The Bowen report on the state of Iraq reconstruction is now out, and it’s pretty devastating. You can download it here. There was “no comprehensive policy or regulatory guidelines” for staffing the interim occupation, and systematic planning was “insufficient in both scope and implementation.” Dan Drezner has the goods. To take on what we took on and to have done so little planning is to me an unforgivable lapse. Like Dan and George Packer, I’m angrier than even the anti-war types about this, because I wanted the war to succeed and trusted people I now realize I was a fool to trust. My feelings are not far from the lines of this emailer’s:
Regarding the email of the day disputing your reasons to be skeptical about conspiracies to get us into war: maybe, but not the point. I remember my ambivalence back in March, 2003. I was mistrustful of the motivations of the Bush people for going to war, but I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Saddam Hussein was bad enough to be deposed whatever the reason used to justify the excursion. So, here I am, a more-or-less Democrat, willing to concede that these people I don’t really trust are taking us into a war that ought to be fought. Concede, concede, concede.
BUT, they blew their chance. They have no idea what they are doing. My worst fears about their core values (which evidently have nothing to do with making our nation safe and strong, and everything to do with Rovian marketing strategies) were realized. These tough-talking hawks ignored good advice, behaved like the worst tin-pot tyrants out of bad fiction, and have ruined our standing in the world for a generation. Whether we got into the war for the wrong reasons or for overly-hyped reasons seems irrelevant now. Our military, diplomatic, and political incompetence is the issue. Apparently we were too stupid to cut our losses when we had the chance last November, so now our chickens have come home to roost. I hope Republicans take a long hard look at their party in 2008. They had the chance to put McCain in office in 2000, and they picked Bush. Shame on them, and shame on us.
I wouldn’t be quite so harsh. Being responsible for this country’s security after 9/11 was enough to make anyone overly-cautious and perhaps too terrified of inaction. People can be forgiven good faith misjudgments. What they cannot be forgiven for is recklessness. If we don’t have solid evidence for that in the pre-invasion stage, then we sure do for the post-invasion mess. That debate is now over. And the reconstruction is still in limbo.
The Dish 