The Rumsfeld "Memo"
Now we know why Rumsfeld was fired last month. No, it wasn’t because he was in charge of a war that has gone disastrously wrong. And it wasn’t because he suggested that “it is time for a major adjustment [since] what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working.” No, I hope Rumsfeld was fired because any one — from the lowest bureaucrat to the highest cabinet officials — who had written a “memo” to the president like the one sent Bush last month ought to have been fired.
Predictably, the press has focused on the fact Rumsfeld called for a major readjustment in Iraq policy days before he was fired (which is presumably why Rumsfeld or someone close to him leaked the memo to The New York Times the Sunday before the Senate opens hearings on his successor). Commentators have also noted the fact that the options Rumsfeld appear to favor all, in one way or another, suggested a retrenchment of the U.S. military role in Iraq (including, in one, the withdraw all U.S. and other foreign forces except for “high-end” special operation forces that would continue to go after terrorists, death squads, and [!] Iranians in Iraq). And he rejected any option to beef up U.S. forces in Iraq or even just in Baghdad.
But what, frankly, was most astonishing about the memo was not the specific proposals, but the total lack of analysis. Here the Secretary of Defense tells the President of the United States that our policy in Iraq is failing. He doesn’t say why and how — just that it is. And then he presents 21 options — 15 “above the line” and six “below the line” — but without providing an explanation of where the line is to be drawn or even what the line represents. He provides no analysis of which opens can be done in what period of time and at how much they would cost. He suggests no prioritizing among them. He is silent on the implications of pursuing some options, but no others. He says some can be pursued simultaneously, but doesn’t indicate which can and which cannot. It’s just a list of musings, with no analytical content or consideration whatsoever.
If this is the kind of “advice” the president has said he valued getting from Rumsfeld for so long, it’s little wonder that we’re in such a deep mess — in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and with respect to our entire military. The only thing to say of this memo, and its author, is good riddance to bad rubbish.
Comments (24)
This "memo" increases the suspicions that America can re-elect a President of the United States who is neither capable of reading documents longer than one page, nor capable of processing any kind of analysis or weighting of options.
Maybe it's time to consider new methods to select government officials?
/Tuomas
December 3, 2006 9:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Provide money to key political and religious leaders (as Saddam Hussein did), to get them to help us get through this difficult period. link
Bribing folks is a honorable component of freedom and democracy isn't it?? Perhaps the man should have been retained as a consultant from his first day of his liberation from that spiderhole?
December 3, 2006 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh come on. Surely not every memo to the President comes in the form of an analytic treatise or think piece. Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense, not some low level analyst, and his job is to direct the DoD, and make businesslike recommendations and reports to his boss - not write journal articles. The memo undoubtably comes in the context of ongoing daily discussions about options and problems in Iraq, and looks like it is intended to open up a discussion rather than to discourse at length on the ultimate truth. Nobody involved in high-level administration discussions of Iraq needs a book explaining the the thinking behind such recommendations, and the reasons for considering them.
I note you in the past have signed some one-page letters making recommendations regarding Iraq that were no more rich in analysis than Rumsfeld's memo.
December 3, 2006 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've read my share of memos to the president -- going back close to 50 years, in doing research on the national security council -- and I've never seen anything like it. Here the secretary of defense argues that a policy the president and he have pursued is not working. He doesn't say why (even though presumably for the preceding 36 months he thought it was working and told the president -- let alone the American people -- as much). And then rather than suggesting what the president might do to make the "major adjustment" in policy that he thinks is needed, Rumsfeld throws out a whole series of options without saying one wit about whether they can be implemented or how.
This isn't serious. Any advice to the president, especially from a Cabinet official, is serious business. All the more so when the lives of 150,000 American soldiers and millions of Iraqis are at stake.
