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Talk About . . . By Sean Paul Kelley, on February 15th, 2007 . . . flawed assumptions. Hilzoy’s best graf:
There are, in these slides, various contingency plans. What will we do if we don’t get to fly over various countries? How will we respond to a Predator being shot down, to the Iraqis using WMD against us, to a major attack on the Kurds? It’s a pity we didn’t plan for other contingencies, like an insurgency or a civil war.
Read it and weep, indeed.
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trying to score points over 1) the fact that the slides speak of Iraqi WMD capability, presumably demonstrating that America did believe Iraq had WMD, and 2) the fact that the slides say that by today America would only have 5,000 troops left in Iraq, presumably undermining the assertion that permanent bases were always planned.
Balderdash. They demonstrate that the military was under those assumptions – not Cheney’s White House.
…but it strikes me that it’s a waste to let something like this devolve into a discussion of “Darth” Cheney. My view, everytime discussion trends in this direction it represents a missed opportunity to garner support from the not insignificant pool of folks that buy the notion that the administration is a colossal bunch of fuck-ups but reject the view that this was all about some grand hegemonic plan.
If you want to destroy them, reveal them as the morons they are – don’t try to make them out to be the evil geniuses they only wish they could be.
“Political Islam is a dream or a nightmare, but not a sociological reality.” – Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah
between morons and evil geniuses, and that’s where my assessment of them lives. There’s true brilliance in some of their bueraucratic maneuvering and jurisdictional wrangling. They truly are evil geniuses in some regards, but moronic in others – vat-bred intelligences with little experience of the real world, whether that vat was Washington or some conservative creche.
Perhaps we could compromise on “idiot savant”?
( … Link … )
delusional
His proposal was critized at Colonel Patrick Lang’s Blog Titled, Stalingrad on the Tigres? (Take note of the question mark.)
Do these twits just computerize their plans and move icons around a screen with no regard for the human beings the modelling and slide shows represent?
Seriously.
It’s worth thinking about the similarities.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) Documentary, out on DVD.
Yes, the guys WERE smart. And VERY delusional.
Just like the neocon chickenhawks.
CNN: White House Now Blames Briefer For Going Too Far On Iran Intel
Last Sunday, the Bush administration finally presented its long-delayed intelligence briefing on Iranian arms shipments into Iraq. Prior to the presentation, a U.S. official told the New York Times that it had been delayed because they were “trying to scrub†the intelligence, adding “the last thing we want to be accused of is cherry-picking.â€
While much of the information had previously been known, the highlight of the presentation — as reported by ABC World News — was that it was “the first time military officials…made the link to the highest level of Iran’s government.†But the briefing “offered no evidence†to substantiate that claim.
snip
Today, CNN reported that the White House is now blaming the anonymous intelligence briefer who presented the information. According to CNN’s Ed Henry, the White House says the anonymous intelligence briefer went “a little too far†in stating the evidence. But, as Henry said, “that begs the question why the administration has taken so long to clarify those comments.†Watch it:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/15/blaming-the-briefer/
I mean do they call a meeting and say stuff like, “Why are we always so wrong?”
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. This principle is, contempt prior to examination.”
Fool Me
What a curious statement, especially in light (to name just two) of Cheney’s long-standing endorsement of the infamous “Clean Break” manifesto of 1996, ostensibly prepared for an Israeli policy change vis-a-vis Syria, Lebanon, and Iran, but later used as a template for a joint US-Israel approach to “putting right” Israel’s long-term security interests, and – of course – Cheney’s involvement with PNAC from its inception, and his approval of the 1998 PNAC call for the removal of Saddam Hussein (by force). Let us not forget that when “Darth” was SecDef during Bush I, he authored the “Defense Planning Guidance” draft that called for – inter alia “benevolent domination by one power” (the U.S.) to replace “collective internationalism” and for Washington to ensure that domination, particularly in Eurasia, in order to prevent the emergence, by confrontation if necessary, of any possible regional or global rival.” .
Right, geniuses they’re not, but surely evil…and hegemonic.
PNAC:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNAC
“A Clean Break…”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm
Cheney/neoconservative foreign policy:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0613-05.htm
…funny how PNAC’s notion of turning Iraq over to a Sunni monarch that they had a long history with turned into a messy attempt at inflicting democracy on a nation quite unprepared for it. My feeling is very much that the PNAC guys got a hell of a lot more than they bargained for. The administration really did believe that they could go in there, apply kinetics and the mythical “Iraqi man” would emerge from the woodwork and change the whole nature of governance in the Middle East.
“Political Islam is a dream or a nightmare, but not a sociological reality.” – Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah
You mean that he really isn’t a believer in US hegemony – in the Middle East, or elsewhere? That we’ve all grievously misread his pronouncements, actions, etc., to further such views? Ah, right.
…guys pinned on the ground for that long? No. Do I think that he actually thought that Iraq’d end up with some sort of ersatz democracy if they kicked over Saddam’s house of cards? Yeah. The guy actually thinks that his way of life is superior enough that people will gravitate towards it given the chance, no need to impose and sustain it at gunpoint – though he thinks that guns might be necessary to establish a suitable starting condition.
“Political Islam is a dream or a nightmare, but not a sociological reality.” – Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah
because a) a “grand hegemonic plan” does in fact exist (it’s not even arguable, there’s a paper trail a yard long) and was/is being pursued, and b) it’s been bungled in the execution.
…hegemony that you’re using. As I view the region, the only definition of hegemony that I see having any enduring coercive utility (or any useful meaning under the label “hegemony”) is one backed by the permanent presence of significant military power. I don’t believe that they intended, in a post-Saddam world, to continue to maintain forward basing of significant numbers of troops in Iraq, or in the Gulf region generally. I think they absolutely did intend to maintain a “lillypad” presence along the southern margin of the Gulf that could be rapidly built up in time of need – to deter Iran, among other reasons – and to continue to have constant maintenance of military relations (FMS, training, etc.) but I think they’ve sufficient mania on force protection that they’d really rather have not had any significant concentrations of guys pinned there as locally convenient targets, a la Khobar Towers.
As I see it, these guys saw little need, in the absence of some local regime keeping their people from what they ["these guys"] believe they ["their people"] naturally want, for coercive hegemony. They actually think an enduring natural, endogenous, willing “hegemony” is possible via soft (sweet and sticky to use Mead’s terms) power alone.
“Political Islam is a dream or a nightmare, but not a sociological reality.” – Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah