While we were in transit from the island to Durham, somehow our New Yorkers got lost and are only now catching up.
There's an article in the November 24th issue by a George Parker, a letter from Baghdad which doesn't seem to have gotten the kind of national attention that it ought.
You may be wondering, after hearing Paul O'Neill assert that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from office was made as early as ten days after the Bush Administration came into office, why there wasn't more planning about what would be done after the removal of Hussein by force had been achieved. Parker's report asserts that, indeed, plans for the aftermath were drawn up; they just weren't accepted, approved and followed.
One official is reported to have suggested that the reason Pentagon officials with expertise in postwar reconstruction were excluded from the planning process was because of “the fear. . .that such people would offer pessimistic scenarios, which would challenge Rumsfeld's aversion to using troops as peacekeepers; if leaked, these scenarios might dampen public enthusiasm for the war.”
“Public enthusiasm for the war.” That phrase is chilling. Who thinks that way?
In any event, Parker's observations just reinforce my suspicion that the reason the project in Iraq is in such disarray, is because Iraq is not the issue for the Bush Administration. The destruction of Iraq doesn't matter. Indeed, since the purpose of the Iraq adventure is to set an example for all those other nations who might be tempted to resist U.S. demands, the greater the destruction, chaos, and suffering, so much the better.
The fate of Iraq is to serve as a deterrent. Success will not be measured with statistics of improving health, education, welfare and the guarantee of human rights, but by whether or not its neighbors in the region apply the lessons of Iraq to their own behavior. And, as Drew Erdmann, now serving the National Security Council as Director for Iran and Stragetic Planning observed, “if the Iraqis don't hate us.”
I don't know about you, but I think that's shameful.