We've now seen two memos to the president by key national security principals -- the Hadley memo being the other one. Neither of these memos provides the president with the kind of information, the kind of analysis, that one would expect to be the norm in any White House (it certainly was in the one I worked in, where drivel like the Hadley and Rumsfeld memos would have never made into the Oval Office or, if it had, would have led the president to call its authors to task -- which, trust me, wasn't a pretty sight!). A good options memo need not be long (only an academic could think that a good argument requires a journal-length treatise). It needs to be concise, clear, and coherent. And it needs to make sense. Rumsfeld, in particular, failed miserably on both counts.
Ivo Daalder
December 3, 2006 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know, but for a President who bicycles a lot, a lot of thinking did indeed go into reducing the chaos in Iraq to an analogy like Rummys:
Begin modest withdrawals of U.S. and Coalition forces (start “taking our hand off the bicycle seat”), so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks...
A rich analysis indeed.
December 3, 2006 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think either Mr. Hadley's ignorances and misjudgments about Iraq or Sec. Rumsfeld's insouciances were exactly directed to the President of the United States. The leaked memos shouldn't be judged by that standard, but rather as internal documents of the Republican Party, of which Mr. Bush is titular head also.
The topic the two -- presumably along with others -- were asked to write an essay question about was not "What can we do in Iraq that would be new and different and better?" It was more like "What can we do to give the impression that we're thinking about doing something new and different and better while we're really waiting until the heat's off and we can stay our noble course exactly as is?"
Mr. Rumsfeld, I suspect, thought it beneath his unique dignity and greatness to assist in a mere P.R. campaign, so he spent about ten minutes writing down anything that casually came into his head and turned his paper in and left the examination room to go do something more important. That is to say, he would quite agree with Mr. Daalder's low estimate of the quality of the essay, but then, he certainly never expected to see it published in The New York Times, he thought the matter would be only between Dubya and himself.
Of course I'm only guessing, but nothing will convince me that Rummy really is as silly as the leakage makes him look. A knave, yes, but hardly any sort of fool.
December 3, 2006 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
But Ivo, you are discussing this memo as though there is no practical and political context involved. Did any Americans on November 6th, including the obtuse Bush, need a thorough explanation of why the current policy was not working, or an argument to that effect? The house was fire and burning down around thse guys. The Penatgon already had an internal review underway and the options being considered began to be leaked a few days after Rumsfeld left, which means they must certainly all have been already under discussion by the pricipal decision-makers. I don't think the point of this memorandum was to make a case for changing course. It's just a quick summary of the range of options available.
The most basic kind of memorandum is a short record of a conversation that has already occurred, indicating the main take-away points as recalled and summarized by one of the parties to the discussion. I understand there is anouther use of "memorandum" in which it means something like a report, but clearly this is more like the first sort of memorandum. My sense is that all Rumsfeld is doing here is summarizing a range of options that were already on the table, and brekaing them into two categories - the ones he thinks are more attractive and those he thinks are less attractive.
This memo was written also two days after an Army Times editiorial called for Rumsfeld's dismissal, and after a weekend firestorm of talk show appearances in which it was made clear that the entire Washington establishment had concluded that Bush had to sack Rumsfeld. The die was cast. Rumsfeld knew his goose was cooked.
Surely the most important feature of the memo is what it indicates about where Rumsfeld stood with respect to the White House, State Department, Congress and other people inside the Pentagon. Three things stand out:
1. First, he takes a few veiled and not-so-veiled parting shots at other parts of the executive branch whom he clearly feels have not been doing their job well. He says we should:
* Aggressively beef up the Iraqi MOD and MOI, and other Iraqi ministries critical to the success of the ISF — the Iraqi Ministries of Finance, Planning, Health, Criminal Justice, Prisons, etc. — by reaching out to U.S. military retirees and Reserve/National Guard volunteers (i.e., give up on trying to get other USG Departments to do it.)
* Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done in Fallujah when they pushed in reconstruction funds, and start rewarding good behavior.
