If you don't think shock and awe was effective then you are not looking at reality. We knew this. We let them go. Don't you understand this? We had them (at least the ones in country at the time) rounded up and held at gun-point. We let the majority of them go. In this we agree 100%. We cannot, will not, and do not desire to push any specific government on them. The initial government structure (which they still have a hand in deciding) is only the interim one until they can decide as a country exactly what they want for themselves. That is as it should be. We have our hopes, but we cannot mandate. You think killing another human being is a right. Even our courts do not seem to be consistant on this. Don't think I'm solely picking on you. You are not the first Christian that I have demanded (or asked) explain his position. This issue is 100% owned by the right. We do not want to limit religious freedom, the left does. Please tell me one case in which the "Patriot Act" denied a citizen his rights. I don't know why Powell did it, but I do know that France promised Powell they would support action against Iraq for violation of UN sanctions. But they lied and backstabbed Powell at the last minute while he was totally unaware. Hell, even Woodward admits that. Tell you what, let's do away with it. Precisely! And France, a principle member, is corrupt! The UN is corrupt! You're so smart, what would it have taken to get France's support for Iraq? Considering France had illegal and unbalanced oil contracts with Iraq worth a hundred billion dollars, of course.

Here's some interesting Tid-bits from the Truthout editor on some of the leading neo-cons and their halting admission that nation building is not the cake walk they expected. Even if you have no respect for the author, the quotations merit your attention.

Neo-Cons Rethink Iraqi Fiasco
By Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 26 August 2004

One of America's friskiest neo-conservatives, young Michael Rubin leads a heady life. While still in his twenties, he did his Ph.D. on Iran, Iraq, and the Middle East, sat in on meetings of the Bush transition team, and worked in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which repackaged as "intelligence" the fables that Iraqi exiles like Ahmed Chalabi conjured up to draw America into war.

Dr. Rubin also served in Iraq as an adviser to Jerry Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, and boasts that he was the only one of his colleagues to live outside the heavily fortified American security bubble. This allowed him to know ordinary Iraqis, for whom he frequently presumes to speak.

His latest blast on their behalf might seem a shocker, coming as it does from a certified neo-con and appearing online last week in William Buckley's National Review. In an increasingly segmented media world, where we too easily hear and see only those views that reinforce our own, I regularly surf the other side of the political spectrum, testing my own ideas and hoping to learn something new. I rarely expect to agree.

"Losing the Shia," Rubin's headline screamed. "Iraqi Shia see a U.S. betrayal, and frankly, they should."

"Any semblance of a ceasefire evaporated today as fierce fighting erupted around the Shrine of Imam Ali, Shii Islam's holiest site," he wrote. "Even if Iraqi forces lead the charge into the Shrine of Imam Ali, Iraqi Shia will blame the U.S. for any damage. Even if a peaceful solution is found, the U.S. will have lost out."

My favorite Middle East maven, the University of Michigan's Juan Cole, could not have hit Bush any harder. Having gone into Iraq claiming to liberate the majority Shia from the Sunni dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and his Baathist Party, the U.S. has squandered any remaining good will, systematically turning the Shia against what they increasingly see as an occupying force siding with the Sunnis.

A fierce critic of those he calls the neo-con cabal, Professor Cole blames Bremer and Coalition officials for trying to arrest the populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, thereby turning him into a martyr. Rubin, one of those officials, blames Mr. Bush's National Security Council for not allowing Bremer to bust al-Sadr sooner, when the young rebel had less support.

Professor Cole sees al-Sadr as an Iraqi nationalist, supported by poor Shia, especially among the urban young. Dr. Rubin portrays the cleric as little more than a cat's paw for Iran.

But Rubin goes every bit as far as Cole in laying the ultimate blame at the White House door. Once National Security Adviser Condi Rice took control of Iraq policy away from the Pentagon, where neo-cons like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith held sway, the Bush Administration overruled Bremer's attempt to purge Saddam's Sunni supporters, explains Rubin. The flip-flop led to a greater reliance on the old regime's bureaucrats and generals, especially after the first standoff in the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah. It also created enormous fear among the Shia, who increasingly see al-Sadr as a needed counter-force.

