I was an enthusiastic backer of the second Iraq War.
I was wrong.
Last week I heard President Obama say that the American military was the finest in the world. It is true. Secretary Albright said that all the time. It was what informed her critique of the Powell Doctrine and the formation of her own "doability doctrine."
I thought, when I heard Obama, what I have thought and written many times before, "Does America still work?" I had heard that so many times before-I believe it is true-but I look around me at the world and all around me, wherever I look, I see the evidence that the finest military in the world has not worked.
And this morning I wondered why.
Take Iraq. America won that fucking war. Donald Rumsfeld's transformation of the American military was on full display; General Tommy Franks' execution of the war plan was flawless and regime change was affected in something like thirty-four days. It was amazing.
Sure doesn't feel like we won that war, does it?
What happened? According to the Pottery Barn codicil to the Powell Doctrine, "If you break it, you own it." We had to "win the peace." We couldn't leave a "power vacuum" in Iraq.
I thought we could. I never bought the Pottery Barn rule. Who is "we" anyway? Under the doability doctrine is it the military's job to win the peace? To "nation build?" Can the finest military in the world do that? It did not seem to me then that winning the peace was the job of the military. My own plan for nation building in Iraq was to throw them a copy of the Federalist Papers on our way out.
Bush 43 believed in the Pottery Barn rule; his plan was to transform Iraq into a democracy. To have that democracy be a model for the Arab world. That failed-but not by much. Iraq got off to a pretty darn good start, held elections in the midst of Taliban threats and attacks; everyone walking around proudly displaying the purple ink on their fingers that they had voted. I was thrilled. Even though I did not think we should try to transform Iraq into a democracy, I was thrilled.
But we didn't win the peace; Iraqi civil society was not reconstructed sufficiently, there was a power vacuum, the Iraq central government was not strong enough to enforce the peace and into the vacuum came ISIL.
Rumsfeld told the Times of London this past summer that he thought the Iraqi democracy project was a mistake from the beginning.
America, through the American military, has obeyed the Pottery Barn rule at some times in the past: after World War II most famously and successfully. Not at other times: not after the Civil War, not after the Indian Wars. We kept slaughtering the Indians until there was nothing to transform.
I like the example of the Indian Wars best. My own thought for the military's role in post-war Iraq was to continue bombing and slaughtering whoever was fool enough to rush into that vacuum. That would be ISIL.
Well, we didn't do that. I don't know what the plan is now. My not so humble plan's the same.
I was wrong.
Last week I heard President Obama say that the American military was the finest in the world. It is true. Secretary Albright said that all the time. It was what informed her critique of the Powell Doctrine and the formation of her own "doability doctrine."
I thought, when I heard Obama, what I have thought and written many times before, "Does America still work?" I had heard that so many times before-I believe it is true-but I look around me at the world and all around me, wherever I look, I see the evidence that the finest military in the world has not worked.
And this morning I wondered why.
Take Iraq. America won that fucking war. Donald Rumsfeld's transformation of the American military was on full display; General Tommy Franks' execution of the war plan was flawless and regime change was affected in something like thirty-four days. It was amazing.
Sure doesn't feel like we won that war, does it?
What happened? According to the Pottery Barn codicil to the Powell Doctrine, "If you break it, you own it." We had to "win the peace." We couldn't leave a "power vacuum" in Iraq.
I thought we could. I never bought the Pottery Barn rule. Who is "we" anyway? Under the doability doctrine is it the military's job to win the peace? To "nation build?" Can the finest military in the world do that? It did not seem to me then that winning the peace was the job of the military. My own plan for nation building in Iraq was to throw them a copy of the Federalist Papers on our way out.
Bush 43 believed in the Pottery Barn rule; his plan was to transform Iraq into a democracy. To have that democracy be a model for the Arab world. That failed-but not by much. Iraq got off to a pretty darn good start, held elections in the midst of Taliban threats and attacks; everyone walking around proudly displaying the purple ink on their fingers that they had voted. I was thrilled. Even though I did not think we should try to transform Iraq into a democracy, I was thrilled.
But we didn't win the peace; Iraqi civil society was not reconstructed sufficiently, there was a power vacuum, the Iraq central government was not strong enough to enforce the peace and into the vacuum came ISIL.
Rumsfeld told the Times of London this past summer that he thought the Iraqi democracy project was a mistake from the beginning.
America, through the American military, has obeyed the Pottery Barn rule at some times in the past: after World War II most famously and successfully. Not at other times: not after the Civil War, not after the Indian Wars. We kept slaughtering the Indians until there was nothing to transform.
I like the example of the Indian Wars best. My own thought for the military's role in post-war Iraq was to continue bombing and slaughtering whoever was fool enough to rush into that vacuum. That would be ISIL.
Well, we didn't do that. I don't know what the plan is now. My not so humble plan's the same.