Who is "they"? I assume the State Department in general and Khalilzad in particular.
* Initiate a massive program for unemployed youth. It would have to be run by U.S. forces, since no other organization could do it.
2. The second notable feature of the memo is the overall thrust of the policy changes recommended. While he does argue for increasing "advisors" and "embeds", the main theme is drawing down and getting out:
* Conduct an accelerated draw-down of U.S. bases. We have already reduced from 110 to 55 bases. Plan to get down to 10 to 15 bases by April 2007, and to 5 bases by July 2007.
* Retain high-end SOF capability and necessary support structure to target Al Qaeda, death squads, and Iranians in Iraq, while drawing down all other Coalition forces, except those necessary to provide certain key enablers for the ISF.
* Initiate an approach where U.S. forces provide security only for those provinces or cities that openly request U.S. help and that actively cooperate, with the stipulation being that unless they cooperate fully, U.S. forces would leave their province.
* Position substantial U.S. forces near the Iranian and Syrian borders to reduce infiltration and, importantly, reduce Iranian influence on the Iraqi Government.
Note that positioning forces along the borders is a way of getting them out of the most dangerous locations.
* Withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions — cities, patrolling, etc. — and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available
Kuwait? Sounds a bit like Murtha's "over the horizon" proposal - right?
* Begin modest withdrawals of U.S. and Coalition forces (start “taking our hand off the bicycle seat”), so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.
Several of the suggestions in the menu focus on ways Rumsfeld's boss could create some sort of poltical cover for this drawdown, to avoid the appearance of defeat. I think it's been clear for some time that this is the major hold up in changing course - Bush's fear of being stuck personally and historically with a humiliating defeat. The Rumsfeld approach seems to have been to begin winding down and getting out, but also taking a few steps to drag things out so that the war would gradually "fade away" rather than end with a crash, and there would be no obvious and unequivocal symbol of defeat.
3. Finally, the third thing that stands out in the memo is the position Rumsfeld took with respect to several very prominent proposals, by placing those alternatives "below the line" as "unnattractive" options. These are:
* Continue on the current path. (Bush official public position prior to the election)
* Move a large fraction of all U.S. Forces into Baghdad to attempt to control it. (Pace/Joint Chiefs)
* Increase Brigade Combat Teams and U.S. forces in Iraq substantially. (McCain/Kagan/AEI)
* Set a firm withdrawal date to leave. Declare that with Saddam gone and Iraq a sovereign nation, the Iraqi people can govern themselves. Tell Iran and Syria to stay out. (Feingold)
* Assist in accelerating an aggressive federalism plan, moving towards three separate states — Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. (Biden/Gelb))
* Try a Dayton-like process. (Holbrooke/Djerjian)
I would sincerely like to know where Bush stands on these proposals. I'd like to know where you stand too. If, as you think, Rumsfeld might have been fired in response to this memo (I doubt that personally), then does that mean Bush didn't like this new advice from Rumsfeld and now favors a more aggressive, escalatory approach? Aren't all these issues more important than whether the Clinton administration wrote better memos than the Bush administration?
I should say that all this focus on Rumsfeld only detracts from the attention that should be placed on Bush and Cheney. The President is the commander in chief - the Secretary of Defense is not. It's Bush's war. I'm sick of the excuse that Bush's problem is that he gets "bad advice". It's a leader's job to get the advice he needs. He's the "decider" after all.
I understand that you supported this war and are therefore pissed at the Bush administration for screwing it up. So why don't you go after the top guys? And while you're at it why don't you put your own proposals on the table? You can put your Clinton White House memo-writing skills to work. :)
December 3, 2006 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Channeling Henry Kissinger Circa 1969!
1. Well, where have we heard that one before? "Strategic enclave strategy" anyone? Ring any bells? Gen. Maxwell Taylor? 1965? Hmmmn? It's exactly the same thing. Keep American forces out of harm's way and secure the "strategic" areas like ports and oil fields.