According to Rubin, the White House simultaneously orchestrated a systematic campaign to marginalize Ahmed Chalabi, the neo-con favorite and scion of a well-known Shia family that had long supported Iraq's third holiest site, the Kazimiya Shrine. U.S. forces raided Chalabi's compound, supposedly unearthing evidence that he had counterfeited old Iraqi money. Unnamed intelligence sources accused him of being a longtime Iranian agent, and willing journalists lapped it up, without ever asking for proof.

Score a major bureaucratic victory for the C.I.A. and State Department. But, says Rubin, the cost was high, as large numbers of Iraqi Shia saw the humiliation of Chalabi as a slap at their entire community. They also saw it as yet another warning of the perils of allying with the untrustworthy Uncle Sam, who - under the first President Bush - urged them to rise up against Saddam after the first Gulf War and then left them unprotected to face the tyrant's revenge.

What, then, of the new American favorite, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who is also a Shiite, but one with a past in Saddam's Baathist Party?

"His close association with the Central Intelligence Agency, Britain's MI6, and Jordanian intelligence have not helped him among a Shia population in which he has little if any constituency," warns Rubin. "The CIA may sing his praises to the president, but Langley's assets seldom make good leaders. They certainly don't make good democrats."

As Rubin sees it, the continuing siege of Najaf, the Shia's holiest city, only confirms their worst fears. "The U.S. pulled out of Fallujah because they worried about killing Sunnis," he quote one of his Iraqi informants. "But I guess they don't have that worry about Shia."

Is young Rubin simply an embittered voice from the losing side in Washington's hardball battles? Perhaps, but he hardly stands alone. Many neo-cons fault Bush for the way he pursued what they thought was their war. Fiascoes do that, creating an intense yearning to run from blame. Who me? I would have done it differently, and then we would have won. It makes a tricky defense to disprove.

Though far less strenuously than Rubin, Robert Kagan and others at the neo-con flagship The Weekly Standard have criticized Team Bush for not sending enough troops to make Iraq secure and not turning power over to Iraqis more quickly. Kagan and editor William Kristol strongly condemned the regional caucuses that Bremer tried to use to preclude real democratic elections, which the Shia were certain to win.

David Brooks, who graduated from the Rupert Murdoch funded Standard to a somewhat more pluralistic New York Times, spoke in anguished tones of how "depressing" it had become for those who support the war.

"The predictions people on my side made about the postwar world have not yet come true," he moaned in May. "The warnings others made about the fractious state of post-Saddam society have."

More than many of his soul mates, Brooks saw "an intellectual failure," which the ancient Athenians might have called the moral fault of hubris

"There was, above all, a failure to understand the consequences of our power," wrote the battered Brooks. "There was a failure to anticipate the response our power would have on the people we sought to liberate. They resent us for our power and at the same time expect us to be capable of everything."

But the biggest slam has come from one of the neo-cons' leading intellectuals, Francis Fukuyama, author of "The End of History." Confronting columnist Charles Krauthammer, who recently proposed that the United States pursue an interventionist policy of forcefully promoting global democracy, Fukuyama flat-out rejected the major neo-conservative arguments for going to war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein never posed an immediate threat to the United States, he declared. And the United States lacked the "nation-building" know-how to make Iraq democratic.

"If the United States cannot eliminate poverty or raise test scores in Washington, D.C.," he chided his neo-con colleagues, "how does it expect to bring democracy to a part of the world that has stubbornly resisted it and is virulently anti-American to boot?"

"The United States," he concluded, "needs to be more realistic about its nation-building abilities, and cautious in taking on large social-engineering projects in parts of the world it does not understand very well."

