know this.
What interests me about all the Monday-morning quarterbacking and reaction thereto is the mixing up of “plan” and “success”. The first time I started paying attention was in the runup to the 2004 election, when John Kerry assured us that he had a plan for everything, but didn’t feel like sharing his plans with the general public.
It seems to have become a generally accepted notion. If the Plan didn’t work, it must be because it didn’t exist or because of errors in executing it — and failure of The Plan seems (at least in selected cases) to invalidate the goal. The concept that the Plan may be deficient because of insufficient information on which to base it has been lost, but (more importantly) the concept of opponent doesn’t seem to enter in anywhere.
An opponent doesn’t agree with your goal and therefore opposes The Plan (well, d’oh, but show me where that thinking comes in to the recent commentary). A clever opponent acts to frustrate The Plan, and the more he knows about it the easier that is. That is especially the case with detailed plans, because a cleverly-placed rock in the PERT-chart sequence can derail everything that follows with minimal effort. A specific Plan-frustrating act on the part of the opponent is not a “mistake” on the part of the planner.
A lot of that is egotism. Pelosi and Reid had a Plan to force abandonment of Iraq, impeach Bush, and assume power. Unfortunately that Plan did not include the possibility of opposition, and when opposition materialized it left them dumfounded and helpless. They and the nutroots simply assumed that everything would go as Planned. It didn’t, and they’ve shrieked and howled and generally done everything except to admit that their Plan was effectively opposed.
Bush & Co. haven’t been shy about admitting that they have made mistakes. They have not apologized for “making a mistake” with the original tactics in Iraq, for the excellent reason that they didn’t “make a mistake”. The goal was, and remains, a functional nation-state in Iraq; at the good-side limit, one which rejected Islamic extremism and support of terror and adhered to Western ideals of citizen empowerment a.k.a. “human rights”, and at the bad-side limit one which was cohesive enough to stand on its own. The plan was to defeat Saddam’s army and depose him and his Government, then stand aside while the Iraqis built themselves the Governmental structures they wanted. It didn’t work, for several reasons, and a new tactic needed to be adopted. That doesn’t mean it was a bad plan, except in the trivial ex post facto sense that any plan that doesn’t work was “bad”. If they’d known in advance about the factors that caused the plan to fail they could have made additional plans to counter them.
Furthermore, success of “the surge” does not invalidate the original plan, because to a very close approximation the “surge” isn’t working. What’s working is the various Awakening movements among Iraqis; the surge is simply keeping the raff off while the Awakeners get their act together. A similar surge-type tactic at the beginning — in 2003, for instance — would not have worked at all because the necessary attitudes of the Iraqis were not in place, attitudes which were developed by Iraqis’ experience with Zawahiri, Muqtada al-Sadr, and the various merry men who followed them. If the preconditions for the Awakenings had been met at the beginning, the “light footprint” strategy would have worked and we wouldn’t be talking about (that set of) “mistakes”.
Regards,
Ric
Dan,
In his search for incompetence in Iraq, I’m sure Yglesias will come up with something. After-all, any successful outcome in Iraq will surely have a dangling thread or two that Yglesias and his fellow travelers could tug at.
You know: Anything to get the Arab Democrat(ic) Party (aka the Baathists), back on top!
Because, as Global Socialists all know, before Bush distracted the world from the Baathist’s “Kill the Jews” campaign with his unilateral zero-ing in on the singular Saddam Hussein, the Iran-Syria-Iraq axis was about to flip Lebanon and Turkey into the Islamo-Socialista camp.
And now…thanks to Bush, all the Baathists’ and European Socialists’ efforts of the last twenty years are swirling down the proverbial drain. Those with connections have moved on: Germany’s Socialist PM went on to a well-paid GazProm consultancy. But those caught dead-headed are in limbo, or worse: Alain Jospin and Jacques Chirac are cooling their heals in the bleachers. and Baghdad Bob is hosting a string of furry Bears in the north ward of Abu Ghraib!