We're back to recycling the old failed strategies from Vietnam, which I suppose is not surprising since Kissinger is wandering the White House grounds like the ghost of Hamlet's father with his toothless bromides about "victory", no more relevant today than it was in 1969.
I've been predicting it would come down to this for 2 years now, ever since the insurgency grew serious in fact:
2. "Vietminization" -- *
Yes, and that worked so well in Vietnam, it'll surely work here! Just "talk tough" to those Iraqi politicians who are helpless puppets in the middle of a civil war that's spinning out of control and can't even take 1 step outside the Green Zone without being instantly targeted for assasination!
They're really going to all come together and sing Kumbuyah if we just start talking about "withdrawing some units" -- translation, withdraw some combat forces and subsitute MAAG forces (military assistance advisory Group -- or whatever they're calling it these days).
I could go on for pages with all the endless ways these "new policy proposals" are just the regurgitated remains of the old failed Vietnam strategies all over again. And why they are utterly doomed.
I have no idea at this point what could avert a regional war that would set the main energy producing region of the globe on fire, but I do know that recycling past failures is not the answer!
We've been down this road before and it ends with helicopters flying off the roof of the embassy. But, by all means! Let's all get amnesia and pretend any of that crap has a snow-balls' chance in hell of working!
Or that any of it is new!
December 3, 2006 9:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why waste more funds on Saddam when this guy has been on the US payroll well before shock & awe came to a living room near you?
~OGD~
December 3, 2006 10:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with you - the memo was utter garbage. I can't for the life of me imagine writing a memo to any boss, let alone the President (!!), that doesn't at any point provide reasoning behind one's thinking.
For me, the memo signified two things: (a) Rummy's supreme hubris, that he felt he could drop a piece of baseless junk of this type on Bush's desk; and (b) that the policy-making process in the Bush administration barely exists.
And whenever I think of (b), I am reminded of Paul O'Neil's criticisms in the Price of Loyalty. It was set out back in 2003, well before the likes of Woodward had turned on the Bushies, that the Bushies just didn't do policy analysis. And evidently, on Iraq, they still don't.
December 4, 2006 6:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Rumsfeld was, like any competent communicator, writing to the level he thought his audience could understand.
December 4, 2006 6:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let me respond succinctly:
1. Secretaries of Defense don't write memoranda of conversations; that's not what they are paid to do. Nor was this the stated intent of the memo.
2. You provide an explanation of why things have gone wrong in order to relate the proposed cure to the underlying cause. If the cause is unclear, there is not way to judget the effectiveness of the cure. This is called analysis.
3. If Rumsfeld wanted to tell Bush what he thought about other parts of the bureaucracy, and make the points you deduce, he should have done so directly. This is a man who doesn't mince words.
In other words, your lengthy analysis just proves my point: if this is the quality of writing the president receives from his secretary of defense, he should have been fired long ago.
Ivo Daalder
December 4, 2006 7:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
If this is the kind of “advice” the president has said he valued getting from Rumsfeld for so long, it’s little wonder that we’re in such a deep mess — in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and with respect to our entire military.
People often say this kind of thing about Bush and his organization, as if he is a good leader, and has just been given poor advice by his advisors. His organization is his, and his policies are his, too. The rot in this government starts from the head down. If he has been given bad advice, its because he and the people he associates with are...bad.
December 4, 2006 7:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sheriff Dick Cheney secretly runs the administration from his bunker/crypt. Deputy Dubya Bush catapults the propaganda from a teleprompter screen crawl. Donald Rumsfeld, the "Great White Shark," swims around through the bureaucracy voraciously devouring departments and budgets until the entire federal government has nothing to do but produce bad Pentagon television campaign commercials designed and marketed by a second-rate snake-oil salesman, Karl Rove. Now that I have succinctly described to you how the current manifestation of the schizophrenic, double-thinking Lunatic Leviathan in fact operates, let us proceed to address what significance, if any, a sentient citizen should attach to some meandering mind-drool supposedly addressed from the shark swimming away to the propaganda catapulter suddenly left staring at a blank teleprompter screen.
