[Peace-discuss] The Hubris of the Neocons

[patton paul]

 The Hubris of the Neocons
by David Corn


It took US policymakers and the American public many years, perhaps
decades, to realize that hubris--arrogant and uninformed
self-confidence--had played a crucial and negative role in the Vietnam
tragedy. As Richard Helms, the CIA director for much of the Vietnam War,
said in 1981, "We were dealing with a complicated cultural and ethnic
problem which we never came to understand. In other words, it was our
ignorance or innocence, if you will, which led us to misassess, not
comprehend, and make a lot of wrong decisions, which one way or another
helped to affect the outcome." This time out, the nation is more
fortunate: the perils of hubris have become evident within days of the
first attack.

The year-long run-up to the war allowed for much debate: why it was needed
(or why not), what it would take to win, how the Iraqis and the rest of
the world would react. Most advocates of war argued that it would not be a
difficult endeavor and that the Iraqis would be grateful for a US invasion
and welcome what American war-backers called "liberation."

Neither of those propositions has panned out. Yes, it's early. But the
point was that the collapse of the Iraqi forces and the dancing in the
streets would happen early. Shortly before the war was launched, Vice
President Dick Cheney predicted Saddam Hussein's troops would "step aside"
and that victory would take "weeks rather than months." His remarks
reflected the argument that war advocates--led by Washington's
neoconservatives--had been pushing for over a year.

Immediately after September 11, according to Bob Woodward's book Bush at
War, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz tried to convince President
Bush to attack Iraq rather than Afghanistan, maintaining that Hussein's
government was a brittle regime that could crumble easily, that Iraq was a
pushover and Afghanistan was not. In February 2002, Kenneth Adelman, an
assistant to Donald Rumsfeld in the 1970s and now a leading
neoconservative defense intellectual, wrote, "demolishing Hussein's
military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." He predicted that
Saddam Hussein would quickly fall if the US military attacked his
"headquarters, communications, air defenses and fixed military facilities
through precision bombing."

In his book, The Right Man, neocon David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter,
suggests that the war in Afghanistan demonstrated that Iraq could be taken
with "ten thousand men and a few hundred planes." Throughout the previous
year, I often spoke with TV generals in favor of the war, and most were
claiming the war would be short and sweet. Their scenarios usually began
this way: Day One, we take Basra. (That, of course, didn't happen.) Then,
within days, the US forces would be outside of Baghdad and controlling
most of the rest of the country. What about Baghdad? I asked repeatedly.
The answer was always some variant of, that will take care of itself. In
other words, the regime will collapse, an anti-Hussein coup will occur,
the dictator will flee, or something will happen to make the invasion of
the city unnecessary. This jibed with what a prominent Pentagon
correspondent told me late last year: the military had a wonderful
five-day plan for the war, a plan that ended with US forces ringing
Baghdad. Then there was no plan.

And last May, Richard Perle, then the chairman of the Pentagon's Defense
Policy Board and the godfather of Washington's hawks, told me it would not
be necessary to amass a force of 250,000 troops to solve the Hussein
problem. What was the Perle plan? To use 40,000 troops to grab control of
the north and the south, particularly where the oil fields are located.
Cut off Hussein's oil, Perle said, and he would tumble. What surprised me
was not his belief that Iraq could be conquered so easily, but his disdain
for the leaders of the military services. As he described his
take-Baghdad-by-Tuesday scheme, his voice dripped with contempt for the
wimpy generals and admirals who insisted on deploying hundreds of
thousands. His lack of confidence in overly-cautious military commanders
might have been warranted, but if Perle's attitude was at all
representative of the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, it was clear
trouble was brewing. It would be hard for the military to prosecute a war
if the civilians and the brass were at war with one another. It's true
that Perle's proposal has not been put to the test, but after the first
week-and-a-half of fighting, it does appear safe and fair to say that he
was utterly out of touch with reality, that a smaller and lighter force
would not have done better and achieved a "cakewalk" success.

And what of the war of liberation? President Bush termed it so, as did
Rumsfeld. Many pro-war commentators practically promised the troops would
be met by garlands and gushing Iraqis. To date, that has not happened. A
question: is it a war of liberation if the "liberated" ones don't consider
it so? When John Donvan, an unembedded ABC reporter visited "liberated"
Safwan, a Southern border town, he found the residents there more
resentful than appreciative. "They saw the US-led invasion as a takeover,
not liberation," he recounted. Toward the end of the first week of war,
there were news reports that thousands Iraqi exiles in Jordan, some of
whom had previously fled Iraq to escape Hussein's repression, were heading
back to Iraq (or considering doing so) to join the fight--not against
Hussein, but against the United States. It wasn't that they were rushing
to defend Hussein. They wanted to protect their homeland from a US
invasion. To these people, this is not a war of liberation. And the
Iranian-based leader of the Shi'ite opposition in the South issued a
statement urging his followers in Iraq not to rise up, not to support the
American invasion of Iraq (and not to fight for Hussein either).

On March 31, the London Times reported that refugees outside Basra were
throwing stones at British forces. "British soldiers sitting on their
Warrior vehicle," the story noted, "looked stunned when a couple of
packets of sweets that they had thrown to children were hurled back by
their fathers." Several thousand refugees fleeing the city have been
forced to pass single-file through a checkpoint. The Brits did not bother
to have translators present who could explain why they were making people
faint with heat and dehydration wait. Nor did they have water or medical
assistance for these Iraqis. One refugee, who shook his fist at the
British, told a reporter, "I have no love for Saddam, but tell me how are
we better off today when there is no power, no water. There are dead
bodies lying on our streets, and my children are scared to go to bed
because of the shelling."

It may well be that if the US and British forces achieve military success,
a wary Iraqi public might express gratitude. Memories are long, and Iraqis
remember that they were urged in 1991 by the United States to rebel
against Hussein and that those who heeded the call were slaughtered. Some
US commentators who asserted the Iraqis would respond positively to a war
of liberation have lately been saying, patience, patience. But timing may
not be everything in this regard. As Judith Kipper, director of the Middle
East Forum, notes, Iraqi resentment may be deep-rooted: "They're losing
their sovereignty. That's not something a very proud, fierce, nationalist
people will accept very easily.Iraqis will be happy Saddam Hussein is
gone. But they will not be happy to be occupied."