Fukuyama also faulted his close friend Krauthammer, and other neo-cons by implication, for failing to deal with reality. "There is not," he wrote, "the slightest nod towards the new empirical facts that have emerged in the last year or so: the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the virulent and steadily mounting anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East, the growing insurgency in Iraq, the fact that no strong democratic leadership had emerged there, the enormous financial and growing human cost of the war, the failure to leverage the war to make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and the fact that America's fellow democratic allies had by and large failed to fall in line and legitimate American actions ex post."

Still claiming the neo-conservative mantle, Fukuyama continues to believe that the United States should play a deeply interventionist, even messianic role in world affairs. But, like the elder Bush, Brent Scowcroft, and other foreign policy realists whom the neo-cons deplore, Fukuyama urges some old-fashioned paleo-conservative virtues - prudence, restraint, and a greater respect for the "common opinions of mankind."

I wonder what Dr. Michael Rubin thinks about that.

Why not read the actual article:

http://www.nationalreview.com/rubin/rubin200408191059.asp

It is quite good and I am in agreement with a lot of it. The Administration has not pursued a realistic strategy with regard to the Shia majority and are playing into the hands of the Iranians.

agreed

It seems as if nothing the Administration has done with respect to Iraq is realistic. The intelligence was unrealistic. The preparations to secure the country were unrealistic. The expected reaction of the Iraq people were unrealistic. The goals were unrealistic.

This entire endeavor has been one mistake after another, each one based on unrealistic analysis and expectations -- and some people still think Mr. Bush should be praised for what his Iraqi War.

Amazing.

(BTW, excellent article. I am fascinated by the way the neocons are blaming everyone and everything but their own failed ideology for what has happened. They were warned what would happen if we pursued their vision. And they have not learned a damned thing!)

Yes, good article.

From John Andrew:
[We need an emoticon for dropped-jaw]

So many things came to mind when I read the article, and subsequently, your commments.

Where is our leadership? Where is the President of the United States?

It became a question of persuing their (neocon) vision!? What about our vision? Why hasn't our President[/b] listened to his people?

Where is our democracy?[/b] The US became the neocon-US? How did this happen? Leadership would not have allowed it to happen.

I am so dismayed.

Remember, this was a man who said he would be a uniter. But he sold us out. Big time.

One guy shows disagreement with one aspect of the Administration's Iraq policy and, to JA and KK and other, it represents a total melt down with regard to the entire Iraq war. No where in this article do I see an expression of doubt with regard to the wisdom of invadinng Iraq in the first place. Yet, to John Andrew and kathyk, it represents a total break with Administration policy. Amazing.

Some may recall something I said here the other day with regard to red meat and wolves.

No, JB, it's not just one guy. That's why I thought the article was so interesting. It's not only Rubin, but Kristol, Kagan, Fukayama, David Brooks. They're falling like a house of cards. But, what else can they do - their lofty, grand scheme came back and bit them good.


"Is young Rubin simply an embittered voice from the losing side in Washington's hardball battles? Perhaps, but he hardly stands alone.[/b] Many neo-cons fault Bush for the way he pursued what they thought was their war. Fiascoes do that, creating an intense yearning to run from blame. Who me? I would have done it differently, and then we would have won. It makes a tricky defense to disprove."

. . .

"David Brooks, who graduated from the Rupert Murdoch funded Standard to a somewhat more pluralistic New York Times, spoke in anguished tones of how "depressing" it had become for those who support the war. "

"The predictions people on my side made about the postwar world have not yet come true," he moaned in May. "The warnings others made about the fractious state of post-Saddam society have."

So far you have supplied the names of many who have tactical differences with the Administration on the pursuit of their Iraq policy. You can add my name to that list. However, none of us (to my knowledge) disagree with the overall strategic aim of the Iraq invasion and that was my point. No falling house of cards with regard to whether it should have been done, just differences with regard to how it should be done.

It is just a microcosm of politics in America today.

