Let the record show that before 9 AM on September 1, I had gotten three emails telling me that I *had* to read this article by James Fallows (in the October Atlantic Monthly) *immediately*. June 2003-June 2004 in Iraq is only the second strategic defeat inflicted on America by the Bush administration. January 2002-January 2003 was the first:
Bush's Lost Year
By deciding to invade Iraq, the Bush Administration decided not to do many other things: not to reconstruct Afghanistan, not to deal with the threats posed by North Korea and Iran, and not to wage an effective war on terror. An inventory of opportunities lost.
by James Fallows
.....
At the beginning of 2002 the United States still operated in a climate of worldwide sympathy and solidarity. A broad range of allies supported its anti-Taliban efforts in Afghanistan.... President Bush was still being celebrated... fewer than 10,000 U.S. soldiers were deployed overseas as part of the war on terror, and a dozen Americans had died in combat. The United States had not captured Osama bin Laden, but it had routed the Taliban leadership that sheltered him, and seemed to have put al-Qaeda on the run....
I also remember the way 2002 ended.... 200,000 members of the U.S. armed forces were en route to staging areas surrounding Iraq.... [T]he Administration refused to discuss plans for the war's aftermath—or its potential cost. In December the President fired Lawrence Lindsey after Lindsey offered a guess that the total cost might be $100 billion to $200 billion.... Lindsey's controversial estimate held up very well... at striking variance with the pre-war insistence by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz that Iraq's oil money, plus contributions from allies, would minimize the financial burden on Americans....
[T]he biggest question... whether [the Bush] response to 9/11 has made [America] safer or more vulnerable.... Over the past two years I have been talking with a group of people at the working level of America's anti-terrorism efforts... no partisan ax to grind with the Administration... they have so far been proved right. In the year before combat started in Iraq, they warned that occupying the country would be far harder than conquering it.... [A]mong national-security professionals there is surprisingly little controversy... America's response to 9/11 [was] a catastrophe. I have sat through arguments among soldiers and scholars about whether the invasion of Iraq should be considered the worst strategic error in American history—or only the worst since Vietnam.... "Let me tell you my gut feeling," a senior figure at one of America's military-sponsored think tanks told me recently, after we had talked for twenty minutes about details of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. "If I can be blunt, the Administration is full of shit. In my view we are much, much worse off now than when we went into Iraq. That is not a partisan position. I voted for these guys. But I think they are incompetent, and I have had a very close perspective on what is happening. Certainly in the long run we have harmed ourselves. We are playing to the enemy's political advantage. Whatever tactical victories we may gain along the way, this will prove to be a strategic blunder."...
Posted by DeLong at September 1, 2004 11:57 AM | TrackBackBecause of outlays for Iraq, the United States cannot spend $150 billion for other defensive purposes.... [W]ar in Iraq crowded out efforts to design a broader strategy against Islamic extremists and terrorists.... Regime change in Iraq, it said, would have a sweeping symbolic effect on worldwide sources of terror. That seems to have been true—but in the opposite way from what the President intended. It is hard to find a counterterrorism specialist who thinks that the Iraq War has reduced rather than increased the threat to the United States....
By the beginning of 2002 U.S. and Northern Alliance forces had beaten the Taliban but lost bin Laden... bear down even harder in Afghanistan, or to shift the emphasis in the global war on terror... Paul Wolfowitz forcefully argued that Saddam Hussein was so threatening, and his overthrow was so "doable," that he had to be included in the initial military response. "The 'Afghanistan first' argument prevailed, basically for the reasons that Colin Powell advocated," Richard Clarke told me. "He said that the American people just aren't going to understand if you don't do something in Afghanistan right away—and that the lack of causal connection between Iraq and 9/11 would make it difficult to make the case for that war."
[T]he stated and unstated need to be ready for Saddam Hussein put a serious crimp in the U.S. effort against bin Laden and the Taliban.... In removing the Taliban, the United States had acted as a genuine liberator. It came to the task with clean hands and broad international support.... What it needed... was a sustained military, financial, and diplomatic effort to keep Afghanistan from sinking back toward chaos and thus becoming a terrorist haven once again.... Iraq, of course, was what we were ginning up for, and the effects on Afghanistan were more important, if subtler, than has generally been discussed....
