huh. Well you learn something new everyday.
Neo Culpa
As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.
by David Rose VF.COM November 3, 2006
I remember sitting with Richard Perle in his suite at London's Grosvenor House hotel and receiving a private lecture on the importance of securing victory in Iraq. "Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform," he said. "It won't be Westminster overnight, but the great democracies of the world didn't achieve the full, rich structure of democratic governance overnight. The Iraqis have a decent chance of succeeding." Perle seemed to exude the scent of liberation, as well as a whiff of gunpowder. It was February 2003, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the culmination of his long campaign on behalf of regime change in Iraq, was less than a month away.
Three years later, Perle and I meet again at his home outside Washington, D.C. It is October, the worst month for U.S. casualties in Iraq in almost two years, and Republicans are bracing for losses in the upcoming midterm elections. As he looks into my eyes, speaking slowly and with obvious deliberation, Perle is unrecognizable as the confident hawk who, as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had invited the exiled Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi to its first meeting after 9/11. "The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," Perle says now, adding that total defeat—an American withdrawal that leaves Iraq as an anarchic "failed state"—is not yet inevitable but is becoming more likely. "And then," says Perle, "you'll get all the mayhem that the world is capable of creating."
According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."
Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' … I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."
Having spoken with Perle, I wonder: What do the rest of the pro-war neoconservatives think? If the much caricatured "Prince of Darkness" is now plagued with doubt, how do his comrades-in-arms feel? I am particularly interested in finding out because I interviewed many neocons before the invasion and, like many people, found much to admire in their vision of spreading democracy in the Middle East.
I expect to encounter disappointment. What I find instead is despair, and fury at the incompetence of the Bush administration the neoconservatives once saw as their brightest hope.
To David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush's 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them." This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on "failure at the center"—starting with President Bush.
Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."
Fearing that worse is still to come, Adelman believes that neoconservatism itself—what he defines as "the idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world"—is dead, at least for a generation. After Iraq, he says, "it's not going to sell." And if he, too, had his time over, Adelman says, "I would write an article that would be skeptical over whether there would be a performance that would be good enough to implement our policy. The policy can be absolutely right, and noble, beneficial, but if you can't execute it, it's useless, just useless. I guess that's what I would have said: that Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked can't do. And that's very different from let's go."
I spend the better part of two weeks in conversations with some of the most respected voices among the neoconservative elite. What I discover is that none of them is optimistic. All of them have regrets, not only about what has happened but also, in many cases, about the roles they played. Their dismay extends beyond the tactical issues of whether America did right or wrong, to the underlying question of whether exporting democracy is something America knows how to do.
I will present my findings in full in the January issue of Vanity Fair, which will reach newsstands in New York and L.A. on December 6 and nationally by December 12. In the meantime, here is a brief survey of some of what I heard from the war's remorseful proponents.
Richard Perle: "In the administration that I served [Perle was an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan], there was a one-sentence description of the decision-making process when consensus could not be reached among disputatious departments: 'The president makes the decision.' [Bush] did not make decisions, in part because the machinery of government that he nominally ran was actually running him. The National Security Council was not serving [Bush] properly. He regarded [then National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice] as part of the family."
Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Ins ute freedom scholar: "Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes."
Frank Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan and founder of the Center for Security Policy: "[Bush] doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric, and that's what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home. It also creates the sense that you can take him on with impunity."
Kenneth Adelman: "The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former C.I.A. director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] Bremer—three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots. And they get the highest civilian honor a president can bestow on anyone! That was the day I checked out of this administration. It was then I thought, There's no seriousness here, these are not serious people. If he had been serious, the president would have realized that those three are each directly responsible for the disaster of Iraq."
David Frum: "I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything."
Michael Rubin, former Pentagon Office of Special Plans and Coalition Provisional Authority staffer: "Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric people trusted him, people believed him. Reformists came out of the woodwork and exposed themselves." By failing to match his rhetoric with action, Rubin adds, Bush has betrayed Iraqi reformers in a way that is "not much different from what his father did on February 15, 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up, and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did."
Richard Perle: "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I'm getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, 'Go design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that."
Kenneth Adelman: "The problem here is not a selling job. The problem is a performance job.… Rumsfeld has said that the war could never be lost in Iraq, it could only be lost in Washington. I don't think that's true at all. We're losing in Iraq.… I've worked with [Rumsfeld] three times in my life. I've been to each of his houses, in Chicago, Taos, Santa Fe, Santo Domingo, and Las Vegas. I'm very, very fond of him, but I'm crushed by his performance. Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don't know. He certainly fooled me."
Eliot Cohen, director of the strategic-studies program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and member of the Defense Policy Board: "I wouldn't be surprised if what we end up drifting toward is some sort of withdrawal on some sort of timetable and leaving the place in a pretty ghastly mess.… I do think it's going to end up encouraging various strands of Islamism, both Shia and Sunni, and probably will bring de-stabilization of some regimes of a more traditional kind, which already have their problems.… The best news is that the United States remains a healthy, vibrant, vigorous society. So in a real pinch, we can still pull ourselves together. Unfortunately, it will probably take another big hit. And a very different quality of leadership. Maybe we'll get it."
My favorite quote was this:
This is the kind of old-timey misogyny you'd hear back in Victorian times. It's almost too quaint to be offensive.Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Ins ute freedom scholar: "Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes."
