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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (159345)	3/20/2005 5:55:13 PM
From: Orcastraiter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

The Powell doctrine was NOT adhered to and here's why: 1. Clearly defined mission. According to you the defined mission was to bring democracy to Iraq. I never heard the administration say that was the mission once. That is part of Mission Creep...which is antithetical to having a clearly defined mission...and this is a mission that is defined before the war...not the mission you make up as you go along. The defined mission was to remove Saddam, and to get the WMD. Everything else we're doing there is mission creep. 2. Overwhelming force. Check? I don't think so. When overwhelming force is used casualties go down over time...not up. We're undermanned. It's directly responsible for the increase in casualties. 3. Exit strategy. The exit strategy was never clearly defined. That was a complaint of many right out of the blocks. The only exit strategy that we have now is a result of the mission creep that has occurred. The president never said after we establish democracy in Iraq we'll withdraw the troops. What is clear is that very little was clearly defined at the outset of the war. They have been making it up ever since. And there's another plank to the Powell Doctrine that I left off before: 4. Establish a broad coalition. We never accomplished this. Not one Arab nation. Only one country of the old european allies...England. The rest of the coalition were small contributions from small nations that were trying more to gain favor with the US than to help Iraqis. Orca

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (159345)	3/20/2005 9:29:48 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Barnett is an ironic citation on this topic. From command-post.org My problem with this description, as I've noted many times in my blog, is that it conflates two concepts: regime takedown and the post-conflict stabilization / nation-building effort. I call the former, the "war," and the latter, the "peace." So, in my more careful lexicon, I say that Rumsfeld was arguing—and arguing correctly—about how to "win the war," while Shinseki was arguing—and arguing correctly—about how to "win the peace." command-post.org But Shinseki is the canonical citation on more troops, resolutely badmouthed by the innermost circle of the people who had to have the war, and have it their way. Also pretty definitely an "old Army" type. Of course, badmouthing the US uniformed military leadership was a integral part of the pre-war propaganda campaign. "Perfumed Princes" was, I believe, the fashionable term among the local "intellectually honest" war cheerleaders.