W*GS
08-19-2006, 11:05 PM
America and Iraq
A litany of abuse
Aug 17th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
By Thomas E. Ricks
Penguin Press; 482 pages; $27.95.
Penguin/Allen Lane; £25
In July 2003 George Bush gave this statement on Iraq: “There are some who feel that the conditions are such that they can attack us there,” the president said. “My answer is: Bring 'em on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.” A year later, with over 7,000 American dead and wounded, a failed occupation authority and Iraq in flames, one insurgent group issued its response: “Have you another challenge?”
It was not quite so surprising that Mr Bush should fail to grasp that the insurgency could not be defeated by firepower, that America's forces were incapable of trying other ways, and were too few: he believed what his advisers told him. Whether wedded to personal dogmas, like Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, who drove the Iraq policy in ignorance of the reality, or intellectually restricted, like General Tommy Franks, who led the invasion, America's most senior officials failed to comprehend basic strategy. On his desk, Paul Bremer, a disastrous occupation chief, planted the grandiloquent sign: “Success has a thousand fathers”. His cannier, and cold-shouldered, British deputy, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, said it should instead have read: “Security and jobs, stupid”.
Thomas Ricks, a reporter with the Washington Post, has written the latest of several excellent compendiums of these blunders. Many, especially in the war's run-up and early months, are well-known: the fake pre-war intelligence; the failure to commit sufficient troops to the invasion; or to plan for its aftermath, and so on. But Mr Ricks has dug up enough new sources to justify revisiting them. His research took in 37,000 pages of official documents, hundreds of interviews and access to e-mails that, according to one survey, have been written weekly by 95% of American soldiers in Iraq. Perhaps more confidently than in any previous history, he connects America's half-cocked strategy to subsequent calamities on the ground. Most controversially, he describes widespread abuses against Iraqi citizens, including hostage-taking, murder, torture and theft, committed by American soldiers who did not understand why they were in Iraq or what they were supposed to be achieving there. Only a small minority of these crimes, perhaps, such as those at Abu Ghraib prison, have so far come to light.
Another virtue of retelling the whole ugly tale is to dispel a favourite accusation of the Bush administration: that its critics are “Monday morning quarterbacks”, emboldened only by hindsight. At every step, in fact, from the pre-war intelligence to American interrogation tactics, wiser men than those in power questioned each facet of the Iraq policy. These people—in the Central Intelligence Agency, in Congress, and especially in America's armed forces—failed to be heard only because Mr Bush's team viewed any contrary view as dangerous dissent. Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, recently recoiled against a claim that America had made errors in Iraq, despite thousands of official documents listing them, including many that Mr Ricks has unearthed. As America searches for any joy in the fiasco it has made of Iraq, it can at least be proud of serious and brave reporters like Mr Ricks—among whose fine observations is the novel fact that few American troops now care to buy the Iraq campaign T-shirt.
Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
A litany of abuse
Aug 17th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
By Thomas E. Ricks
Penguin Press; 482 pages; $27.95.
Penguin/Allen Lane; £25
In July 2003 George Bush gave this statement on Iraq: “There are some who feel that the conditions are such that they can attack us there,” the president said. “My answer is: Bring 'em on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.” A year later, with over 7,000 American dead and wounded, a failed occupation authority and Iraq in flames, one insurgent group issued its response: “Have you another challenge?”
It was not quite so surprising that Mr Bush should fail to grasp that the insurgency could not be defeated by firepower, that America's forces were incapable of trying other ways, and were too few: he believed what his advisers told him. Whether wedded to personal dogmas, like Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, who drove the Iraq policy in ignorance of the reality, or intellectually restricted, like General Tommy Franks, who led the invasion, America's most senior officials failed to comprehend basic strategy. On his desk, Paul Bremer, a disastrous occupation chief, planted the grandiloquent sign: “Success has a thousand fathers”. His cannier, and cold-shouldered, British deputy, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, said it should instead have read: “Security and jobs, stupid”.
Thomas Ricks, a reporter with the Washington Post, has written the latest of several excellent compendiums of these blunders. Many, especially in the war's run-up and early months, are well-known: the fake pre-war intelligence; the failure to commit sufficient troops to the invasion; or to plan for its aftermath, and so on. But Mr Ricks has dug up enough new sources to justify revisiting them. His research took in 37,000 pages of official documents, hundreds of interviews and access to e-mails that, according to one survey, have been written weekly by 95% of American soldiers in Iraq. Perhaps more confidently than in any previous history, he connects America's half-cocked strategy to subsequent calamities on the ground. Most controversially, he describes widespread abuses against Iraqi citizens, including hostage-taking, murder, torture and theft, committed by American soldiers who did not understand why they were in Iraq or what they were supposed to be achieving there. Only a small minority of these crimes, perhaps, such as those at Abu Ghraib prison, have so far come to light.
Another virtue of retelling the whole ugly tale is to dispel a favourite accusation of the Bush administration: that its critics are “Monday morning quarterbacks”, emboldened only by hindsight. At every step, in fact, from the pre-war intelligence to American interrogation tactics, wiser men than those in power questioned each facet of the Iraq policy. These people—in the Central Intelligence Agency, in Congress, and especially in America's armed forces—failed to be heard only because Mr Bush's team viewed any contrary view as dangerous dissent. Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, recently recoiled against a claim that America had made errors in Iraq, despite thousands of official documents listing them, including many that Mr Ricks has unearthed. As America searches for any joy in the fiasco it has made of Iraq, it can at least be proud of serious and brave reporters like Mr Ricks—among whose fine observations is the novel fact that few American troops now care to buy the Iraq campaign T-shirt.
Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.