Nate's Well Earned Response

Nate has been writing and commenting a lot lately on the carelessness of the Bush administrations handling of the Iraq war effort.

I agree that some specific war-decisions have been made that in hindsight, do not appear wise, and have strengthened the insurgency. I am most angry about the operation in Afghanistan that we subcontracted to warlords when we had OBL in our sights and failed to make the best effort to get him.

In hindsight, I think the more boots on the ground theory may have worked better. However, I try to avoid Monday morning quarterbacking, coulda, shoulda, woulda reasoning. Iraq is a tough job, no doubt about it, and I think there are a couple kind of mistakes that were made and will continue to be made. The first kind of mistake is a "reaction mistake." These are calls that were made in reaction to a particular circumstance that I think were bad calls. The Afghan warlord call was an instance of this. Hummer vehicles not immediately being better armed against roadside bombs are another. Abu Gharib also falls into this category.

Each mistake merits a specific type of response, depending on the situation. First, we ought to correct the mistake - get the vehicles armored. Sometimes we cannot correct the mistake, like Abu Gharib or OBL in Afghanistan, we can only learn and not continue to make the same type of mistakes. That is step one. Step two is to determine whether the mistakes were egregious enough that someone ought to be fired. In the Afghan situation, I think someone who made the call ought to be fired. Same with Abu Gharib. In some cases, someone ought to be prosecuted for gross misconduct. Abu Gharib falls into this category.

I think we've been slow to react to a few of these "reactionary" mistakes, but have generally handled them well. People get upset abou Abu Gharib, but I feel like it has been handled appropriately - people fired and prosecuted. What else should we do?

Another type of mistake is what I would call a "systemic mistake." An example of a systemic mistake, to me, is something like the drinking age being 21 instead of 18 - which is a useless law for a couple reasons: no one follows it and it is unjust. Consequently, there are all sorts of inefficiencies and practices of arbitrary justice - locking up parents who serve kids alcohol, creating a market niche for fake IDs, excessive "underground" alcohol consumption and lies by college kids about alcohol consumption, etc.

What Nate is arguing is that the handling of the post-war Iraq situation is a "systemic" mistake, whereby the Bush admin negligently didn't plan for "how to handle the peace." I argue that it was more of a "reactionary" mistake, we always have been operating under the premise that the future of Iraq was up to the Iraqis - that is, it would largely be about how well we were able to help Iraq develop its own security forces as opposed to a British style imperialism with overwhelming number of Americans in Iraq creating a surrogate government, with American precepts handling government operations. That was never our goal.

I think this premise was pretty well articulated prior to the war, as well, that we would be sending troops over to liberate Iraq and not as a permanent occupying force. I don't remember Zakaria, Friedman, or Sullivan calling at the time of the Iraq invasion for more troops and a more permanent occupation because the only thing that mattered in Iraq was security. Security matters in Iraq, but it also matters how Iraq is secured. Saddam created a "secure" Iraq via terror. I don't think a "secure" Iraq as a US protectorate is desirable.

On another note, there are other elements of part of the Iraq strategy as a part of the war on terror that aren't about liberating Iraqis. One element was "the flypaper on the wall theory," that we would rather fight terrorists in Baghdad than New York. I prefer our troops fighting all the crazies over there, instead of letting them hide incognito in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Pakistan while we sit around trying to pass UN resolutions and they get to ponder about how, whether, and if they are going to release a chemical weapon attack on US soil.

The other element is the Saudi question. How the fuck are we supposed to deal with country? This is a country that would popularly elect Osama Bin Laden. They are in the same spot as Europe in the 16th century with respect to the mindset of the people. They also have the most oil in the world and the only country with reliable reserves to react to any type of oil crisis. Further, they preach hatred of the US through the mosques, yet put a friendly face with the Royal family. They have us in a shitty, twisted position. Should anything happen in Saudi Arabia, the Islamicists take over, or just if they try to destroy the oil, we have 100,000 troops right next door. We also have the opportunity, if we are able to transform Iraq into a west friendly, economically able country, the oil reliance on Saudi Arabia can be lessoned. This will be a good thing.

So any discussion of mistakes in Iraq ought to focus of what type of mistake, how it should have been prevented, the ramifications of the mistake, and how this matters in the larger context of the mission.

UPDATE: Smarter people have written on the same topic here and here.