Regarding Iraq, few commentators have approached the ongoing decline of our leadership and prospects of success with more intellectual integrity than Gregory Djerejian of the Belgravia Dispatch. Statements like this, for example, can’t be easy to write:
In good time, I will write my personal mea culpa in this tragic affair. I had greater faith in this Administration, and they have let us down time and again. But it’s too easy to say it would all have been OK but for the dumbies who effed up the show. People who supported the war, and there were many of us (on both sides of the aisle, lest we forget), had to keep in mind the abilities of those charged with prosecuting it, and the resources that would be brought to bear. We knew the Powell Doctrine had been shunted aside in favor of utopic transformationalist nostrums, and we knew that some who were listened to in the leading counsels of power had memorably declared the effort would be a cakewalk. We should have smelled the danger signals better, and we deserve the scorn of those who were against this effort from the get-go, at least those who honestly believed we were doing the wrong thing rather than just opposing anything the horrible Bushies would bring to the plate.
There isn’t anything for me to add.
The post goes on to argue that hope remains for a stable future in Iraq but it won’t come quickly. Djerejian estimates that for Iraq to have any chance at reaching a stable state foreign troops will need to remain at or near current levels at least through 2008. If you take his assumptions for granted the drain on American blood and treasure seems dire enough. On top of that the idea that America won’t have the boots to respond to any international crisis for the next three years, plus the time it takes to rebuild our Iraq-worn Army into a battle-ready machine again, does not encourage me.
But I wonder how much longer we could sustain our current fighting force, even at the current level which many judge insufficient to properly challenge an insurgency. We all know by now that Rumsfeld planned to draw troops down to 30,000 by the fall of 2003, so whatever they’ve don’e since then has basically amounted to winging it. Sure they’ve managed to wing it for three years now, and they’re building at least 14 enduring bases to house a certain fraction of our troops, but I think it’s just as likely as not that the Army simply won’t be able to sustain current troop levels for three more years without an immediate draft. Needless to say, from a political perspective a draft is about as likely in the current Congress as an impeachment vote.
Of course if Greg Djerejian is right and I’m right then all of the current sturm und drang over the Iraq issue amounts to dragging our feet towards a foregone conclusion. Hopefully one of us is wrong, but I won’t hold my breath.
srv
As these clowns are finally beginning to realize, you go to war with the dumbshits you have, not the dumbshits you wished you had.
Of course, the rest of the nut-o-sphere has parroted that if you didn’t have any faith in Bush before 2006, you just suffered BDS. But if you only lost faith after beating the dead pooch for three years, you just had too much faith.
If you think God is on your side, I hope he old testaments your asses.
capelza
Good for him..I mean that. After years of warning about Bush (I mean well back into the 90’s for me) and then witnessing firsthand the resultant train wreck, I at least thought I’d enjoy the “you were right”. But I don’t. I only want to cry..for the lives, hopes and comity that this past five years has seen wasted.
Really, Bush sux..thanks for finally noticing folks.
Perry Como
Djerjian is just a terrorist loving hippy. We must stay the course or the Islamofascists will be embolden and attack us again. Why does Djerjian hate America?
VidaLoca
What she said. Worse yet, there’s still (at least) another three years to go. God help us all.
yet another jeff
I remember in the early nineties, running around saying “Bush can’t run a baseball team…he can’t run a state!”
Tried to warn people…dammit. The anger behind the snark….
CaseyL
I’ll repeat here some of what I said at DJ’s place.
Nothing will change for the better while Bush is in office. It can only get worse, because “worse” is all they’ve managed to do so far. Bush won’t get new advisors unless the ones he has take it upon themselves to resign, and Hell will hold Mass before that happens.
The status quo won’t stay static. The civil war has already started, the same way the insurgency “started” – that is, a slow accumulation of attacks that the Bush Admin and its cheerleaders kept dismissing as the last throes of dead-enders. The civil war is already on, with a slow accumulation of ethnic/sectarian attacks that are now growing in numbers, casualty count, and effect on the general population. Our leaders and commentators will only call it what it is when it’s long past time to realize what’s happened – just like the insurgency. (In fact, the insurgency and the civil war are the same thing. The civil war has grown out of the insurgency.)
The status quo will certainly not stay static if Bush launches an attack on Iran. The consequences of that are incalculably horrorific. It’s possible the only thing that will stop Bush from attacking Iran is a mutiny by the military – and that’s as horrifying as the consequences of not stopping him, in terms of what it will mean for civilian government in this country, in our very own US of A.
So: civil war in Iraq; exacerbated by a possible war in Iran. That’s where we’ll be in three years.
As I asked Greg, “What choices do you think the next President will be facing?”
