Pentagon Is Moving Ahead on Getting Ready for Next Occupation, but Who Else in Government Is Doing That?
Barnett
Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 26 January 2005
Another Post story shows the Pentagon is moving in the right direction to correct the mistakes of the occupation:
"Pentagon Prepares to Rethink Focus on Conventional Warfare: New Emphasis on Insurgencies and Terrorism Is Planned," by Bradley Graham (26 January 2005), p. A2.
Rumsfeld is moving the pile: he wants Special Ops Command to focus on killing terrorists (and he wants them to have their own dedicated intell units); he wants Civil Affairs out of SOCOM and back in the Army, which should focus a whole lot more on post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction (something it is loathe to do); he wants the Army and Marines to do more mil-mil training, again freeing up SOCOM's trigger-pullers to focus on killing terrorists; and he want a general shift away from planning for conventional wars to a more balanced approach that highlights the need to be able to handle post-war foes like insurgencies.
This is why Rumsfeld needs to stay. He basically "gets" the challenge and the need for change, and he'll push the uniformed services to get it done.
The real question is: Who else in the U.S. Government is moving in the same direction? Again, ask Rice questions about that in her confirmation hearings. Ask Treasury. Ask USAID. Ask anyone involved in foreign aid, disaster relief, or the Gap in general.
It ain't a grand strategy if only the Defense Department gets it.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 08:47 AM
The Senate Democrats on Rice: Mostly Missing the Big Mistakes
Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 26 January 2005
Here is the Post story:
Democrats Criticize Rice Over Iraq War: Senate Confirmation Is Expected Today by Charles Babington (January 26, 2005), P. A1.
Blaming Rice on either pre-9/11 intell or pre-war intell on WMD in Iraq misses the real point.
On pre-9/11, the whole system was biased against processing that info, so finger-pointing at Rice isn't the answer, nor is the National Intell Director, who will become just another person to point fingers at. Everyone wants intell to be the ANSWER, when it won't. Good police work and cooperation across the Core will stop the attacks here in the U.S., and good Special Ops work in the Gap will keep the bad guys on the run (and yes, they need their own intell units, which only the uninformed call "spies").
On pre-war intell on Iraq: this is the biggest bit of nonsense. If anyone voted to take down Saddam just on WMD, then they were stupid. After a decade of violated sanctions and all the killing he did and all the killing we did with bombings and sanctions, it was simply time to get him off the stage. Vote should have been about whether or not US committed to doing the job right, which gets us to the real questions to ask Rice.
The real point on her role as Nat'l Security Adviser is that her office was in charge of the inter-agency process that ran, or should have run, the occupation. If there is one single person to blame for that job, it's her, and so that is where all the questions should go. Senate plans on plopping an office of postconflict stabilization and reconstruction in State, which is a very bad idea, but it only points up that SECSTATE will, if this bill goes through, be very much the person on the hook now regarding this task. Again, since Rice did a very bad job of coordinating on the Iraq occupation, and since that office will now be her's to run, all the questions should focus on that aspect of her job--both past and future.
Two examples of senators. First is Kennedy, who gets it wrong:
Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the Senate's most vocal opponent of the war, said: "We now know that Saddam had no nuclear weapons program, and no weapons of mass destruction of any kind." Instead of making the United States safer, he said, "the war has made Iraq a breeding ground for terrorism that previously did not exist."
This is BS. The history of Al Qaeda is that they always show up wherever the fight is. In all of their "glorious battles," to include Afghanistan against the Sovs, they have played only insignificant roles. There is no major role for foreign terrorists in Iraq. What we have there is an insurgency that uses terrorism in a Fourth Generation Warfare or asymmetrical manner. Did we "create terrorists who were not there?" Not really. We create an insurgency that did not need to be because we ran the postwar situation badly. Again, ask Rice about that!
Bayh strikes a better note:
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), a possible presidential candidate in 2008 who voted to authorize the war, said Rice "has been a principal architect of policy errors that have tragically undermined our prospects for success" in Iraq. "The list of errors is lengthy and profound, and unfortunately many could have been avoided if Dr. Rice and others had only listened to the counsel" of lawmakers from both parties, Bayh said. "This is no ordinary incompetence. Men and women are dying as a result of these mistakes."
This is the right tone and the right focus. She was the principal architect of the occupation, by virtue of her job. Her performance has undermined our long-term prospects for success. The Bush administration did not listen well. The vast majority of the personnel who've died have died in the badly planned and badly run occupation, not in the brilliantly run war. Rice is on the hook for the occupation, not the war. That is where the focus should be. |