I'm no Kenneth Adelman, but having served 23 years in the Military I can say that not only do I agree with Adelman, but a lot of the people, both in and out of the military feel the same way.
Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk."
Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/f...urrentPage=all
Vanity Fair
Just a bunch of think-tankers, coverning their butts,
I think the secret to next Tuesday's election (along with the source of Democratic failure) can be found in this thread.
I saw a recent poll that show 60% of those polled were dissatisfied with the President's prosecution of the war and that only 30% were satisfied with his performance there.
What did not make the news cycles is that the same poll internals showed that of those 60%, half were dissatisfied because they believed the President didn't go far enough or commit enough resources to the effort in Iraq.
If you think this election is a referendum on the war and you believe that 30% who are dissatisfied with the President, because he didn't go far enough in Iraq, are going to vote Democratic. You're delusional.
"half were dissatisfied because they believed the President didn't go far enough or commit enough resources to the effort in Iraq."
He's still at fault for making that mistake, aka, he's the commander-in-chief responsible for wasting military lives in Iraq.
Are you trying to say it wasn't dubya's fault for not sending enough troops?
Of course you are, for you and similar dubya suckers, the dumb can do no wrong.
"I'm so pissed at Bush for mishandling the war/increasing govt. spending/neglecting evangelicals...I'm going march right out to my polling station and vote Republican! Turnout City, baby!" [/delusional]
I had to wait in line to vote early...first time. Turnout baby!
I'd rank the Bush haters like this:
1. Spurs Reports Libs.
2. Liberals
3. Moderate Democrats
4. Saddam Hussein
5. Usama Bin Laden
6. Kim Jong IL
7. Others that hate America
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whottt, turambar85
I would rank the Bush-suporters like this:
1. Uber-patriotic nut-jobs with brains in which function ceases to exist beyond the stem, and think that you must support your president, no matter what. Unless he is a democrat.
2. Terrorist leaders who are having trouble obtaining new recruits on their own.
3. uhm.....wait...thats it....
Well, anyway, there are two types of people who still support the sick joke that is President Bush.
Whott, is there something wrong with your brain, man? How in the bloody does half of a quote from a different forum, especially when you divide the quote in a haphazard way that doesn't make sense, belong in a forum regarding Bush and his opponents?
Come on...
Exactly the response I had expected.
I am glad you know how funny you are turam...at least we know now it is intentional. Which makes me feel better...because no one feels good about laughing at a re
I want so bad to think that all people are, in theory, equal. However, your incessant toddler-esque quips and comments, sometimes responding simply with an awkward smiley face that doesn't even make sense, or fit in with the topic at hand, makes me think that there is seriously something wrong going on inside of your head.I am glad you know how funny you are...at least we know now it is intentional. Which makes me feel better...because no one feels good about laughing at a re
However, could you at least make the effort to keep up, or get out? Respond to things withot bringing up ty quotes from another forum, on another subject. That is just pathetic.
Ok, I give up. You respond to me calling you a lobotomized moron for replying solely with illogical smiley faces, and your only reply is an illogical, unexplained smiley face.
Ok then...
Ok, I give up. You respond to me calling you a lobotomized moron for replying solely with illogical smiley faces, and your only reply is an illogical, unexplained smiley face.
Ok then...
Dear God, its an epidemic. Yonivore too?
Well, he never had that much to lose in the first place. We're safe for now.
If you want answers about whottt's brain you'll need to channel his "dead doctor".
Apparently, no other doctor is capable of diagnosis. (per whottttt)
But it's easy to see the disconnect -- the Cheney/Rummy contingent that ended up driving foreign policy had its own agenda that only matched that of the neocons in one respect: thinking that removing Saddam was a good idea -- and even there there were differing motives. The Cheney/Rummy agenda of redesigning the military and expanding Presidential powers quickly eclipsed any practical concerns like actually finishing off the Taliban and Al Qaeda when we had the chance, sending adequate numbers of troops to occupy and control both Afghanistan and Iraq, equiping the "new" army with little things like body armor and vehicle protection, formulating a real plan for the occupation, etc. In the end, however, these neocons were idiots to think Cheney and Rummy weren't going to do what they did, and they're as much to blame as those two for doing it and Bush for giving them the reins.
But it's easy to see the disconnect -- the Cheney/Rummy contingent that ended up driving foreign policy had its own agenda that only matched that of the neocons in one respect: thinking that removing Saddam was a good idea -- and even there there were differing motives. The Cheney/Rummy agenda of redesigning the military and expanding Presidential powers quickly eclipsed any practical concerns like actually finishing off the Taliban and Al Qaeda when we had the chance, sending adequate numbers of troops to occupy and control both Afghanistan and Iraq, equiping the "new" army with little things like body armor and vehicle protection, formulating a real plan for the occupation, etc. In the end, however, these neocons were idiots to think Cheney and Rummy weren't going to do what they did, and they're as much to blame as those two for doing it and Bush for giving them the reins.
THis is true;
Dumbass trying to cover his ass, by blaming the administration for his idea, meet Dumbass #2 who tries to cover his ass by not posting an oppinion and just criticize.
Chumpdumper, you have met your soulmate neocon.
Now go off and cottage together in some public restroom.
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