Herbert: Dangerous Incompetence (Bush Iraq)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/opinion/30herbert.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

The president who displayed his contempt for Iraqi militants two years ago with the taunt "bring 'em on" had to go on television Tuesday night to urge Americans not to abandon support for the war that he foolishly started but can't figure out how to win.

The Bush crowd bristles at the use of the "Q-word" - quagmire - to describe American involvement in Iraq. But with our soldiers fighting and dying with no end in sight, who can deny that Mr. Bush has gotten us into "a situation from which extrication is very difficult," which is a standard definition of quagmire?

<snip>

The incompetence at the highest levels of government in Washington has undermined the U.S. troops who have fought honorably and bravely in Iraq, which is why the troops are now stuck in a murderous quagmire. If a Democratic administration had conducted a war this incompetently, the Republicans in Congress would be dusting off their impeachment manuals.

The administration seems to have learned nothing in the past two years. Dick Cheney, who told us the troops would be "greeted as liberators," now assures us that the insurgency is in its last throes. And the president, who never listened to warnings that he was going to war with too few troops, still refuses to acknowledge that there are not enough U.S. forces deployed to pacify Iraq.

[GetTheRightVote]

1. They have made fools of so many in the public

:kick:

[Goldmund]

2. That article kicks ass.

[wtmusic]

3. It was all a matter of competence

Herbert is a moron. "Not enough forces", "can't figure out how to win", blah blah.

If only we had murdered Iraqis more competently. :grr:

[Demit]

6. Bob Herbert is not a moron, and you're misreading him besides.

His major point, which he expresses several different ways, is that sufficient numbers of troops would have helped make Iraq secure. That after the insurgents had been driven out of a place, a proper security force left behind would have prevented them from returning. That's what the officers schooled in war know, and that's the competency the administration ignored.

[wtmusic]

7. There aren't enough troops in the world

to make Iraq secure.

You seem to have fallen for the myth that people fighting for their homeland can be 'driven out of a place', and that there is such a thing as a 'proper security force'. It's a very dangerous myth, acceptance of which will lead to thousands upon thousands of more deaths in Iraq. The so-called 'insurgents' live there. It is their land. They will win if it takes 10, 50, or 200 years. It's completely up to the US how long we want to prolong the agony.

The officers 'schooled in war', and Bob Herbert, are morons.

[geckosfeet]

18. We don't have enough troops to do that. To do that, you need help

from the civilian population. The underground during WWII was instrumental in the defeat of the axis. Between intel and covert ops they did much to divert manpower and dilute axis resources.

There is a little saying about war: The attacker must vanquish, the defender must only survive.

edit grammar dammit.

[cliss]

4. Words like this -

cannot be repeated too often. This article, along with all the others I've read today, should be printed and placed in lunch rooms, cafeterias, hung up on bulletin boards around the country.

,,,,,,the steam is buildilng....

[Skittles]

5. yet supposedly these incompetents were voted back into office in November

I don't believe it

[Larkspur]

13. That's because the Dem Prez candidate seemed more incompetent

to the voters and his campaign really did stink.

[Democrat 4 Ever]

8. Dangerous Incompetence by Bob Herbert 6/30/05 NYT

Herbert does a nice job of naming Chimpy's ability - dangerous incompetence. Of course, since the editorial is in the pages of the "liberal" press the repugs in Congress will feel free to ignore this along with everything else said that does not support their agenda. I keep hoping that one of these days the moderate repugs will finally realize they have been "punked" by this administration, get over it, suck it up and help to repair this nation.

June 30, 2005
Dangerous Incompetence
By BOB HERBERT

The president who displayed his contempt for Iraqi militants two years ago with the taunt "bring 'em on" had to go on television Tuesday night to urge Americans not to abandon support for the war that he foolishly started but can't figure out how to win.

The Bush crowd bristles at the use of the "Q-word" - quagmire - to describe American involvement in Iraq. But with our soldiers fighting and dying with no end in sight, who can deny that Mr. Bush has gotten us into "a situation from which extrication is very difficult," which is a standard definition of quagmire?

More than 1,730 American troops have already died in Iraq. Some were little more than children when they signed up for the armed forces, like Ramona Valdez, who grew up in the Bronx and was just 17 when she joined the Marines. She was one of six service members, including four women, who were killed when a suicide bomber struck their convoy in Falluja last week.

