Chronicle of a debacle foretold

The waPo’s Michael Abramowitz and Peter Baker have apparently been partially anointed by the Bush White House as its current chroniclers of choice. And thus, in today’s Wapo, we have their “authorized by the White House” version of how Bush undertook the allegedly extensive “policy review” that resulted in the current escalation plan.
The short version of the story of this policy review would be “ABB”: that is, “Guys! Cobble together a policy that is Anything But Baker-Hamilton”. But I guess the White House spinmeisters wanted to craft a longer, slightly more compelling narrative for it that would make their boss look deliberative, decisive, and wise…
And so we have “A&B”, Abramowitz and Baker.
They write:

    A reconstruction of the administration’s Iraq policy review, based on more than a dozen interviews with senior advisers, Bush associates, lawmakers and national security officials, reveals a president taking the lead in driving the process toward one more effort at victory — despite doubts along the way from his own military commanders, lawmakers and the public at large.

The main official whose words are quoted by name in the article is Bush’s National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley. So this really is the “authorized version” of the chronicle.
About the most significant aspect of A&B’s narrative is that, in their attempt to make Bush look “decisive” and “leaderlike”, they make Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki look like a pathetic US cat’s-paw… This, in contradiction of the official administration story so far wherein Bush is sending in the surge in troops “in response to a request from the Iraqi government.”
Right there at the top of theie story, A&B write that when Maliki and Bush met in Amman on November 30, Maliki formally presented– Power Point slides and all!– a proposal whereby US troops would

    withdraw to the outskirts of Baghdad and let Iraqis take over security in the strife-torn capital. Maliki said he did not want any more U.S. troops at all, just more authority.
    The president listened intently to the unexpected proposal at their Nov. 30 meeting, according to accounts from several administration officials. Bush seemed impressed that Maliki had taken the initiative, but it did not take him long to reject the idea.

So much for Iraqi “sovereignty.”
Later, A&B tell us of Bush that,

    He never seriously considered beginning to withdraw U.S. forces, as urged by newly elected Democratic congressional leaders and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. And he had grown skeptical of his own military commanders, who were telling him no more troops were needed.
    So Bush relied on his own judgment [oh my G-d, what a terrifying thought… ~HC] that the best answer was to try once again to snuff out the sectarian violence in Baghdad, even at the risk of putting U.S. soldiers into a crossfire between Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. When his generals resisted sending more troops, he seemed irritated. When they finally agreed to go along with the plan, he doubled the number of troops they requested.[!!!]
    It was a signature moment for a president who seems uninfluenced by the electorate on Iraq and headed for a showdown with the new Democratic Congress. Presented with an opportunity to pull back, Bush instead chose to extend and, in some ways, deepen his commitment, gambling that more time and a new plan will finally bring success to the troubled U.S. military mission.

These nearly always unnamed “senior Bush advisers” etc who are quoted by A&B admitted to the chroniclers, however, that along the way they– though not, of course, their extremely wise and omniscient boss– had made at least two key errors of political judgment.
One was regarding US politics, where,

    They understood that many if not most Democrats would not welcome a troop increase but thought at least some would grudgingly go along — not anticipating what ended up as near-universal opposition by Democrats and visceral anger even among some Republicans…

And the other error was regarding Iraqi politics:

    By early fall, even as Bush was on the campaign trail accusing Democrats of defeatism, he and his senior advisers were coming to the conclusion that his core assumptions were wrong. The political process would not lead to security in Iraq. In fact, it would have to be the other way around. And they started to doubt the advice from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior commanders in Baghdad that troop levels were adequate to contain the violence.
    “It was pretty clear when you started to look at our assumptions, many of them just weren’t right,” said a senior administration official, who like others discussed internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity.

And thus, as we have seen, the “way forward” to the surge involved, right after the November 7 elections, Bush firing Rumsfeld and the two senior commanders in Iraq.
A&B describe how the White House’s “Iraq policy review” picked up steam after the election:

    The Bush team concluded that the previous Baghdad security plans had failed for four reasons: The Iraqis never took ownership over security, Maliki placed political constraints on military operations, there were not enough reliable Iraqi and U.S. forces, and there was no serious effort to rebuild areas taken back from insurgents or militias.
    Bush spent hours in conversation with Maliki, on the phone and in videoconference, probing to determine whether he could count on the prime minister. “The president decided we need to bring this issue to a head,” one senior adviser said. “We need to clarify whether this government is really a partner or not.”