Is it any wonder why this gang might want to find examples of Bush’s “incompetent?!”
I think Bush has done a better job of dealing with Iraq than the socalled progressives have of running their present campaign. I mean was this fiasco their Plan?
People need to get away from the idea that wars can be planned out like a business trip.
“No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemyâ€Â
-Carl von Clausewitz
Excellent compendium, Ric. Good points, as well, Steve.
I hereby formulate Ric’s Rules of Life:
1) Nobody’s that smart. Plans always fail, partially or completely, because of things the planners didn’t know. Since what’s needed to make a perfect plan is perfect knowledge, plans are always deficient because nobody’s that smart.
2) Markets happen anyway. A wants what B has; it is then A’s responsibility to find something he has that B wants, so they can trade. That’s a market. Try to suppress it, and what you get is that C (the suppressor) has power and A and B both want it — which is another market.
3) Ants find the sugar. Put something like power, privilege, or wealth out there, and regardless what what it’s intended for it will attract people who want those things for their own purposes — which may be simple self-gratification — and will do anything to acquire them.
Apply that to any attempt at centralization or control, and you can work out the failure modes in advance.
Regards,
Ric
4) Anderson Cooper wears better shoes than you. And he also has way more of them. If you try and get more or better shoes than Anderson, Anderson just goes out and gets more more better shoes.
Is “shit flows downhill” covered under “ants find the sugar”?
Maurice’s First Law of Battle: Everything gets fucked up as soon as the enemy arrives. That’s why he’s called the enemy!
Maurice’s First Law of Battle: Everything gets fucked up as soon as the enemy arrives. That’s why he’s called the enemy!
No, B Moe, “shit flows downhill” is a corollary of rule 1. The boss doesn’t know what he’s doing, so everything he does makes it harder for the underlings.
Regards,
Ric
Ric, Dan, et al:
I’m a couple of months from graduating with an MA in Military History, and I’m fascinated by some on the left’s viewpoint on this war, or on any war for that matter. Sometimes I think none of them have ever cracked a history book, aside from one written by Zinn. If they have, they seem either to ignore or never have internalized any of the examples throughout history of wars, successful or otherwise, that were not replete with mistakes or flawed strategies by victor and defeated alike. Some of my profs were opposed to the war for various reasons, but were at least realistic enough to recognize the situations behind it. To many on the left history, and military history especially, seems to be a subject that is either ignored unless it fits a certain narrative, and can be cherry picked to beat one’s opponents over the head when convenient to do so. I’d like to hear more comments on this. Am I alone in feeling this way?
It’s all really more discouraging than maybe you think.
Well, feets, I guess that’s just one more organization I won’t be paying any dues to.
“War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.â€Â
George Clemenceau
cjd,
NPR had a piece on how “musicologists” were against the war, too. That was sometime back in 2006, as I recall.
I wondered at the time, just when did these particular “-oligists” knit together such a rigid consensus out of such a diverse academic constituency, and on a topic falling so far outside of their of their specialty…?
And isn’t there a single, lone dissenter?
It’s kinda like that loony Reverend or Mullah who spouts gobsmacking idiocy for his “ummah” or flock: he presumes the “believer’s” ecclesiastic power of attorney. then runs with it, because they let him.
Kind of. Geez!
16: I would like to be on record as holding that both the plan and the execution of the Iraq invasion worked like a pip. I say the military forces of the United States went through that country like shit through a tin horn, and that there has not been such an army since the days of Julius Caesar. This was a victory of biblical proportions. Thank you.
One could show that the mistakes aren’t sufficient to account for the problems in Iraq, but rather are due to the invasion itself. That would count as falsifying evidence.
I don’t get that.