What did matter... was the knowledge that the "center of gravity"... was about to shift to Iraq. That dictated not just the vaunted "lightness" of the invasion but also the decision to designate allies for crucial tasks: the Northern Alliance for initial combat, and the Pakistanis for closing the border so that al-Qaeda leaders would not escape. In the end neither ally performed its duty the way the Americans had hoped... delegating the real work to less motivated allies seems to have been the uncorrectable error....
[...]
"Are we better off in basic security than before we invaded Iraq?" asks Jeffrey Record, a professor of strategy at the Air War College and the author of the recent Dark Victory, a book about the Iraq War. "The answer is no. An unnecessary war has consumed American Army and other ground resources, to the point where we have nothing left in the cupboard for another contingency—for instance, should the North Koreans decide that with the Americans completely absorbed in Iraq, now is the time to do something."...
"We're really in dire straits with resourcing," [an army officer] said. "There's not enough armor for Humvees. There's not enough fifty-caliber machine guns for the Hundred and First Airborne or the Tenth Mountain Division. A country that can't field heavy machine guns for its army—there's something wrong with the way we're doing business."...
[...]
A later article will describe insights about controlling terrorism. For now the point is the strong working-level consensus that terrorists are "logical," if hideously brutal, and that the steps in 2002 that led to war have broadened the extremists' base.... [T]he International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London, reported that al-Qaeda was galvanized by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As of mid-2004 it had at least 18,000 operatives in sixty countries. "Al Qaeda has fully reconstituted [and] set its sights firmly on the USA and its closest Western allies in Europe"....
To govern is to choose, and the choices made in 2002 were fateful. The United States began that year... with tremendous strategic advantages.... World opinion was strongly sympathetic. Longtime allies were eager to help; longtime antagonists were silent. The federal budget was nearly in balance, making ambitious projects feasible. The U.S. military was superbly equipped, trained, and prepared. An immediate foe was evident—and vulnerable—in Afghanistan. For the longer-term effort against Islamic extremism the Administration could draw on a mature school of thought from academics, regional specialists, and its own intelligence agencies. All that was required was to think broadly about the threats to the country, and creatively about the responses.
The Bush Administration chose another path. Implicitly at the beginning of 2002, and as a matter of formal policy by the end, it placed all other considerations second to regime change in Iraq. It hampered the campaign in Afghanistan before fighting began and wound it down prematurely, along the way losing the chance to capture Osama bin Laden. It turned a blind eye to misdeeds in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and to WMD threats from North Korea and Iran far more serious than any posed by Saddam Hussein, all in the name of moving toward a showdown with Iraq. It overused and wore out its army in invading Iraq—without committing enough troops for a successful occupation. It saddled the United States with ongoing costs that dwarf its spending for domestic security. And by every available measure it only worsened the risk of future terrorism. In every sense 2002 was a lost year.
The lost year was predicted by one of the GOP grownups:
http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage1.asp
Note clues about why grownups don't speak out.
Posted by: bakho at September 1, 2004 12:32 PMNot shrewd.
Any old chump can point out why Bush's policies are a disaster. It takes a shrewd commentator to discern the faint traces of strategic brilliance.
Posted by: Kaus Hackula at September 1, 2004 12:41 PMWow. It sounds like Fallows is trying to make an argument based on opportunity cost. Since the Bush universe is "tradeoff free" it should come as no surprise if this argument falls on deaf ears.
Speaking of Fallows, did anyone besides me feel sorry for anyone with the misfortune of publishing "Free Flight" just before Sept. 11. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1586480405/104-0716333-6983966?v=glance
I heard him on NPR touting his book in the summer of 2001, but then oddly enough I didn't hear a peep about his idea in Autumn or thereafter.
Actually, Fallow's idea of flexible, smaller passenger aircraft might reduce the chances of carrying out something like the WTC attack, but it still seems like a pretty tough sell in the new security era.
Posted by: Paul Callahan at September 1, 2004 12:48 PMAmazing that Fallows gets space (and pay) from The Atlantic for what amounts to a sweeping statement of the obvious. However, I can only hope that the Heathers of the mainstream media pick up on this and begin actually thinking about what has happened during Bush's first term.