(snip)

On July 2, 2003, with evidence mounting that U.S. troop strength in Iraq was inadequate, Mr. Bush told reporters at the White House, "There are some who feel that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, Bring 'em on."

It was an immature display of street-corner machismo that appalled people familiar with the agonizing ordeals of combat. Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, was quoted in The Washington Post as saying: "I am shaking my head in disbelief. When I served in the Army in Europe during World War II, I never heard any military commander - let alone the commander in chief - invite enemies to attack U.S. troops."

read the rest at -

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/opinion/30herbert.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

[AValdoux]

9. Excellent phrasing

trouble distiguishing between a wish and a strategy


AValdoux

[Firenze777]

10. Stating the obvious- FINALLY.....

The latest fantasy out of Washington is that American-trained Iraqi forces will ultimately be able to do what the American forces have not: defeat the insurgency and pacify Iraq.

"We've learned that Iraqis are courageous and that they need additional skills," said Mr. Bush in his television address. "And that is why a major part of our mission is to train them so they can do the fighting, and then our troops can come home."

Don't hold your breath. This is another example of the administration's inability to distinguish between a strategy and a wish.

[Jack Rabbit]

11. It's hard to tell whether the neocons are evil or just self-deluded

Since they knew Saddam was not a threat and had no ties to al Qaida, we have to look elsewhere for the real justifications for invading Iraq.

There is the idea that they were going to bring "democracy" to Iraq, although the neocons don't mean the same thing by democracy that I do. By democracy, the neocons really mean global free market capitalism, which in turn resembles a colonial relationship of unequals in which the wealth of the bonded nation flows to corporations in the free nation. Some well-meaning neoconservatives, like some well-meaning intellectuals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who justified slavery, actually think kind of freeman-bondsman relationship benefits the bondsman. It's hard to tell who is well meaning and who isn't, since any neocon who knows that this is a lot of horsepuckey is also going to use this argument rather than allow himself to be caught saying what he really thinks. What the more realistic neocon really thinks is that all civilization is an illusion and that all law is just the law of the jungle dressed in a business suit in which elite predators rule and devour their prey from among the masses.

Suppose Colonel Sanders kills the fox who has been raiding a hen house and says the hen house is now his; does he think that the chickens are going to love him for ridding them of the fox? Not if they know what he really wants. The neoconservative invasion of Iraq was like that.

Yet the neocons thought the Iraqi people would be so grateful that they got rid of Saddam for them that they would simply allow them take anything they wanted in return, like everything on which Iraq's future is based. Did they really think it was going to be that easy?

Of course, real chickens would have no idea what Colonel Sanders really wants and Colonel Sanders really doesn't care about their fear of the fox. However, Iraqis are intelligent human beings who know what Bush and his friends wanted by getting Saddam out of the way and it didn't have a lot to do with democracy or liberation or even their benefit. Prior to the invasion, how many cab drivers in Baghdad or longshoremen in Basra did the neocons consult to see what kind of Iraq they wanted after Saddam? They were less interested in the views of common Iraqis who suffered under Saddam than in the views of an embezzler who lived his entire adult life abroad. Did the neocons think that this would be lost on cab drivers and longshoremen? Did they think, in light of that, that Iraqis would not see some irony in the claims that the neocons invaded Iraq to bring democracy?

And yet this whole operation could only have worked if common, work-a-day Iraqis were as dumb as chickens. Getting rid of Saddam was easy and they knew it would be easy; they knew he was a paper tiger. For that purpose, a light force was adequate. But the war wasn't really against Saddam. It was against the Iraqi people whom they knew or should have known would resist the imposition of a neoliberal socio-economic structure on them that this war is fought. It is a colonial war, not a liberation. For that purpose, a light force is inadequate.

That is why we are in this quagmire. That is why this proclaimed liberation of Iraq features torture in Abu Grhaib and general slaughter in Falluja. That is why the neoconservative occupation of Iraq looks so much like Saddam's brutal rule, only without the sufficient force to keep most Iraqis permanently brutalized.

As a democrat, I have no desire whatsoever to be an emperor. As an American citizen, I have no desire to take from the Iraqi people what belongs to them. Therefore, I am not asking how large a force would be adequate to complete the mission, since I see the mission as one of colonial theft rather than liberation. I think a legitimate Iraqi government, free of the taint of manipulation by an foreign imperial power, could organize its own security forces as easily as an insurgency has been organized and take down people like Zarqawi, who has no more concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people than has Dick Cheney.

