You Can't Make A Silk Purse From a Sow's Ear...

Last week, it was the Baker group that took the big hit trying to legislate an impossible outcome. This morning, undeterred by the experience of their peers, another group of august thinkers were wrestling with what is the best solution to the challenges we face in Iraq. What came out of their mental gyrations was that every single one of them misses the point.

The reason: They are starting with the set of circumstances that Rumsfeld orchestrated, a situation that Bush built on which if one thinks about it, are concepts in direct opposition to each other.

Bush says he will not quit until “we win!...” But contradictorily, he is operating on the Rumsfeld theory that less is more—less manpower that is.
It is impossible to reconcile two contradictions in thinking.

Let’s take a step back and look at the background to understand my point.

Rumsfeld knew that he was never going to get the money for both an expanded Army and the new Army he had envisioned which was going to substitute technology for manpower. This was the vision.

And much of the funding was coming out of planned educational budgets.

In the beginning, many of us had thought that Rumsfeld could never make this work and that, in effect, he was being viewed as the sacrificial goat.

But we were wrong and hadn’t counted on Cheney’s behind the scene support for the man who had brought him into government during the Ford Administration.

It was always a choice of this way or that, and technology, of necessity, had to win!
And Rumsfeld had to make it work. That was his mandate. Remember, we were still funding the 264 billion dollar antimissile shield that still doesn’t work…

To put things into perspective, Rumsfeld should have realized that during the Desert Storm, America had positioned more than 500,000 Allied troops for the invasion. And at that time, the population was something like 20% smaller.

Contrast this with the fact that during the second invasion of Iraq we were to make our initial forays into Iraq with fewer than 200,000 troops.

In other words, we were starting at a serious disadvantage in terms of the ratios of occupying forces to native populations. Most military theorists ruled an invasion of a country with a population of over 26 million people with fewer than 200,000 troops as suicide waiting to happen.

The former Army Chief of Staff and then Secretary of State Powell warned against the dangers of not using overwhelming force, his coda for the troops under his command after the experience of Vietnam…. And most of his generals
Would have agreed that he was right.

But Rumsfeld didn’t listen. He was out to prove his point and make brownie points with his “boss,” the president.

Only, nobody had thought out a plan B. What if it didn’t work and what if the Iraqis were not so eager to gravitate to democracy?

Knowing Rumsfeld is to know that he, like Cheney and Bush, are not the kind of Cold Warriors who take criticism of their decisions lightly. And so, with the general staff knowing better and not eager to stand up to a man who is a practitioner of “get even,” they went ahead anyway…

Last night, the former Secretary of State under Clinton said that that decision may turn out to be the worst foreign policy decision of all time. And when Charlie Rose asked her “why?” she explained that is because it could trigger Middle Eastern conflict for many years to come with Sunni Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt positioned against Shiite Iran and Syria with Lebanon and Palestine caught in the middle.

Clearly, no one had thought about future outcomes when they decided to use WMD and other half baked arguments and faulty research as an excuse to march into Iraq.

Ironically, it was Kerry and Gore who wanted to build up the American military from its weakened position after the first Gulf War..

But the question is today, how can the president on the one hand claim that he needs to finish the job and on the other hand fail to provide the resources including both men and equipment necessary to that purpose. That is not only stiff headedness, it is dishonest and wrong!

American negotiators are trying to formulate a solution from those untenable positions and that is why none are forthcoming that satisfy a middling intellect. In the end, the electorate will come to the realization that this was Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s Show and they handled it much like Katrina.

Les Aaron
www.lesaaron.blogspot.com