I served eighteen months (after a year of preparatory language and counter-insurgency training) in the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-1972). As a bitterly experienced implimentor (i.e., "stander-upper") of the "Vietnamization" (i.e., "Yellowing the Corpses") policy, I fully recognize and understand the "new" "phased" (i.e., glacier race) nature of our contemporary Cheney-Bush Buy Time Brigade. Its ever-ongoing "Browning the Bodies" mission poses no analytical problem whatsoever for me, as it should not for any other ambulatory carbon-based life form on Planet Earth, either. It requires a human population unimaginably stupid to think that on any day of any week America possesses a functional government. No empirical evidence whatsoever supports this fantastic supposition. Where it required the "Best and the Brightest" to reduce us to FUBAR and SNAFU four decades ago, it only takes the "Worst and the Dullest" to screw up the same soup sandwich this time around -- only faster. Our "leaders" have lowered our expectations for them to nothing -- and still they disappoint us.
I really wish I didn't have to live through yet another bizarre spectacle of American public-policy-makers endlessly reiterating Orwellian mixed metaphors and flawed figures of speech as a substitute for reasoning and acting rationally. If I hear or read once more of the tipping point turning the corner in the next six critical months (now known as a "Friedman") connecting the ink-stained dots on the flypaper dominoes in the tunnel at the end of the light -- I think I'll scream. Such cardboard caricatures as float to the top of America's political sewer cannot possibly mean the same thing by "reading" and "writing" -- much less "thinking" -- that I do. So please spare us public-school peasants the ersatz effrontery of "analyzing" transparent -- and all-too tardy -- attempts by discredited reactionaries to rescue their ruined, reptilian reputations even as they try to avoid having the doorknob hit them in the ass on their way out. Dignifying such drivel -- by taking it seriously enough to debunk -- debases us all of what little dignity our "leaders" have left us
December 4, 2006 7:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
You point out something that still doesn't get enough emphasis---the quality of analysis (lack of) in today's nat'l security crowd. At least when we read Kissinger memos they have substance, if distasteful or worse to take seriously.
Case in point is Condi Rice, who made a strong impression on me when she testified to the 9/11 Commission. I never heard such an unbroken string of teacher-pleasing emptiness.
Second case in point--that the phrase "they only understand strength" got any play. This because the corollary--revenge (as justice) is important, too. Apparently this bunch really thought Arabs (aren't they all Arabs?) were dogs that needed their noses rubbed in the poop.
As others have said, you don't put ideas in writing as "thinking out loud"; you do it for the record. This record shows how little thinking, out loud or quietly, has actually taken place. Scheming, yes, planning, no. Winning bureaucrat points, yes, winning the peace, no.
December 4, 2006 9:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Are you genuinely surprised that this is what a policy-planning process under Bush 43 looks like, up close and personal?
Haven't you been reading Suskind all these years?
December 4, 2006 9:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Great minds think alike! I've been on about the former Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf being on the US payroll for awhile. Are there others out there who think so, too?
When I read that Mr. al-Sahaf's son is a doctor in Ireland, I knew right off the bat that Baghdad Bob had to be on our payroll.
What got me was everyone here laughed about the Iraqi Minister of Information's performance as if the Iraqis were all stupid. Nobody questioned why the Iraqi minister of information was disseminating such patently ridiculous information.
I guess Mr. al-Sahaf and Saddam Hussein get the last laugh after all. The CIA and the DIA probably thought they had bought themselves an easy win. In the meantime, the Iraqis were busy setting up for the real war.
Dopes.