KC
Though I never supported the war, I do sort of wonder if things would be going better in Iraq if the 1) Dems had at least one house of Congress or 2) Kerry would have won the election. The reason I say this is because without having to worry about being accountable to anyone, Bush has had a free ride unlike any President since, well, longer than I can remember. Had someone been there to demand accountability, to tell him that PR stunts aren’t sufficient, it may have forced him to put a team in together that’s actually policy proficient. I think it’s a given that Kerry would have done so, especially with a Republican Congress breathing down his neck. Would it have been that way for Bush?
dagon
entirely too generous tim,
i am so tired of this (in an effort to seem serious, not flaming or punitive) tendency of people of good faith (not leftist partisans mind you) of providing cover for ideologues who trumpeted this action.
although he tacitly admits that he was wrong, sully has issued a challenge to anyone who can find a MAJOR anti-war proponent who spoke out against the veracity of the cia assessment that sadaam’s iraq posed an imminent threat to us prior to the failed recovery during the invasion.
i wish that punk would actually allow comments because i never believed that to be the case and provided reams of sourced material to the contrary on every blog that i encountered during the runup to the invasion; not least on that list were the words of colin powell himself.
mea culpa’s are all well and good and i’ll eagerly await djerjian’s, to see if he can do better than the half ass condemnation that he has provided so far while still get in a few proximity digs against the opposition:
–the evidence of the corrupt, illegal, self-serving and detrimental aspects of this action were abundant to anyone with a genuine interest in history or humanity over efficacy long before the first bombs fell. and one would have to seriously question not only the intellect but the sanity of the hawks and apologists who have brought this nation to this point.
they certainly have no place in credible journalism OR the blogosphere. and they certainly don’t deserve any cover now that once the political winds have irrevocably changed, they wish to issue a ‘mea culpa’. that goes for greg djerjian, andrew sullivan and sadly, that goes for john cole.
peace
Bob In Pacifica
These motherfuckers will rot in hell.
Metaphorically speaking. I don’t believe in hell.
srv
CaseyL,
The next few presidents choices are between ending empire and beating a dead horse. They will chose the latter. Call it “propping up empire with Honor”.
KC,
Dems in Congress trying to be responsible and make GW accountable would be like making Jim Jones accountable. All they can offer is a different flavor of Kool-Aid, and they’re smart enough to know it gains them nothing.
In the end, the Bush Doctrine will be officially relegated to the ash-heap of history. No doubt the longer it takes us to get there, the more likely Condi’s mushroom clouds are to be realized. But I would rather trade DC than a United States where Unitary Executive Theory is taught in every Civics class.
The threat really is existential. It’s just not an external threat.
The Other Steve
Well then he’s wrong, and he’s still caught up in his poppycock conventional wisdom claptrap.
There is no strategic value for the US to remain in Iraq, because the US cannot provide any semblance of stability to the nation and if anything we undermine the authority of whatever existing government there is.
He’s just as wrong now as he was when he cheerled for this stupid war.
But at least he’s a small bit more honest than Sully, I’ll grant them that. Although he uses the typical pro-war apologist excuse
It’s amazing how the two people in America who opposed the Iraq war because they just don’t like Bush in general are used as a scapegoat for this horrifically bad policy decision.
The Other Steve
I’ll be honest. Absolutely nothing different.
It takes a while for people to admit reality. Had Kerry won, he couldn’t have pulled us out. He’d have been accused of not clapping hard enough, etc. and the reality would not have sank in so deep with the America psyche as to understand that this thing is going nowhere.
Let’s face facts. Had Kerry won, or the Democrats controlled the House, the Republicans would just have used it as an excuse for someone to blame. Because that’s the only game they know how to play.
The best thing that ever happened for this Nation and for the Democrats, was the Republicans to win in 2002 and 2004. Because now everything that has gone wrong is all their fucking fault, and America realizes that.
Yeah, you’ve got a few partisan sycophants like Protein Wisdom trying to lay down the blame game. And you’ve got Nick Danger over at redstate trying to figure out if he can blame his mother. But the rest of the red-blooded honest Americans arne’t buying the bullshit anymore.
Yes, it’s terrible what has happened to this nation as a result of the Republicans. But we’ve been in bad spots before, and we’ve turned around. Now that this ideology has been completely discredited, we have a chance and an opportunity for honest open debate, and that’s a good thing.
Now we just need to kick the Democrats in the balls and make that happen.
The Other Steve
That’s ok. I do believe in hell, so therefore they will rot in hell.
Dennis
I almost hate to admit that I was against this war from the start. All the people I know considered me a pacifist nut from the start. I was derided. I was never a pacifist! I wanted retribution as bad as the next guy. I wanted O’Sama. Saying “I told you so” has no satisfaction. Bitching about the incompetent administration has no satisfaction. Impeachment has no satisfaction. Nothing will bring back the dead.