– The ploy of removing the opponent from the equation was the very first step og the Left. The mother of all strawmen, where you set up the debate in such a way that even events that are carried to a conclusion will, by definition, be imperfect and therefore failures. But the problem the Left has with this approach is tactics of this sort do not stand the test of time. Thats why the left is absolutely desperate to railroad the process and get it over with, before any sort of success in Iraq can ensue. A stable, even psuedo Democratic state in Iraq, spreading the word of a civil alternative to intercinal/tribal cross slaughter to neighbooring countries will be an absolute dagger through the heart of every socialist on the planet. Thus we have all “Iraq bad” all the time.
Except they really didn’t remove the enemy. They elevated him to the moral high ground, and declared that he could do no wrong.
You’ll notice that you don’t hear them talking about, oh let’s say Zarqawi’s mistakes.
comatus, you’re absolutely right. That was the easy part. But it was an amazing, unprecedented victory and the left’s predictions were 99% wrong. Hey, even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then.
Not even that whole going-into-a-house-that-was-about-to-be-bombed thing?
Remembering which, suddenly my mood is even better than it’s been all day…
Why is it that “we” are winning in Iraq? What are we winning, what is this war? For the last fucking time, we are not at war with the Iraqi people. We are at war with a concept. We cannot beat it.
Happy Easter, cynn!
Teh Poverty! Happy Easter, cynn!
No, you aren’t alone.
Remember the Prophet Karl: “The point is not to understand the world, but to change it.” If understanding, including apprehending precedent and its relevance, does not contribute to Leftist goals, then understanding must be rejected. It is probably the most rigidly self-contained belief system possible.
Consider, for instance, the concept of appeasement. I doubt there are any large number of Leftists who would fail to agree that rape is not so much a sex crime as it is a power crime. A rapist is a special case of the general category “bully”. When the schoolyard bully demands the lunch money, he does in fact want the money — but what he wants even more is the power. He is less satisfied with the coins than he is with the fact that you had to give them up, because it validates his power over you. Giving the bully what he demands does not end the matter, because it is, for him, success — and that which accomplishes the purpose will be repeated. It isn’t so much that appeasement emboldens the bully as it is that it validates his approach to the problem and therefore makes it likely-to-certain that he will make further demands.
There are so many examples of that principle, from superpower politics to the allocation of Pla-Dough in kindergarten, that it is impossible for anyone who actually believes in Reality to fail to acknowledge. The Left not only does not acknowledge the principle, it rejects it in toto. The non-Leftist may appease out of cowardice and wishful thinking; the Left is not, despite appearances, being cowardly. The members of the “reality-based community” are acting on Faith and Doctrine, pure and simple.
Regards,
Ric
Thanks, we’ll be thinking of the people who aren’t here to to observe.
The first Arab country led by a representative government. The first empowerment of an Arab populace. Plus, Saddam is decomposing and a dictatorship is gone.
I like it.
Which is, of course, why you will celebrate Easter with the Albigensians, right?
A concept — a belief system — can be defeated by demonstrating that adhering to it does not lead to success. Demonstrating that it leads to disaster is quicker, but “disaster” is just an extreme version of “not successful”. One of the ways to do that is to eliminate its adherents. If there are no survivors of the group entertaining the concept, I would say it has been “defeated”. It is, of course, true that that is metaphor, not denotation, but if the concept is no longer around and no longer has adherents “defeat” is close enough to reality to be useful.
Note that even if the principle you state were valid, it is just as true of our opponents. The belief system we are combatting states that God will enable Muslims to defeat Western culture by fiercely attacking it. By remaining resolutely undefeated, and by killing the leaders and advisors who preach and propagate it, we can in fact defeat the concept in the terms above; that is, some will abandon it as behavior guidance, others will die, and at the end it will have no adherents.
It would be easier, and a lot less bloody, if you and your friends would allow us to utilize the WMD of belief-system warfare: ridicule. But no. Saying unkind things might offend their poor tender sensibilities. Believe it or not, we would really rather not have to shoot them, because there is work to do and not enough hands to do it, and corpses aren’t particularly good optical-fiber installers. But if psychological warfare and propaganda are Right Out on grounds of kindness and good-chumship, it comes down to a choice of blowing them up or them blowing us up, and when the choice is “them” or “us”, “them” gets short shrift.