A&B write that one “problem” for Bush,

    was that the military did not necessarily want more troops. Army Gens. John P. Abizaid, the Middle East commander, and George W. Casey Jr., the commander in Iraq, opposed an influx of U.S. forces because they were unconvinced it would change the dynamics on the ground.
    Resistance from Casey and the Joint Chiefs of Staff flared throughout the process. On Dec. 13, Bush went to the super-secure “tank” at the Pentagon to listen to his top generals, only to walk away convinced that some of them were trying to manage defeat rather than find a way to victory.
    Bush decided to placate some of the concerns expressed by the generals about the overextended military and told The Washington Post six days later that he would expand the size of the Army and Marines. When Gates went to Baghdad that week, he came back with Casey’s agreement for more troops based on the understanding that the commander would no longer be held back by the Iraqi government and that the United States would address the country’s economic needs.
    “He was not overriding his commanders,” one Bush aide said of the president. “But he was pushing them to identify what went wrong and what do we need to change what happened.”

Of course he was overriding his commanders. But they pushed back just a tiny bit, and got something they wanted out of that negotiation. Namely, an assurance that the US troops in Iraq “would no longer be held back by the Iraqi government.”
However, even having Casey’s agreement for some increase in troop levels, Bush continued to hold out for an increase even larger than Casey had agreed to:

    Bush had already decided to replace Casey with Petraeus, and through intermediaries the president reached out to Petraeus, who was supportive of more troops than Casey requested.
    So the president reversed Casey’s plan, deciding that all five brigades would go to Baghdad in a phased deployment. “The president came out and said, ‘Let’s err on the side of making sure they have everything they need,’ ” said a senior official.

So there is the political insiders’ “backstory” on this horrendous debacle of an escalation that is about to unfold.
… And if we should want an additional indicator of just how truly reckless this surge policy is, we could note that even that old hawk Henry Kissinger today came out in the WaPo with a lengthy peroration that was unprecedentedly critical of it.
I guess Henry’s deal with the many newspapers that carry his opinion columns is that they not make the texts available on the web, and I’m afraid I don’t have time to type in very much of what is in his piece today. But he warned explicitly that, “These circumstances have merged into an almost perfect storm of mutually reinforcing crises… ” [both within and beyond Iraq.]
Henry is also urging that the administration needs to talk with both Iran and Syria…
So if even he is this worried about the situation and about the way the Prez’s present policy feeds into it, then the rest of us should certainly be scared about its recklessness… Very scared indeed.

10 thoughts on “Chronicle of a debacle foretold”

  1. In this WaPo article, the Veep is mentioned only twice, but that is enough to tell the story behind the story:
    “State Department officials urged a more energetic outreach to Iraqis beyond Baghdad’s Green Zone, to hedge against failure by the Maliki government. Other officials, including those in the office of Vice President Cheney, voiced concern that U.S. steps to reach out to disaffected Sunni Iraqis had not brought about a corresponding decrease in violence.”
    “Another retired Army general, Barry R. McCaffrey, said he told Bush that [Keane’s] idea was a “fool’s errand” and argued that putting more troops on the ground would not change the underlying dynamic. Still, the administration was interested enough in a buildup that Keane had follow-up sessions with Cheney and Hadley.”
    You don’t think Dick would let the kid make a decision like this all by himself, do you?

  2. Ray McGovern points out the lack of any current national intelligence estimate on Iraq:
    “[A]n intelligence estimate on Iraq has been in process for months—and months—and months. It is not that the analysts are slower these days; it is that the White House has decided that, for political reasons, no estimate at all is better than an unwelcome one.”
    http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0120-28.htm
    The good news is that Cheney’s ability to intimidate the intelligence community has limits. The bad news is that it doesn’t matter any more.

  3. I am beginning to think the Post indulges the White House in these ‘backstory’ revisionist pieces more in order to get a mulligan on their limp realtime reporting than anything else. It can’t be to get access — what good is access if it only produces after the fact analysis which seemingly never causes the analysts to reconsider the stuff they get told in the first place?
    And I have to confess I no longer care how Bush comes to these wrong decisions. The way in which this man makes decisions is irrelevant. What matters is that too many people accept his decisions, if only because they continue to want to believe that he is following a process that is somehow rational. Even these people know the process is no longer democratic.

  4. What matters is that too many people accept his decisions,
    You are right in this but it is short in total view of this disastrous war and invasion.
    looks to me that more and more Americans and other people more concerned how to benefits from this case “war”, we seeing journalists, military commanders and others and others run wildly to catch any opportunity to get a peace of walkcake, I don’t ignoring the big ones which is oil, and military supplies those all in one side with Bush decision making.
    So what it’s most concerned, when those vast normal people stop and think what they doing looks for them its for their national befits but the reality they share the responsibility of this disastrous war and crimes doing in name of War against Terrorism and Democracy in Iraq.