Steve
Nick Danger was looking for someone to blame within hours of the 9/11 attacks. Fucking sicko.
Brian in Oakland
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote:
“In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop
by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair,
against our will, comes wisdom through the awful
grace of God.”
Those who have used this war to pour fear into the american people while basking in their jingoistic piety have neither grace nor wisdom. Fuck Them.
Ancient Purple
I wonder if Djerjian will be much more forthcoming in his concerns about Bush Co. when we start bombing Iran in, say, October 2006…
… just in time for the election.
srv
I can’t scream this loudly enough. Rub this in their faces, today, tomorrow, and forever. Humiliate them whenever you can. Do everything in your power to marginalize their influence on private and public discourse.
Anyone who ever voted for Bush and/or supported this war is to always be refered to as a “Bush Lover”. Don’t give them inch, and never, ever let them qualify their support. This is black-and-white, this isn’t about “I told you so”, this is about accountability.
srv
Put more simply. Don’t hate Bush. Hate the people who voted for him.
RonB
Well…I did, and I have already said I was a total idiot for doing so, and I don’t even try to qualify it. Can we make a special exception for a born again Bush Hater?
J. Michael Neal
We should have smelled the danger signals better, and we deserve the scorn of those who were against this effort from the get-go, at least those who honestly believed we were doing the wrong thing rather than just opposing anything the horrible Bushies would bring to the plate.
What a crock. He says that he didn’t appreciate how incompetent the administration is, and then derides those who opposed something grand because they thought the Bushies were useless. Wake up, Greg; all you’ve done is deride those who had more foresight than you (or I, for that matter) did.
Look closely, folks. You’ve just seen a perfect example of being a sore loser.
srv
How about a 100-post penance on Protein? ;)
RonB
Ugh, I can’t stand going there for long, can’t we pick someplace else?
RonB
Wait, I think I just got that joke, srv. Duh. Done and done.
Mr.Ortiz
Yeah, what J. Michael Neal said. Djerjian finally admits that Bush and his entire staff are incompetent, and he admits that Bush supporters should have realized this sooner, but anyone who realized it before the 2004 elections should have kept their mouths shut. Typical republican, stuck between an unpopular president and a shared opinion with liberals, he lashes out at both.
Pb
Heh. For some reason this almost reminds me of Buchanan. His message before the 2004 election was something along the lines of… Bush’s war in Iraq has been a complete disaster, and his economic policies have also been a complete disaster, therefore… ah… vote for Bush in 2004… I kid you not!
searp
Incompetence may have led to the decision to go to war, but I doubt it. A triumphalist, imperialist world view is more likely. Bush and his staff simply thought that ~150,000 American soldiers could dictate the future of Iraq, and they were completely mistaken.
We like the incompetence meme, because it excuses a lot. It puts the burden on process, as opposed to policy and outlook.
Bush is incompetent, no question. However, he and the modern Republican party are also wrong, fundamentally wrong.
Imperialism doesn’t work in the modern world. The rest of the world does not want to be just like us, and doesn’t want to be remade in our image. Military force is a limited tool. Massive tax cuts do not result in anything other than massive deficits, because we expect things from our government that require a certain level of funding. Science will not be constrained by Biblical injunctions.
The better excuse is this: Bush said one thing and did another. He jettisoned his own limited-government rhetoric immediately after 9/11. Therefore, those who voted for him in 2000 are excused, they were snookered. Those who voted for him in 2004 have no excuse.
Davebo
Djerjian admits we have woefully incompetent leadership. And that Dubya has no intention of replacing the worst offenders (mainly Rummy), and then admonishes us to stay the course.
As I said at his site, no thanks.
Davebo
Searp,
You hit the nail on the head. I can understand supporting Bush in 2000, but there’s no excuse for doing it again in 2004.
Richard Bottoms
Forget Djerjian, someone I’ve never heard of until now. Even Jessica Simpson want nothing to do with the smirking chimp.
On and by the way. I told you so.
ppGaz
Bush’s poll numbers are headed into historically low territory …. and the rhetoric about Iran seems to be getting kicked up a notch.
Coincidence? Is there any doubt whatever that the Rove machine is going to try to drive American politics this year using Iran as the engine of fear and distraction?
Ancient Purple
No coincidence, ppG. I am willing to bet that there is at least a 75% chance that this Administration will be bombing sites in Iran just prior to the November election. There is no doubt that there will be a rallying effect around the President and that will be exploited to say that you can show your support of the President by keeping the Republican majority in Congress.