Regards,
Ric
cjd;
I’m considering such a course of study. From which insitutiution are you getting yours?
RTO,
I’m doing the program through Norwich University in Vermont. It’s a good program, but one that is still finding its feet. I’ll be in the second class to graduate from the program this summer. It’s expensive, but worth it, I think. I’ve never read, analyzed, and written so much about military history, or anything else for that matter, in any other thing I’ve done than I have in this program. There are other programs, of course, I think American Military University has a good one.
Some of my professors are pretty well known, at least in academic history circles. John Votaw, Kelly DeVries, Antulio Echevarria from the Army War College, along with Dennis Showalter and others. My experiences with my profs varied, but the discussion groups that we were grouped in per seminar was where the real stimulation and discussion lay. People from various walks of life, including former and current military like myself were represented, but I found that some of the non-military folks had some real insights to offer that old soldiers like me and others lacked. Occasionally our debates in the discussion threads became very heated, but were always insightful All in all, worth the time and effort.
There were a few nods to PC things, such as a half-seminar devoted to “Race and Gender in Military History,” which still ended up being pretty fascinating, and we spent an entire seminar debating the merits of VDH’s theory of the Western Way of War. My personal favorite was the seminar devoted to Military Thought, with weeks spent devoted to studying Jomini, Clausewitz, Mahan, Douhet, Mao, and 4GW. I recommend the program.
We are at war with a concept. We cannot beat it.
Never, ever.
The King is dead. Long live the King.
Awella blessa mah soul awhat’s awrong with me ???
The concept we are fighting is mostly liberal defeatism at home. McCain is a very important part of that.
Life is funny.
We are at war with a concept. We cannot beat it.
Ric mentioned the Cathars.
Let me add:
Slavery.
Stalinism.
Naziism.
Feudalism.
Jim Crow laws.
Established and mandatory churches.
The idea of “noble birth”.
All concepts.
All, at one time, devoutly held by a substantial portion of the human race.
All defeated.
You might quibble and say that those things still exist (and they do), but I defy you to claim that any of them is a serious factor in the modern world.
Back in the 60s people were saying that it was impossible to defeat the Soviet Union (hell, Jimmy Carter was claiming that well into the 70s). They were wrong, and you are wrong.
Homephobe !!!
Life is funny.
Funny how ?
Signed,
Tommy DeVito
Just, you know, the way you tell the story…
-Henry Hill
#28
Glad they didn’t have that attitude in 1775.
–“Glad they didn’t have that attitude in 1775.”
– Actually, a fair number of the populace did feel that way, just not the majority fortunately.
– The idea that concepts have never been defeated is laughable, and gives you a good insight into the mind of the typical Lefty.
– That brainfucked idea is usually wedded toi the equally rediculous statement tha war never solves anything. Brute force and unrelenting barbarism has settled more conflicts than all the diplomacy and negotiations in hostory, by a very large amount. Thats why the Left resorts to it when all else in their bankrupt ideology fails. But since they fight wars like they debate issues, in may ways like children, they don’t do well at either.
The truth is that Saddam could be standing on a balcony with a cigar in his mouth…grinning like a loon shooting his rifle in the sky…looking dapper in his Al Capone get up and these bitchers and moaners would be perfectly happy. He could wipe his ass with that cease fire, try to kill a president, refuse to comply with UN force resolutions and fill mass graves with women and children and these sanctimonious preeners would still be yammering on about what a bad man George Bush is. I am sick of them.
Good to know, cjd. It’ll either be that Norwich program or an MIS degree that the Army has negotiated a deal on. My BA is in History.
Decisions, decisions.
Further off topic, since eveyone’s made points I would have made and better than I’d have done, I’m going to be in Denver/Boulder until Wednesday. Anyone know of any regional type cuisine I should sample? I mean, different from Texas–we have steak houses here too, unless there’s someplace that just really stands out.
