Redress

To mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, nine foreign affairs "experts" offered their reflections in the New York Times on 16 March 2008 "on their attitudes in the spring of 2003 and … comment on the one aspect of the war that most surprised them or that they wished they had considered in the pre-war debate”.

Looking back, each of them did more to reveal their continuing blindness or to attempt to justify errors in their original judgment.

After writing five paragraphs of self-righteous justification for his own mishandling of the Iraqi occupation, Paul Bremer III, former presidential envoy to Iraq, concluded by writing:

I should have pushed sooner for a more effective military strategy, because from 2004 to the end of 2007, Al-Qaeda took advantage of this gap, using indiscriminate killings that provoked Shiite militias to respond in kind. The vicious spiral was finally reversed by the change in strategy the president put in place a year ago.

To suggest that "the vicious spiral was reversed" is further evidence of Bremer's self-imposed blindness. If he could see anything clearly, he would have realized that the situation in Iraq has become worse except for the restraint shown by Shi’i cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Richard Perle, who has been referred to as one of the most brilliant of neo-conservatives, reveals that his brilliance has more to do with defending his own preposterous views and positions than anything else. In his reflection, Perle still had the audacity to attempt to justify his part in the decision to invade Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction:

The right decision was made, and Baghdad fell in 21 days with few casualties on either side. Twenty-five million Iraqis had been liberated and the menace of Saddam’s monstrous regime eliminated.

The prime concern Perle had for the menace of Saddam's regime was its potential threat to Israel by its support of the Palestinians. That loyalty to Israel over America has cost 1,185,800 Iraqi lives, 3,987 (acknowledged) US military deaths, 502,497,154,611 dollars. Perle has the arrogance to say "The right decision was made."

What do you say to a woman for whom the destruction of artefacts in Iraq’s museum by looters seems more important than the destruction of over a million Iraqi lives? While sharing Anne-Marie Slaughter's pain at the broken and stolen statues, her perspective is as myopic as that of the US military's considering the failure "a matter of priorities".

Kenneth Pollack, former director of Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council, most wishes that he had "understood before the invasion the reckless arrogance of the Bush administration". In his position, he should have investigated all possibilities and not left it to a post-facto wish that blames someone else's arrogance.

Danielle Pletka, vice-president for foreign and defence policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, attempts to rationalize her errors by saying that others held the same position. She completely ignores the fact that there were many writers who saw clearly what was wrong with attacking and occupying Iraq. Before and at the time of the invasion, the Internet was loaded with reasonable analyses and commentaries about Iraq. No, Ms Pletka. Your ignorance was self-inflicted.

The military, according to Nathaniel Fick, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, sat in the desert in Kuwait worrying about whether they would be gassed by weapons of mass destruction when they invaded Iraq. They should have been concerned with whether or not Iraq actually possessed WMDs. There was a multitude of evidence on the Internet exposing the mainstream media propaganda.

Speeches by weapons inspector Scott Ritter and well-researched articles by writers like Mark Steele and Eric Margolis were readily available to anyone taking the time to look beyond the mainstream media and the pre-emptive neo-conservatives in Washington.

No question by Paul Easton, retired army major-general who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004, about whether we had any business being in Iraq in the first place; his only expressed concern was whether or not the Congress adequately provided for the needs of the troops.

Frederick Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has his head on another planet lauding the successes of the US military to develop close interactions with the Iraqi people. He completely ignores the insurgency, the real disdain held by people who stay well away from American troops and millions of refugees.

A fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Anthony D. Cordesman, negates any expertise he might claim by admitting that he expected to find WMDs and Al-Qaeda connections after the Iraq invasion. Even minimalist knowledge of Saddam's and Bin-Laden's animosity toward each other would dispel that myth.

Like others, Cordesman faults the administration for failing to create "an effective counterinsurgency programme, focused aid and development efforts, political accommodation and effective Iraqi forces". Like all of the others, he fails in his reflection to ask the important questions: What were we doing there in the first place? Why are we still there now? When are we going to get out of Iraq?

Many writers, outside of the main stream, have answered those questions in ways that are uncomplimentary to both the experts and the major news organizations. What is unforgivable is that the so-called experts and mainstream media haven't even bothered to ask the questions.

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Paul Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.

SOURCE: http://www.redress.cc/iraq/pjballes20080319

© 2008 Paul J. Balles

URL: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/03/21/distorted_hindsight