To govern, and govern effectively, consensus must be reached. In today's political climate, "red meat" can never be placed in danger of the fangs. Therefore, sooner or later, one side must annihlate the other, in order to assure governance. There no longer exists a loyal opposition in the country. There are no more Bob Michaels - gentlemen who would disagree in principle, but would craft legislation as long as some of their agenda was met.

If the country continues along the same macro-political path it has been on for almost 40 years (which IMO is just a return to America's normal pre-WWII views), I know who's gonna be on the outside looking in.

And I'm not sure whether the country is better, or worse off, for it.

People like JA and Kathy arrive at their conclusion, then go hunting for facts to support it. It's just one more reason our country can never ever *ever* allow those who think in this fashion to get into power. They arrive at the "answer" without ever even seeing the problem, so busy are they at proving the other side "wrong". That is foolish, and dangerous.

Hardly a fishing expedition, Larry. I happened upon the article in Truthout, which points to the article in the Weekly Standard. It's ALL right there.

This microcosm of politics, Jolly, is precisely the force that plunged us headlong into Iraq. That's why I find the situation so invidious - they don't represent mainstream thinking - they're ideologues pushing a fantastical agenda - yet they've driven the policies of this administration from Day One.

Let's hope more conservatives start to wake up and smell the coffee. I find this article heartening for that reason - ergo, the house of cards is falling.

It's all right there Kathy, except for the warped take on it you assigned it. That's my whole point.

"The house of cards is falling" - no, it isn't. That's the predetermined conclusion you went looking for. As a result, that's all you can see, and no amount of explaining things to you will ever change it. That's why I said what I said - we can *never* allow people who think the way you do to get into power.

Kathy, you proceed from an entire set of assumptions which are erroneous and nothing in what you have posted supports them. You have only shown there to be divisions in how a particular policy should be pursued. You will see that with any administration. BTW, the article cited by truthout was from National Review not the Weekly Standard. Might as well get that correct.

What assumptions? My thesis is simple: The neo-cons were wrong in their projections about this war, and they're slowly beginning to admit it. (Sorry for the mis-cite - those right-rags all sort of blur together in my mind's eye.)

Furthermore, it's not just a matter of an itty bitty policy gone awry. This sort of turns on its head the whole neo-con notion of taking charge of the world with nation building. I'd say that's a pretty major piece of the ideology.

Kathy,

There are those who will never see the obvious.

Just like the neocons, we have those on this Board who have been shifting the blame and saying it is not an ideological failure, but, as JBryan claims, simply a tactical failure.

How often on here have we read that the reason the WMD's were not found is ONLY because Mr. Bush spent a few months pretending to cooperate with the UN (as if the troops were even ready before the time we invaded!). No doubt is expressed by these people about the existense of the WMD's, no matter the evidence or what those who understand these things have said. Just arguments that the WMD search was thwarted by the tactic of talking to the UN.

The same thing with those who claim the overthrow of the Iraqi military was some sort of wondrous success. BCarey points out that part of any military vitory is to keep the other army from going undergorund and waging a continued insurgency. This is exactly what happened. Yes, the Iraqi army was overwhelmed quickly -- as if that would have been hard for the US. But no doubt is expressed about whether there was actually a victory at all even as the ffigthing continues, with Americans and Iraqis dying daily.

We hear the same denial blaming those Iraqis who are fighting the US occupation today. According to those who support Mr. Bush, the Iraqis fighting us are not loyal, patriotic Iraqis who want their country back. No. According to them, the loyal patriotic Iraqis all love what the US is doing. The only ones fighting us are malcontents who hate freedom and hate democracy and want to put Hussein back in power, or the Iranians in power or Osama bin Ladin in power.

They are all living in denial. The facts are before them -- we continue to experience them. Virtually all that more level-headed people warned would go wrong if we invaded has gone wrong.

And yet we hear that the failure is simply tactical. If we had had different tactics, the Iraqis would love us, they would be marching in lock step with all that the US has done and all the puppets the US put into power are doing.