We are at war with a concept. We cannot beat it.
The only one I can think of as possibly undefeatable is death, cynn. But even in death’s case, it would be foolish to give up on defeating it before it occurs, because then you can easily give up on life and achieve the same results of surrender entailed and even advocated by surrenderists/nit-pickers concerning the WOT – a lack of life.
As an antidote to a state of living death, audacious hope won’t prove valuable.
Dude, they have the best vegetable soup there.
– Hang in there Terrye. They usually surface about every 30 years or so to re-enact the failures of the past 100 years. Its sort of a tradition. Then they fall back in the mire of their delusions for awhile, and wait for a new generation of young minds to seduce with the utopian, self-loathing crap.
No. I just made that up. The midwest guy at work says here is where you might want to try though.
huh, we have a place that goes by that name here in Dallas. but it’s more an upscale Denny’s kind of thing, at least in my mind.
Oh. That looks not so good. here’s the menu for the Denver thing – it’s a locally owned thinger… it’s where the midwest guy keeps going back to when he’s in Denver to try everything…
actually, it’s pretty tasty. usually end up there after shows at the Eisemann Center. anyhoo, RTO’s conked out now.
Oh. My Dallas after-show place was Zanzibar I remember. I do not know this Eisemann Center.
Mostly I mean after like a movie or whatever.
I’m not sure we need to actually beat it as long as we contain it, cage it and waterboard the living shit out of it.
It was Lower Greenville if I remember right… and for real you don’t have to talk to the strangers. I don’t really know what they’re talking about with that part.
Its sort of a tradition. Then they fall back in the mire of their delusions for awhile, and wait for a new generation of young minds to seduce with the utopian, self-loathing crap.
“Break The Circadadian Rhythms, Now!” But it’s impossible, without eliminating the Engangered Species Act niche. Now.
That’s what I was thinking.
it’s technically in Richardson. and I’m talking after everyone basically skipped dinner so we wouldn’t be sluggish during hours o’ singing and almost nothing is open that serves food by the time everyone gets out of costume.
#62 speaks to #54
Oh. All food is good then. Really that’s when I hit the Jack-in-the-Box tacos. Oh. This isn’t good. I might have to go out now.
– If you’ve never tried them feets, you would go nutzy over Rubios fish taco’s…Its one of those eats something akin of fresh, right out of the water steamed clams on the half shell, with a good Guiness dark lager, on the pier at Marlborough Mass…..
Yes! We have those here… they were in my old zone. My new zone doesn’t have any, but I used to go there for lunch quite a bit. Oh. Maybe it’s different… This place? It was really good and could be really healthy if you wanted it to be.
Oh. I think it’s different. This is a chain thinger. No clams I don’t think. I never get to go to Massachusetts anyway. The only East Coast I get to do is NYC and these really weird New Jersey places.
Seeing the Faux Liberal mind at work doesn’t exactly whet my appetite, hf, unless the fare includes a good portion of self-marinated chicken dhimmis. Ummmmmm…… Ah likes that kind of thing.
Oh. Yeah. It’s in that part of town. When I lived there it hadn’t completely gentrified. Pretty close, but nowadays it’s way different I would bet.
For the last fucking time, we are not at war with the Iraqi people. We are at war with a concept.
But that would mean its not a war for territory, and we aren’t Imperialist occupiers? How can this be?
“Comment by Rusty on 3/22 @ 10:16 pm #
#28
Glad they didn’t have that attitude in 1775.”
Anyone see the “John Adams” on HBO?
Best TV show in forever.
Here, BBH:
“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue–and thoroughly immoral– doctrine that ‘violence never solves anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”
-Robert Heinlein
#72
Haven’t seen it yet. I’m waiting for my wife to get back from Cali so we can see it together. When the progs use the history of our revolution as a justification for other “wars of liberation” thay almost always get it wrong.
BBH, for a slightly older take on it, I recommend Kipling:
“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man —
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire —
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”