December 4, 2006 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The only time I worked for the government was many years ago for NASA, but I do remember how the system works. First, Rumsfeld is highly unlikely to have been the author of that memo. He would have asked an under secretary to have a memo prepared, with vague guidelines on what it should say. The under secretary would find a low level bureaucrat working for him to assign the job to, and that low level guy would assign it to a grunt to actually write. The grunt would quickly write out something, knowing the final copy would bear no resemblance to what he would write in any case. So, the low level bureaucrat would cover the original memo in red notes and send it back for revision. The revised copy would go up one step, where the red markup would continue, sending it back to the original writer, who would revise it and......on and on... until Rumsfeld would have a finished memo in hand. That product would be what was leaked. Missing in all of this is any semblance of actual thinking.
But, maybe government employment has changed since I worked there?
Hoppy in Sacramento
December 4, 2006 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
You all are missing the point by debating the quality, or lack there-of, in this memo.
It serves only one purpose. As with all Bush Admin programs it is an offensive on the PR front. Even though he was labeled as having tunnel-vision DR was not unable to change. Whether he changed or not is inmaterial. We need to be given the impression that he was able to "re-think" a position. This is critical to establishing the "history" that the White House was actually aware that something was happening.
The more interesting thought. This may be the first official document that reveals to the Decider that something is amiss. This last comment is only one-quarter snark.
December 4, 2006 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good to consider the meta-message. I like your suggestion of it allowing acknowledged Decider insight.
December 4, 2006 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
George W. Bush as Barney Fife - I like it!
Tom
December 4, 2006 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess I'll have take your word for it, then, that this memo is very sub-standard as to style and content, compared to the typical missives from Secretaries of Defense to Presidents. It was my impression that that some memos at the Cabinet and White House level were not exactly written for the history books, and were more like bullet-pointed lists of suggestions for further discussion. But I guess the White House doesn't work like other places of business, and memos are more finely wrought.
I still think the content of the recommendations is much more significant than whether or not those recommendations are packaged with sufficient analysis, since I think the analytic context is pretty clear, and the recommendations were being made under the pressure of a rapidly deteriorating situation. This memo is not about trying to "cure" the things that have gone wrong in the war. That is, it's not about trying a different strategy for winning the war. Its a memo about taking the first steps toward getting out, while at the same time blowing a certain amount of smoke so that getting out doesn't appear to be "losing", but looks like something else.
I also think we have to take into acccount the fact that, given he was just about to be fired, Rumsfeld might not have been in a mood to do his best work.
December 5, 2006 1:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ever the masochist, I've kept on disk an article by former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George P. Shultz entitled "Results, Not Timetables, Matter in Iraq" (The Washington Post, Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A15). The hyperbolic hysteria recycled from forty years previous made me sick enough when I reard it two years ago, but now when I hear it endlessly regurgitated by our so-called and self-styled "foreign policy elite," I want to vomit. Check it out (from only the first two paragraphs:
[Paragraph 1]:
"All this [public criticism of Iraq policy] is a way of foreshadowing a demand for an exit strategy, by which many critics mean some sort of explicit time limit on the U.S. effort."
No and yes. No, the best available criticism of Iraq policy (see, for example, the formerly sane and honest Colin Powell) had demanded an exit strategy even before proposing an entry strategy. The bit about "foreshadowing" here only serves to dishonestly project -- as a dialectical trick of denial -- what has already long since happened (the criticism) as if no one had ever raised the issue before and it only exists now as some sort of vague future possibility. Yes, the critics did, do, and will demand a time limit on America's "effort" -- like from nothing to as little as possible -- but since the proponents of the "effort" had promised that it wouldn't involve anything anyway and what little it did involve the Iraqis would gladly pay for; well, that just means that the critics -- from start to whenever this finishes -- never asked for anything that the proponents of the "effort" hadn't conceded in any event.
[Paragraph 2 -- taken in bite-size chunks]:
"We reject this counsel."
Naturally. Who cares?
"The implications of the term "exit strategy" must be clearly understood; there can be no fudging of consequences."
