Looking Failure in the Face

From Thomas E. Ricks' blog The Best Defense, here is an interesting posting with a general's critique of the Bush admin's approach to the Iraq war:

Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster is about as close to a celebrity brigadier general as the Army has. He went from being in the middle of a big tank battle in the 1991 Gulf War to leading the first major successful counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq (in Tal Afar in 2005-2006) and then was the brains behind Gen. Petraeus during the Surge (which, in case you were wondering, succeeded tactically but failed strategically).

So when he spoke at the Naval War College's conference on counterinsurgency earlier this week, people listened. He politely but powerfully dissected American failures in Iraq from 2003 through 2005. First, he said, there was "a failure to recognize" that the security problem in Iraq had shifted from insurgency to a communal struggle for power. Then, in 2006, he added, there was a centrally directed, well-executed campaign to ethnically cleanse Baghdad, but American commanders and civilian officials failed to recognize this until late in the ballgame. Instead, he said, they kept talking about accelerating the transition to Iraqi authority, not seeing that "there really wasn't an Iraqi government." What looked to some like a government, he explained, was instead a situation where different people had captured parts of the government structure. "So in effect our strategy in 2006 was a rush to failure," and even was intensifying Iraq's problems, he said.

How did this come to pass, he asked? It wasn't that everything was going swimmingly until the Golden Mosque in Samarra was blown up in February 2006, he said. He called that view a "myth." Rather, he said, from early on in the war, American commanders failed to adjust to the realities of Iraq. "We were always a step behind."

Also, he said, "We had these maximalist objectives [such as transforming Iraq and the Middle East]. ... but we took a minimalist approach to the application of resources." The preoccupation of senior people, he said, always seemed to be how many brigades could be withdrawn from Iraq in the coming months. "This is the period of self-delusion," he said.

When this was happening, it was like watching the slow-as-molasses response to Hurricane Katrina. The Bush admin was completely incapable of responding in real time to reality. They were so ideology-bound, they saw the world they wanted to see, not reality. For Katrina you had the insanity of Bush patting Michael D. Brown on the back and saying "heckova job Brownie". This for the catastrophe of leaving tens of thousands trapped in the Superdome and at the New Orleans Civic Centre while emergency response fumbled and dawdled and failed.

Similarly the Bush admin is incredible for the Rumsfeld indifference to the looting in Baghdad in the vacuum of authority created by the US invasion with no plans for restoring order. The Bush admin hadn't bothered to plan that part of the operation! Or the Rumsfeld indifference to the lack of armour for the US troops. Instead of turning over heaven and earth to get armour to the troops toute suite, Rumsfeld simply shrugged his shoulders and commented "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want." Can you imagine if the US has fought WWII with that attitude? Incredible!

What boggles my mind is all the right wing nuts still running around braying for Bush, for McCain, for Rush Limbaugh, for Glenn Beck, etc. With this record of disaster you would think people would see that this whole spectrum of "political thinking" was bankrupt and incompetent. But no! You get tea parties with crazies in the street that are gung ho for more of this insanity. Incredible!