label this message "sucrets"

[snarkyman]

This Message came to me from David Mankins, who is far more eloquent than me.


[Josh Marshall puts it this way[1]:

Number of days between Novak column outing Valerie
Plame and announcement of investigation: 74 days.

Number of days between O'Neill 60 Minutes interview
and announcement of investigation: 1 day.

Having the administration reveal itself as a gaggle of
hypocritical goons ... priceless.

Apparently at least one of the documents in question --- the map from the Cheney Energy Commission that divvied up Iraq's oil assets --- was on the public record, coming out in an FOIA suit. I think I mentioned that one here when it first came out.

This is almost required background reading for Paul Krugman's column in the _Times_ today[2]. Gosh, he's getting awfully smug as events bear out the warnings for which he was denounced as ``shrill''.

I'd considered mentioning Paul Krugman's other example here yesterday, but didn't. But since I've been given this excuse...

An Army War College scholar has published a pretty scathing report on the planning for the Iraq invasion[3, 4].

The report, by Jeffrey Record, a visiting professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is "near the breaking point."

It recommends, among other things, scaling back the scope of the "global war on terrorism" and instead focusing on the narrower threat posed by the al Qaeda terrorist network.

"[T]he global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious, and accordingly . . . its parameters should be readjusted," Record writes. Currently, he adds, the anti-terrorism campaign "is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security."

....

Many of Record's arguments, such as the contention that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was deterred and did not present a threat, have been made by critics of the administration. Iraq, he concludes, "was a war-of-choice distraction from the war of necessity against al Qaeda." But it is unusual to have such views published by the War College, the Army's premier academic institution.

In addition, the essay goes further than many critics in examining the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism.

Record's core criticism is that the administration is biting off more than it can chew. He likens the scale of U.S. ambitions in the war on terrorism to Adolf Hitler's overreach in World War II. "A cardinal rule of strategy is to keep your enemies to a manageable number," he writes. "The Germans were defeated in two world wars . . . because their strategic ends outran their available means."

He also scoffs at the administration's policy, laid out by Bush in a November speech, of seeking to transform and democratize the Middle East. "The potential policy payoff of a democratic and prosperous Middle East, if there is one, almost certainly lies in the very distant future," he writes. "The basis on which this democratic domino theory rests has never been explicated."

We've discussed this here some. I've felt remiss in not providing stronger support for my point of view that Bush has actually *harmed* our security, not enhanced it. Now Jeffrey Record makes my case for me.

Okay, it's not the official word of the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, it's just some scholar talking (though the director of the institute had high praise for the study).

As a digression, I used to be a peacenik --- nearly a pacifist (though one aware of Orwell's criticism). I've evolved from that point --- I thought Bush handled the initial business with Afghanistan quite well, for example (I'm less sanguine about the follow-up there). But I've been amazed for some years at how easy it is to find retired generals and military scholars with whom I agree.

[1] http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_01_11.html#002404
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/opinion/13KRUG.html
[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/administration/whbriefing/
[4] http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/2003/bounding/bounding.htm

Comments

[siderea]

Oh, heck, I was going to post that in my journal. Coolbeans, I'll just link to yours. :)

A correction: it's "Mankins".