Therefore, the question I ask is: How and how quickly can American troops withdraw from Iraq?

[AtTheEndOfTheDay]

12. Outstanding post

thank you. I loved the chicken analogy.

[Jack Rabbit]

15. Thank you. These thoughts anchor a thread in GD as well.

Please click here.

[glitch]

14. Or maybe their true goals aren't their stated goals. Iraq is profitable

for them. They are raking in the loot hand over fist. What do they care if people don't trust their competence, as long as they don't do prison time or face reparations, they are golden to each other.

[Jack Rabbit]

16. That's a safe bet

I've been saying that since before the first missiles flew over Baghdad.

[glitch]

17. Me too Jack Rabbit, me too. Buying into their "incompetence" just plays

into their frame, and gives them an out, a la Reagan. Phooey on that.

[Jack Rabbit]

19. At the same time, it can't be totally dismissed

Since their intentions were imperial rather than altruistic, why did they not occupy Iraq with more troops? Why did they not anticipate more resistance?

That was incompetence.

And if I'm wrong and their intentions were altruistic, why did they not anticipate Osama's sympathizers coming from all over the Islamic world to Iraq in order to kill Americans so conveniently assembled in an Arab country?

That was incompetence.

And since the insurgency is clearly not in its last throes, shouldn't we either commit more troops or withdraw? Why is Bush maintaining the same level of troops when it is clearly inadequate?

That is incompetence.

[glitch]

20. Good point, but since the more problems in Iraq the more taxpayers money

thrown at it, the more war profiteering ala Halliburton and Carlyle, I am not sure competence or incompetence is even part of their equation.

Empire could also be a distraction to get another target buy-in: what if the only thing they are about is personal profit for themselves and their cronies. What if they could care less about an "American Empire". What if that is just another level of their con game? Don't cons try to give every mark what they want? Some Americans want empire, get their buy-in by pretending to go for empire. Some Americans want revenge for 911, get their buy-in by pretending Saddam is Osama, etc etc. Same con, different targets.

I would never argue that they are competent, because even as con men they are pretty blatant. Obtuse even, and their con is as old as time. Without the complicity of the corporate media they would've been exposed long ago.

I am just saying waging a competent war was probably never part of their agenda.

[teryang]

23. Major disconnect

The decision to invade was wrong period. Morally, legally, tactically and strategically.

No amount of money and troops can fix it. The decision of history is against colonialism and aggressive conquest. Only outright genocidal policies could succeed in Iraq. These would not be tolerated politically by the rest of the world.

The notion that the political objectives can be met with more troops, money or armor is wrong. The casualty rate would go up at first, abate, and then we would be steadily bled white fiscally at an accelerated pace. It is doubtful that a more accelerated rate of expenditures could be maintained without a major currency crisis. A similar phenomenon occurred in the Vietnam conflict. If only we had more troops, if only we had carpet bombed Hanoi, etc., etc. These alternatives DID NOT EXIST AS A PRACTICAL MATTER.

One real neo-con objective (along with consolidating the military energy coup of 2000 and 911) was to castrate Iraq as a regional power. This is a strategic blunder. By turning Iraq into Lebanon circa early seventies, oil prices are inflated, Iranian influence is enhanced economically and politically, and our national security is compromised in all other areas. As a regional proxy Israel benefits politically and economically at American expense. The ruling American families who own the central banks, defense contractors and oil majors don't mind.

They have built a huge moat including the Patriot Act, a centralized police system and a rigged national election process to protect themselves from political reprisals.

[ismnotwasm]

21. I was talking to co-workers, who are immigrants

From various countries. One in particular, a Philipina woman, thought that what * and company have done, is show the world the the US has no real teeth, or at least teeth they feel they can challenge. Thus, the dismissals from Iran and North Korea. She said the world used to have this vision of the US as practically omnipotent, and that is no longer the case. This is a patriotic woman who is a US citizen, by the way. Incompetence, indeed.

[edhopper]

22. I think

that all Democrats should keep reminding America that Com. Cookoobananas said "Bring it on" 1500 casualites ago. Enough of this "let's not debate the past, we're here now" bullshit. Let's always remember how we got here.