I believe any rational examination shows nothing but costs, with no benefits whatever accrued anywhere on the ledger--only the vague promise that if we let Bush keep doing what has cost so dearly, it will somehow pay off against all odds, logic, and physics.
Posted by: Derelict at September 1, 2004 01:13 PM"The Bush Administration decided not to do many other things"
Still don't get why, oh why, the dem campaign choose to not choose the "ressource for irak were distracted from pursuing ben laden", line, hammered again and again and again and again.
"Whatever tactical victories we may gain along the way, this will prove to be a strategic blunder."
Iraq has proven to be the "tarbaby" that many predicted it would become. Bush and Co. smacked the tarbaby without imagining how it would extricate itself if it didn't turn out as planned. The press has been almost tratoriously malfeasant in ignoring the lack of options the US has in executing a graceful exit.
It is as though Iraq, as a US problem, was solved in June when the Bush administration turned over "sovereignty" to the Iraqi interim government. If one reads the popular press now, it seems the death, destruction, mayhem and chaos there are Iraqi - not US - problems.
Since the Bush administration struck the tarbaby and set into motion a series of events which will impact the Middle East for a generation or more, the US will continue to carry the sole responsibility for all those impacts. Lord help us if the sum total of those impacts is negative, rather than positive.
Posted by: Mushinronsha at September 1, 2004 01:57 PMCouldn't agree more. Kerry really needs to emphasize the enormous financial, political, and security related opportunity costs associated with Bush's decision path. Is there anything to the statistic that over 70% of Bush supporters don't have passports. What does this suggest about the majority of his supporters, given their sociographic variables. I think there most be some connection between never having left your own country and the inability to conceptualize alternative outcomes.
Posted by: economic girlie man at September 1, 2004 02:03 PMAmazing that Fallows gets space (and pay) from The Atlantic for what amounts to a sweeping statement of the obvious.
He states the obvious so well, though, that it's worth it. He doesn't seem at all strident, and that dispassion makes the piece even more devastating.
Posted by: Matt Davis at September 1, 2004 04:41 PMBut you can understand how it all had to happen: you had strong-willed, don't-take-no-for-an-answer neocons like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Cheney with a preexisting agenda pressuring an unseasoned, neophyte president, and a totally incompetent National Security Adviser. To have chosen the right course would have taken extraordinary courage and maturity, and Bush had none of either quality.
Posted by: Bob H at September 1, 2004 05:13 PM"Irak" , "Ben laden" --> Foreigner!
Kill! Hurt! Destroy!!!!!!!
A cheese-eater! A wine-swiller!
(Yabonn, welcome! That was a parody of people who actually, alas, exist in this country and are in fact very influential).
Hey zizka :)
Yes the reptiloids in question are quite a show, and not only for the french bashing : overall, a real social-democratic thriller (drown it in the bathtub! how deliciously barbarous!)
But in these case it is usable againt them.
They like straight talkin'? Kerry goes "i've been cheated, cheated like you my dear american citizens, by this administration into irak". Then goes "why does the president avoid the ben laden subject?"
Furriner killing is in order, or you'll be weak on terror? "I swear, dear people that i'll do everything to find and kill ben laden, unlike this administration, who's distracted billions from this goal and puts us all at danger".
Remains the not-completely neglectible possibility that said ben laden in shelved somewhere waiting for election day, but still, there's an angle here.
Posted by: yabonn at September 2, 2004 03:58 AMFallows' associated piece, "Blind Into Baghdad," is superb. On The Atlantic web site.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200401/fallows
The irony of his current piece, "Bush's Lost Year," is that the Administration probably did NOT literally weigh all of the things they couldn't do if they committed to a war in Iraq. "Blind Into Baghdad" makes this pretty clear. There was no sober discussion. There should have been.
Posted by: Jim Harris at September 2, 2004 05:25 AMIt's pretty easy to do armchair 20-20 hindsight and say this or that should have been done. What if Saddam Hussein actually had acquired a nuclear weapon and used it? With his total control of Iraqi oil money, and unscrupulous business people ready to sell anything, and unaccounted for weapons from Russia, who is to say that would not have happened? Then armchair political strategists would be saying something very different.