Yes, but most people already know that "exit" means "leaving." You don't have to muddy the waters by implying that some sort of linguistic word magic can transform "leaving" into "staying." All consequences flow from the "entering," anyway, and not from any "exiting." To claim otherwise amounts merely to the discredited dialectical trick of "Shifting the Burden of Proof."
"The essential prerequisite for an acceptable exit strategy is a sustainable outcome, not an arbitrary time limit."
First, you don't need the useless modifier "essential" before "prerequisite." Next, after we "exit," other people will do the "sustaining" of whatever they want to "sustain." Our "acceptance" of what Iraqis sustain (or don't) has nothing to do with our leaving Iraq for purposes having only to do with us and what we want for our own country. Why do you keep giving recalcitrant foreigners veto power over American actions? Next, nothing focuses the mind like a deadline, arbitrary or otherwise. Nothing unfocuses it like Parkinson's Law which states that "work will expand to fill the time alloted for its completion." Allow infinite time for the work, or "effort," and you will get unlimited effort (inversely proportional to accomplishment) -- the real military/political bureaucrat's wet dream -- with everyone involved soon forgetting amid all the alligators the original goal of draining the swamp.
"For the outcome in Iraq will shape the next decade of American foreign policy."
Perhaps. Perhaps not. You don't know any more than I do. So knock off the astrological prognostications. If I want my palm read I'd rather have Madame Sophie do it.
"A debacle would usher in a series of convulsions in the region as radicals and fundamentalists moved for dominance, with the wind seemingly at their backs."
Leaving aside the irrelevant issue of wind direction, the ongoing debacle in the region already has produced radicals and fundamentalists -- starting with the American variety -- moving for dominance. Some of them -- aside from the American variety -- seem already to have achieved a little. Wake the fuck up, will you?
"Wherever there are significant Muslim populations, radical elements would be emboldened."
Yes, these "radical elements" do seem to have found themselves "emboldened" by our occupation of their Muslim lands." How did yo think they'd react to conquering and plundering? Passively? In fact, these radical Muslim elements have gotten so bold over the last four years that by next week, we'll have lost more of our army than we lost civilians on 9/11/2001. Did you two guys just return from the Alzheimer's rest home, or what?
"As the rest of the world related to this reality, its sense of direction would be impaired by the demonstration of American confusion in Iraq."
You mean, like, you think the rest of the world hasn't already witnessed American confusion and debacle in Iraq? Do you mean that you think that other countries haven't already made up their minds and started moving to take advantage of our self-inflicted conundrum? You apparently seem to think that foreign people wait around for that always-over-the-horizon day when American foreign policy "elites" agree that, "OK you foreigners; you can lose your "impairment" now. We give you our permission. You can call a civil war a civil war now. Really. Even CBS and NBC say so." What arrogant and deluded crap.
"A precipitate American withdrawal would be almost certain to cause a civil war that would dwarf Yugoslavia's, and it would be compounded as neighbors escalated their current involvement into full-scale intervention."
A deliberate American non-withdrawal has already done all these things. Wake the fuck up! Everything you say will happen if we leave happens when we stay. So shut the fuck up. You said all this same shit during your time fucking up America and Vietnam forty years ago. You don't make any more sense now than you did then. So shut the fuck up you two old senile farts.
I could go on and on, but I feel sick enough already at having to wade through this same old bullshit again and again and again. America really does have no one, and I mean no one even remotely competent to manage our country's foreign and domestic affairs. We've got nothing more than bullshit-slingers, and old bullshit at that.
December 5, 2006 1:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hmm...After giving it more thought, I regret calling the CIA and the DIA "dopes". If one of the goals of the Bush administration was to create chaos in Iraq and intentionally destroy any possibility that Iraq would ever be a strong and united nation able to withstand US pressure, the Bush administration succeeded admirably.
December 10, 2006 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink