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April
10, 2003, 7:45 a.m.
Hall
of Shame
Media
recriminations after VB Day.
By NR Staff
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o
many pundits, pols, and, yes, celebs, said so many wrong — and downright
silly — things about the war in Iraq, prewar. We knew that
back then, but now that Baghdad has effectively been liberated by the
U.S.-led Coalition, we provide a handy snapshot of what was said by some
of those who should be looking down and making their apologies. Included
here are Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews, and Barry McCaffrey, the latter
one of the retired-general second guessers Vice President Dick Cheney
dubbed “embedded in television studios.” This list is far from all-inclusive,
but a taste of the shame many should be feeling today. The Media
Research Center, AndrewSullivan.Com,
and Corner
readers were invaluable in putting this together.
R.
W. Apple
“Bush Peril: Shifting Sand and Fickle Opinion”
New York Times, March 30, 2003
“With
every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made two gross military
misjudgments in concluding that coalition forces could safely bypass Basra
and Nasiriya and that Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq would rise up against
Saddam Hussein.”
With every passing
day, it is more evident that the failure to obtain permission from Turkey
for American troops to cross its territory and open a northern front
constituted a diplomatic debacle. With every passing day, it is more
evident that the allies made two gross military misjudgments in concluding
that coalition forces could safely bypass Basra and Nasiriya and that
Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq would rise up against Saddam Hussein.
Already, the commander of American ground forces in the war zone has
conceded that the war that they are fighting is not the one they and
their officers had foreseen. 'Shock and awe' neither shocked nor awed.
Peter
Arnett
Iraqi TV, March 30
“The
first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance.”
It is clear that
within the United States there is growing challenge to President Bush
about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war. So our
reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the
Iraqi forces...help those who oppose the war . . .
The first war
plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to
write another war plan.
Clearly, the American
war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces. And I
personally do not understand how that happened, because I've been here
many times and in my commentaries on television I would tell the Americans
about the determination of the Iraqi forces....But me, and others who
felt the same way, were not listened to by the Bush administration.
Eric Alterman
“Can
We Talk?”
The Nation, April 3, 2003
“Is
Wolfowitz really so ignorant of history as to believe the Iraqis would
welcome us as 'their hoped-for liberators'?”
To make matters
worse, many of these Jewish hard-liners — "Likudniks" in the current
parlance — appear, at least from a distance, to be behaving in
accordance with traditional anti-Jewish stereotypes. Much to the delight
of genuine anti-Semites of the left and right, the idea of a new war
to remove Saddam was partially conceived at the behest of Likud politician
Benjamin Netanyahu in a document written expressly for him by Perle,
Feith and others in 1996. Some, like Perle, apparently see the influence
they wield as an opportunity to get rich. What's more, many of these
same Jews joined Rumsfeld and Cheney in underselling the difficulty
of the war, in what may have been a ruse designed to embroil America
in a broad military conflagration that would help smite Israel's enemies.
Did Perle, for instance, genuinely believe "support for Saddam, including
within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of
gunpowder"? Is Wolfowitz really so ignorant of history as to believe
the Iraqis would welcome us as "their hoped-for liberators"?
Maureen
Dowd
“Back Off, Syria And Iran!”
New York Times, March 30, 2003
“In
cranking up their war plan with expurgated intelligence, the hawks left
the ground troops exposed and insufficiently briefed on the fedayeen.
Ideology should not shape facts when lives are at stake.”
Retired
generals were even more critical of the Rumsfeld doctrine of underwhelming
force. The defense chief is so enamored of technology and air power that
he overrode the risk of pitting 130,000-strong American ground forces
— the vast majority of the front-line troops have never fired at
a live enemy before — against 350,000 Iraqi fighters, who have kept
their aim sharp on their own people.
The incoherence
of the battle plan — which some retired generals say is three infantry
divisions short — has made the guts and stamina and ingenuity of
American forces even more remarkable. . . .
….But in pursuit
of what they call a "moral" foreign policy, they stretched and obscured
the truth. First, they hyped C.I.A. intelligence to fit their contention
that Saddam and Al Qaeda were linked. Then they sent Colin Powell out
with hyped evidence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Then,
when they were drawing up the battle plan, they soft-pedaled C.I.A.
and Pentagon intelligence warnings that U.S. troops would face significant
resistance from Saddam's guerrilla fighters.
In cranking up
their war plan with expurgated intelligence, the hawks left the ground
troops exposed and insufficiently briefed on the fedayeen. Ideology
should not shape facts when lives are at stake.
Asked about General
Wallace's remarks, Donald Rumsfeld shrugged them off, noting that anyone
who read Amnesty International reports should have known the Iraqis
were barbarians.
Rummy was too
busy shaking his fist at Syria and Iran to worry about the shortage
of troops in Iraq.
As one administration
official marveled: "Hasn't the guy bitten off enough this week?"
Nicholas
D. Kristof
“The Stones of Baghdad”
New York Times, October 4, 2002
“[I]f
President Bush thinks our invasion and occupation will go smoothly because
Iraqis will welcome us, then [he] is deluding himself.”
From their
perch in Washington, President Bush and his advisers seem to have convinced
themselves that an invasion will proceed easily because many Iraqis will
dance in the streets to welcome American troops. That looks like a potentially
catastrophic misreading of Iraq.
Consider Dahlia
Abdulrahim and Intidhar Abdulrahim, two young women I met at an English-language
used-book shop in Baghdad. Dahlia reads romance novels, while Intidhar
favors Thomas Hardy. So will they be cheering the American troops rolling
through Baghdad?
"I will throw
stones at them," Dahlia said.
"Maybe I will
throw knives," Intidhar said brightly.
Those two women
are broadly representative of Iraqis I spoke to. If American military
strategy assumes popular support from Iraqis facilitating an invasion
and occupation, the White House is making an error that could haunt
us for years.
After scores of
interviews with ordinary people from Mosul in the north to Basra in
the south, I've reached two conclusions:
1. Iraqis dislike
and distrust Saddam Hussein, particularly outside the Sunni heartland,
and many Iraqis will be delighted to see him gone.
2. Iraqis hate
the United States government even more than they hate Saddam, and they
are even more distrustful of America's intentions than Saddam's.
"America is a
new colonial power that wants to dominate," warns Rahim Majid, a farmer
from Karbala.
"Americans are
not coming to help us, but for our oil," frets Naseem Jawad, a merchant
in Najaf….
….while I found
few people willing to fight for Saddam, I encountered plenty of nationalists
willing to defend Iraq against Yankee invaders. And while ordinary Iraqis
were very friendly toward me, they were enraged at the U.S. after 11
years of economic sanctions….
….So if Saddam
thinks the average Iraqi is going to miss him, he's deluding himself.
But if President Bush thinks our invasion and occupation will go smoothly
because Iraqis will welcome us, then he too is deluding himself.
Chris
Matthews
“To Iraq and Ruin”
August 25, 2002, the San Francisco Chronicle
“This
invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam,
Desert One, Beirut and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe.”
The American
people are not committed to a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Cheney's staff
is. Rumsfeld's deputies are. The White House speech-writing office is.
The guys they're working under are.
But what about
the families of those who will do the fighting? What about the country
that will have to suffer the casualties that are the wreckage of every
war?
A Washington Post/ABC
poll found 57 percent of us back a ground attack on Baghdad but that's
if there are no significant casualties. Faced with that prospect, 51
percent oppose it.
Is this a strong
base from which to launch a pre-emptive attack on a country on the other
side of the world? To send several hundred thousand U.S. service people
on a mission to take over a country, remove its political leadership
from power and install one of our choosing?
It's time to recall
the Powell doctrine of the 1980s and recall the names that gave it resonance:
Vietnam and Beirut.
With memories
of those misconceived missions fresh and painful, then-Secretary of
Defense Caspar Weinberger and his chief military assistant, Gen. Colin
Powell, drafted new criteria for overseas military involvement.
War should be
a last resort, undertaken only with precise political and military goals
and clear support from the American public and the Congress. There must
be a clear exit strategy, and a will to deploy overwhelming force.