Besides, it is troubling that James Fallows is arguing from the position that the United States is the solver of all world problems. In that respect he is not that different from Bush. The underlying assumption is that we should be poking our beaks into every world problem because we are the greatest country on the planet.
We probably don't have the military to take on another big problem right now, and frankly, if Japan, China, and Southeast Asia would like to assist in beak-poking regarding North Korea, that would be fine with me.
If we keep expanding military operations at the expense of other things like infrastructure and education, we will not maintain a leadership position. It makes me a little bit worried when political leaders keep using the "greatest country" slogan, like they think we have to be convinced over and over again.
A vote for the GOP is a vote for the failure of America.
Is this why Nader is helping the Republicans?
Highten the contratdictions?
woodturtle:
What if Saddam Hussein actually had acquired a nuclear weapon and used it?
We would have traced it back to him and held him accountable. We've traced back most, if not all, of the 9/11 connections, even the ones to ----- -----, although the public doesn't get to know about those. This is a completely specious argument and I am getting sick of hearing it. What if he had sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads? As far as we know, he was as close to getting those as he was to buying a nuclear weapon. It isn't as easy as Tom Clancy makes it sound, and doing anything with it is even harder.
Posted by: Nathan at September 2, 2004 10:09 AMI know that any comparison to Hitler is seen as desparate loser's arguement in any debate. Certainly the widely panned Bush = Hiter homemade commercial that briefly appeared MoveOn.org is a good example. Even the MoveOn.org Judges and membership rejected it for good reason.
However, Brad I think a honest comparison of the Bush administrations policies in Iraq and Afghanistan to the Hitler's stunning series of Miltary Blunders is not out of order. Tora Bora where the Bushies refused to use ground forces to the ensure capture OMB reminds me of the Nazi's attempting to finish off the Brits at Dunkirk with Air Power letting them get away to fight again. Rummy = Goering anyone. The throwing out of the Pentagon's Iraq War Plan by the Neo-cons reminds me of Hitler's constant last minute meddling in the his Army High Command's strategies. The U.S. Occupation of Iraq vs the Nazi's alienation of the Ukranians. Starting a second front in Iraq before winning the battle in Afghanistan is uncannily like Hitler with England and Russia.
Are the Bushies are not only the greatest Miltary Blunderers in US history, but attempting to rival any in Modern World History.
Hell, with a second term the Bushies could aim the to out do Alcibiades, the Athenians and the Invasion of Syracuse in the history of Miltary Blunders
Posted by: llamajockey at September 2, 2004 11:19 AMNathan:
You may be right, but all the same I am glad that he is not running Iraq any longer. The main flaw of the Bush administration was believing that a small efficient fighting force would also be effective as a peacekeeping force.
What? Tom Clancy is not the same as the Bible of Foreign Policy? That's news to me.
Posted by: woodturtle at September 2, 2004 03:20 PMWoodturtle asks: What if Saddam Hussein actually had acquired a nuclear weapon and used it?
An important question. Here's an equally important one:
What if monkeys had flown out of my ass? Would I have had to buy new pants? Would I need a license for the monkeys? Would my landlord have complained?
Oh wait, actually neither of those are important questions, since there are no medically documented cases of spontaneous simian recto-expulsion in humans, and nobody -- nobody -- outside of Doug Feith's spy-riddled and incompetent Office of Special Plans believed for even a second that Hussein had anything even close to a nuclear weaspons program.
Posted by: Doctor Memory at September 2, 2004 07:40 PMDear Dr. Memory,
I am sorry to hear you do not agree with me, but I am confused how the monkey issue fits in with the discussion of how you feel about the safety of the world in regards to the presence or absence of Saddam Hussein as the leader of Iraq. I take it you mean that we should have just stayed out of it and left him there, and that is your opinion, I take it.
Actually, I did give birth to a hairy monkey, in my husband's opinion, on account of her eyebrows going from the middle of her forehead to her hairline, but she later metamorphosed into a beautiful girl.
Have a good one........
Posted by: woodturtle at September 3, 2004 09:03 AM