I will keep my fingers crossed that the American public will see it for what it is and throw the Republican majority out anyway.
Then again, this is the same American public that thinks Olive Garden is great Italian food, so I won’t get my hopes up.
p.lukasiak
give Greg D a break. Sure, he is still reluctant to admit that us “bush haters” were right….
but when Greg D also says stuff like “our President appears too bovinely stubborn to realize this”, its obvious that he is well on his own way to becoming a “born-again” Bush hater.
Greg’s problem was that he always looked at Iraq through an idealized prism — he supported the Iraq war because with the proper leadership he believed the invasion could succeed. He’s still mad at those of us who kept telling him that “we don’t have the proper leadership, we have Bush, and Iraq is therefore a bad idea” — thus the slam at those of us who “opposed anything those horrible Bushies” wanted to do.
(The weird thing is that I posted over at BD that if Greg was running things, I’d be willing to give the occupation a chance to succeed…. It wasn’t that Greg was stupid about what the situation in Iraq was, it was merely that he was stupid about Bush. )
Northman
Ancient Purple,
Remember your history, and you only have to go back three and a half years. The Administration won’t start bombing Iran before the election, they’ll just really kick up the rhetoric, and put forth a vote on authorizing force just before the election, which the Democrats will support to avoid looking “weak on defense”, and push back the actual bombing to early ’07.
That way, when things go even worse than the current mess in Iraq, they can claim the Democrats supported the War on Iran too, and they’ll basically be right, so far as the leadership of the party is concerned. And of course, only Republicans can carry on the war, since they’re better on these defense issues. And the Democrats lose again.
Now, getting yourself involved in international wars due to partisan domestic politics is probably not the best way of doing things, but that is the system you have created down there. Enjoy.
ppGaz
Now THAT’S funny!
Great Mexican food? Taco Bell.
Great seafood? Long John Silver.
What a country!
Davebo
I guess we should give Gregory some credit for facing reality and fessing up. Unlike some folks….
The Other Steve
Taco Bell is an America icon. It is as American as Kentucky Fried Chicken, Hamburgers and Apple pie!
The Other Steve
Oh man, that’s painful. Just reading that site for 5 minutes makes me want to scrub my eyes out with Brillo pads and Kerosene.
Ancient Purple
Indeed.
I had a debate with a friend about the merits of Claim Jumper. I said their food was mediocre at best and he said, “Yeah, but you get huge portions!”
Because we all know that bad and mediocre food tastes better when there are huge portions of it.
Nikki
No, no, no. Red Lobster is the standard for great seafood!
KCinDC
For Google’s sake, if nothing else, the guy’s name is Djerejian, with an “e” in the middle.
Tim F.
Thanks.
ppGaz
Yes, Red Lobster is where the trailer dwellers who normally eat at Long John Silver go for a special occasion, such as when a paternity test comes back negative.
Ancient Purple
POTD Nominee.
kb
“Remember your history, and you only have to go back three and a half years. The Administration won’t start bombing Iran before the election, they’ll just really kick up the rhetoric, and put forth a vote on authorizing force just before the election, which the Democrats will support to avoid looking “weak on defense”, and push back the actual bombing to early ‘07”
Don’t forget going to the UNSC, so that with a bit of luck, bush will be able to get all the anti-french hysteria (‘them democrats sure look french to me’), complete with all the jokes, sneers & insults that their ever gullible base will roll out again, just as in 2003.
jg
I must admit, I was once a Bush lover. On 9/11 I wasn’t comfortable until I saw him show up at the WH. I was all for the war in Iraq (I actually believed the administration knew more than Powell showed at the UN but they didn’t want to burn sources, Boy was that wrong). I sat up nights watching the war on CNN. I laughed at the libs at work trying to tell me Bush was an idiot, I was glad Gore ‘lost’. It all changed sometime during the summer of ’03 when I heard for the first time that we went to Iraq to save the Iraqis, a group of people I and I thought my fellow republicans really didn’t give a shit about. It really blew up when I heard fellow republicans not only buying the ‘save the Iraqis’ line but also using it as a blunt instrument against libs. The wmd argument had gone away and all of a sudden this new reason was being used like it was there all the time. I pointed that out and got called a liberal which to me was just as bad as telling me I’m just like my dad. I couldn’t believe I was cast out so fast simply for pointing out Bush’s bullshitting.
Anyway Olive Garden does suck, so does Claim Jumper. I might add that if you ever want to be able to enjoy a homemade on the grill steak don’t go to Ruth’s Chris. I’m ruined now. Any other steak tastes like wood in comparison.
The Other Steve
Anybody who has ever eaten at the Hungry Horse would know this is sadly, not just an American thing…
http://www.hungryhorse.co.uk/