Kathy, they literally cannot see that this entire thing is a failure. Or if they see it, they cannot bring themselves to admit it. So they find reasons outside of the most simple one -- the war was a stupid idea, that this type of foreign policy is bound to fail, that the premises on which the ideology has been contructed are pure fantasy.

And what is the most fascinating argument of all is that all of those who have been warning since the idea of invading and occupying Iraq first surfaced that it would fail are now being blamed for that very failure. If we had just kept our mouths shut, all would be a bed of roses with no thorns.

It's just like Vietnam. It took Robert McNamara almost two decades to get around to admitting he was just plain wrong and to finally apologize for the great eviul he inflicted on the US and the Vietnamese and the world.

I suspect it is going to take the neocons and their supporters the same amount of time to admit it about Iraq.

John, that was a magnificent piece of utter garbage. It was *almost* worth refuting.

I would call that a left field foul, but would give a star for distance.

Silly winger......

The fact remains, the people cited here and elsewhere that are supposedly representing a break with Administration policy on Iraq still are in agreement on the strategic aims of the invasion and have disagreements of a tactical nature only. Therefore, the conclusion that so-called "neocons" are having second thoughts about the actual invasion are erroneous. Furthermore, although mistakes and miscalculations have been made (expected since no plan survives first contact with the enemy), the conclusion that setbacks that have been encountered are proof that the strategy was wrong are similarly erroneous. JA and KK like to continuously opine that we are less safe than we were with Saddam in power but that is a difficult case to make in my view. Even with the difficulties we have ecountered, the absence of a Saddam Hussein working on ABC weapons and dancing cheek to cheek with terrorists is something we can definitely call a major step forward in terms of our security.

Of course this war is an ideological failure. It’s the sort of thing that happens when irrationality infests the highest levels of government, when presidents claim to speak for God, when ethnocentrism pervades and cultural relativism fades. At the root of this problem is a fundamental disconnect between two cultures, each convinced of its own rightness and the other’s wrongness.

In Vietnam, we thought we were fighting Communism. Our enemies thought they were fighting a colonialist aggressor. Such confusion is at the heart of our present conflict as well. Bush, with his severe narrow-mindedness and ignorance of other cultures, is in no position to reconcile the two sides.

Interesting observation and an even more interesting question at the end.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that the US is moving back, or at least trying to move back, towards its traditional islolationist role in the world that existed prior to WWII and FDR. While I can see specific trends that would seem to qualify your observation, I also see increasing strategic and economic demands being placed on the US to do the opposite. In reality I would argue that the US can no more go back to pre-WWII views of itself than can China return to orthodox Marxism-Leninism or Russia reintroduce even a constitutional monarchy.

The US arose from isolationism in 1917 when it entered WWI. It was a major power broker in teh 1919 Paris Treaty. For awhile there was a brief return to semi isolationism yet all US politicians and policy makers recognized that US influence in the PAcific was growing to such an extent that US interests and Imperial Japanese interests would collide. The Pacific fleet of Dreadnoughts & aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor affirm early US acceptance of maintaining command of the sea and a power projection capability in that theatre.

Today the US has global economic interests and the power projection ability to maintain global command of the sea. The proposed North American Missle Defence Program ( causing all symptoms of agaric hallucinations & political dyspepsia here right now), is yet another means of ensuring that a global sea, air and land power projection capability be maintained as a first line in defence of the homeland.

In past I have argued that the US inherited the mantle of the British Empire- an empire that was primarily commercial in nature. What remains or what arisen out of the ashes of major 20th Century conflicts and diplomatic initiatives is a global commonwealth of the English speaking peoples at whose head stands the United States of America. No other country of that commonwealth is capable of, or willing to, accept the huge responsibiliy this entails.

I too am not sure whether the US is better or worse off, for it either.

I vote for isolationism! See! I'm really a conservative.

Buchananite not conservative