Powell condemned
the ambiguous mission objectives that led to the 1983 Lebanon fiasco
that cost us the lives of so many young Marines:
"When the political
objective is important, clearly defined and understood, when the risks
are acceptable, and when the use of force can be effectively combined
with diplomatic and economic policies, then clear and unambiguous objectives
must be given to armed forces," Powell wrote in his autobiography. "When
we use force we should not be equivocal; we should win and win decisively."
So we drop tens
of thousands of airborne troops into Baghdad. We look for Saddam Hussein.
We wear gas masks to protect us from whatever chemical and biological
weapons the Iraqi leader has stockpiled for just this occasion. A threatened
Israel mobilizes for war.
All this against
the backdrop of an Arab and Islamic world in riot. In Cairo, President
Hosni Mubarak must tighten his grip, igniting even more opposition.
Jordan's King Abdullah joins his country's Palestinian majority in condemning
the attack. The Saudi Arabian royals are silent. The Muslims and anti-war
elements of Europe take to the boulevards.
Then comes the
messy part.
Our troops in
Baghdad morph into a nervous constabulary force. Their mission: guard
streets, shoot snipers, arrest the suspicious, keep order, find the
Hussein loyalists, round up the members of his ruling party, root out
plots, battle the terrorists.
For how long?
How long were
we in Beirut before that "peacekeeping" mission ended with a barracks
being blown sky-high by a suicide bomber? How long were we in Saigon?
This invasion
of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert
One, Beirut and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe.
What will set
it apart, distinguishing it for all time, is the immense — and
transparent — political stupidity.
A mission to attack
one isolated enemy will end up isolating us. A mission justified by
the fight with terrorism will give birth to millions of terrorist-supporting
haters. In every cafe from Manila to Casablanca, just whom do you think
they will be rooting for? Just whom will their kids be killing themselves
for?
Barry
McCaffrey
BBC’s Newsnight, as reported by Reuters, March 24,
2003
“[W]e
could take, bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties.”
Retired
U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey, commander of the 24th Infantry Division
12 years ago, said the U.S.-led force faced "a very dicey two to three
day battle" as it pushes north toward the Iraqi capital.
"We ought to be
able to do it (take Baghdad)," he told the Newsnight Program on Britain's
BBC Television late on Monday.
"In the process
if they (the Iraqis) actually fight, and that's one of the assumptions,
clearly it's going to be brutal, dangerous work and we could take, bluntly,
a couple to 3,000 casualties," said McCaffrey who became one of the
most senior ranking members of the U.S. military following the 1991
war.
"So if they (the
Americans and British) are unwilling to face up to that, we may have
a difficult time of it taking down Baghdad and Tikrit up to the north
west."
McCaffrey said
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had misjudged the nature of the conflict.
Asked if Rumsfeld made a mistake by not sending more troops to start
the offensive, McCaffrey replied: "Yes, sure. I think everybody told
him that."
"I think he thought
these were U.S. generals with their feet planted in World War II that
didn't understand the new way of warfare," he added.
U.S. forces have
advanced more than 200 miles into Iraqi territory since the start of
the war and are beginning to confront an elite division of the Republican
Guards deployed to defend the capital.
"So it ought to
be a very dicey two to three day battle out there." McCaffrey said of
the confrontation with the Republican Guards.
He said his personal
view was that the invading troops would "take them (the Iraqis) apart."
"But we've never
done something like this with this modest a force at such a distance
from its bases," he warned.
Robert
Wright
“The War and
the Peace”
April 1, 2003, Slate
“.
. . the Pentagon's failure to send enough troops to take Baghdad fairly
quickly could complicate the postwar occupation . . . ”
As the war drags
on, any stifled sympathy for the American invasion will tend to evaporate.
As more civilians die and more Iraqis see their "resistance" hailed
across the Arab world as a watershed in the struggle against Western
imperialism, the traditionally despised Saddam could gain appreciable
support among his people. So, the Pentagon's failure to send enough
troops to take Baghdad fairly quickly could complicate the postwar occupation,
to say nothing of the war itself.
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