  5. Sheriff Dick Cheney doesn’t allow Deputy Dubya Bush to make “decisions.” He only lets him make mistakes. Insider gossip and self-interested spin leaked to the Washington Post aside, few if any but die-hard Disciples of Dick believe the inane teleprompter propaganda catapulted indiscriminately everywhere by the commander-in-briefs. Look for things in Iraq to just keep getting worse until America packs up and leaves, one way or another.

  6. hi:
    the article certainly was noteworthy, and I agree that it was very much the official spin on the story.
    it’s interesting that the white house might feel an edited narrative is warranted- which could lead us to think that the unedited version might have made some people a little uncomfortable.
    the article is interesting both for its omissions and its points of emphasis.
    for example, although there is some emphasis on jack keane’s role in cooking up the strategy, there is little mention made of the american enterprise institute and only passing reference to Frederick Kagan, whose advice was only ‘monitored’ by the White house [please!!!]. In the run up to this thing, particularly as the Baker Hamilton report was being jettisoned, AEI and Kagan were playing a far more prominent role in the selling of the surge. initially the surge powerpoint that had people talking was prepared by AEI and presented by Kagan.
    now, it does seems fairly convenient that we won’t definitively know whether this thing will work or not until Bush’s waning days in office and by that time his utility will have expired.
    this is less about making Bush look decisive and presidential, a losing proposition at this point (remember how he was not going to be rushed in his ‘consultations’?), and more about making sure that it is his fingerprints that are all over the trigger.
    when Bush’s term expires, his time in washington will end- there are others who intend to stick around for a bit longer, and they will need make sure that their tracks are well covered when this thing goes awry.

  8. swerv21, that is a very interesting interpretation of the article’s motivation. And one I think has to be given a great deal of weight. I hope the web can keep track of all these players, particularly the ones who are now attempting to disappear themselves until a brighter day.

  9. (mostly for “swerv21”)
    The emphasis and the omissions you notice all add up to the same thing: “The Surge of ’07” is a Kennebunkport-Crawford Dynasty release, directed by G. Walker Bush, and starring Dubya D. Decider.
    It is not quite true that nobody else gets on stage with Mr. Protagonist, however. His performance is supported, from a safe distance, by three lesser figures, as a bit of word-counting reveals:
    “Bush” appears 31 times
    ====================
    “Maliki” 12 times
    “Casey” 7 times
    “Hadley” 7 times
    and the rest of the pack of surnames is negligible .by comparison. General Casey is a left-over from the bad old days, so it is really just the other three of them to whom Americans and Mesopotamians alike shall owe our future happiness.
    The prominence of Master Stephen Hadley is a bit alarming, considering the abysmal quality of that trip report of his that they leaked for Party purposes. Who wants to live on a world ordered so as to put an injudicious ignoramus like that anywhere near the top? One may hope, however, that it was Mr. Hadley who prepared this press release and took a certain advantage of his opportunities. In any case, if the President wants somebody around the house all the time to talk surges with who is guaranteed never to outshine his boss, this lad will do nicely.
    Rear-Colonel Kagan of AEI and The Weekly Standard does have some cause to feel miffed, but not primarily because the press release says “closely monitored” instead of “substantially adopted.” Look at his brief appearance:
    “The guy who is most committed to winning and finding a way to win is the president. He always has been; he’s the only reason we are still in this fight,” said Frederick W. Kagan, a military historian at the American Enterprise Institute whose advice to send more troops has been closely monitored by senior administration policymakers.
    Colonel Kagan did not, of course, simply advise the Leader of his Party to send more troops, as if he were a Sen. John McCain or a Dr. Rush Limbaugh, he prepared at least two elaborate plans about how to do it, one before the “sectarian violence” angle had registered with the militant Republicans, and the current one afterwards. In the article, however, there is no sign of all that work, he’s only mentioned to help rivet the spotlight on the star of the show, a menial task which any other rightist tank-thinker could have performed quite as well.
    To be sure, it is not an accident that the journalists who garnished the Crawfordite press release with additional quotations should give us Frederick Kagan in praise of Bush’s triumphalism instead of some better known Party eulogist, but unless one has been paying a fair amount of attention, one can not understand what is really going on here.
    If there were any standards in the newspaper business, the Washington Post would have offended against them twice: (1) by not printing a self-serving Administration hand-out as is, without additional comments or any attempts to disguise it as reporting, and (2) by this wink-wink-nod-nod strategy that is bound to leave quite a number of WP customers in the dark.
    (Perhaps Messrs. Abramowitz and Baker fancy they are “subverting” the White House “discourse” by reminding those who know already that “The Surge of ’07” is more Freddie’s intellectual property than it is George’s? Very silly to play such Eng. Lit. games in a mass-circulation newspaper, I’d say.)
    Happy days.

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