The Pulitzer-winning journalist whose 2006 book so thoroughly debunked the "Mission Accomplished" myth of the Iraq war came to my town a few hours ago and asked his audience to face some nasty new diagnoses about Iraq.
Being so fresh from hearing Fiasco author Thomas Ricks speak here in Seattle on Thursday night, I can't swear to which of his statements is ultimately the most distressing. Here are a few contenders:
* "The best-case scenario for Iraq is a country that is not particularly democratic, is not ... stable, is not a great respecter of human rights, is almost certainly a closer ally with Iran than it is with Washington. That's the best-case scenario."
* Iraq "almost certainly" will end up being America's longest war ever.
* Obama is so "overly optimistic" about prospects for getting troops out of Iraq that the new president "sounds a lot like Bush before the surge."
* In overthrowing Saddam Hussein, America forcibly traded a "toothless tiger" of an enemy for the possibility of a much worse one: "There are a lot of little Saddams in Iraq wearing police and army uniforms and I worry that one of them may grow up and become a big Saddam. ... We may say, 'My God, we created a monster.'"
Of course, most of these are predictions. They look to the future. We don't have good data on the future. So, as dire and plausible as Ricks' predictions are, I'm actually more interested in his judgments of the recent past. The recent past is the subject of Ricks' new book, The Gamble. Its subtitle is "General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008"
Speaking on Thursday about those years and about the Petraeus-led "surge" that defined the period, Ricks used a blunt word that jarred me. The word was "failure." The surge, Ricks said, failed. All the big political issues Iraq faced before the surge are still there, he said.
This, in a sense, is not news to me. Back in July, I wrote a piece here on HuffPost called "McCain's Premature Surge Adulation." In it, I tried to counter the incessant scolding from Senator McCain's presidential campaign that painted Obama as mulish for refusing to rejoice in the truth that everyone supposedly knew: that "the surge worked."
As Gov. Sarah Palin put it in her GOP convention speech, "Victory in Iraq is finally in sight (and Obama) wants to forfeit."
I knew that was nonsense.
All the same, Ricks' words did jar me Thursday. Thank goodness. Because we need to be jarred.
There's the saying about how people who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. But what about people who actively lie to themselves about the past, about something like the surge? Surely, such people are in for something even worse than a mere repetition of the past.
This matters for Afghanistan. It matters for Iraq. It matters for America.
As Ricks writes in the very last sentence of The Gamble, "the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered probably have not yet happened."
UPDATE (4/11/09): Many thanks to all of you who took the time to read, think, and comment. Based on what you wrote, I just want to share a few more quotes from Ricks' Seattle appearance:
* Obama "inherited the worst foreign policy situation that any new president has ever taken on."
* "The invasion of Iraq was the single biggest blunder in the history of American foreign policy."
* "Staying in Iraq is immoral. I think leaving Iraq is even more immoral."
And since commenter "viper234" brought up the crucially important issue of torture, I should note that Ricks said "every one of us have had people tortured in our names." Ricks wants a Truth and Reconciliation Commission aimed at discovering the full facts of what has been done since 9/11. He blogged about it here.
Even without a truth commission, Ricks predicted the facts will continue to leak. "I see this as Cheney being waterboarded by history," he said.
Huffington Post blogger David Quigg's previous posts about Iraq are archived here on his new blog, AfPak Ignoramus. To follow David on Twitter, click here. Or, if you want to understand how Dick Cheney ultimately failed the torture enthusiasts every bit as much as he failed you, please take a few moments to read "Keep Yapping, Dick. (Why Even Another 9/11 Can't Redeem Cheney and Bush)".
Blunder is to kind of a word for a planned invasion based on outright lies and deception. That was a War Crime (Crimes against Humanity are described as "aggressive war"). When countries in S. America can hold truth and reconciliation commissions (against criminals in power DESPITE an improving economy)j, that speaks ill of our third world heavily armed state. We live in a nuclear capable banana republic now.
The "Surge" is a complete lie. As was said before we embarked on the strategy, it is like "Whack-a-Mole." The fighting will calm down where we are located. In addition, as populations shift from fear of being in the wrong region, the local violence will also calm down in the short term. In the name of individual security, sides have been taken. Now it is like two dogs separated by their 'master,' just waiting for him to step out of the way so they can go at it.
Civil War is inevitable. I'm sorry, America has some bizarre need to be viewed as "the good guy." In this instance, no amount of redefining or nurturing through intervention is going to transform us into healers. We screwed up. That is ALL it will ever be.
Here we have this Uncle Sam who used to be a generous sort to the less privileged and many pockets for the things of peace like the sick, infirm, the poor , the needy and to give all a chance to live a dream to the future.
Yet it has been for many years where this Uncle Sam has emptied his peace pockets and filled them with war implements, ideas, groups; not for the defense of the ideals set forth from our beginnings
The pockets are deep and giving to the privileged, the greedy who would not share and a war machine to help them acquire what they would from whoever they could with no thought to life or limb or others property or goods or any dream they may nurture.
This Uncle Sam is starting to look ratty and worn from being a practitioner of usury with the less privileged and loading up the “other class” and borrowing to and from the future, if any, from the pockets of peace. Peace has more pockets but empty ones and the war ones would keep it that way by hoping that we are nothing but lemmings
What are we? Tony 5/10/09
Carol
So before all the "who lost Iraq" nonsense begins, Americans would do well to get the answer firmly fixed in their heads: Bush "lost Iraq" the day of the invasion.
Isn't it a little early for newspeak?
Victory in Iraq is newspeak. We are more hated in the Middle East and less respected in the World than at any time in my life. Whatever government we install will never be considered legitimate and will fall with the speed of the retreating Vietnamese Army once we draw down sufficient troops.
Iraq has never been "won." There isn't going to a western-style democracy in Iraq. The best that can be hoped for is a less murderous and repressive militarized regime than Saddam's. Maliki is showing signs of growing into the role of strongman, and the immediate issue is whether he has accumulated enough power to suppress violence by Iraq's Sunni and Kurdish minorities, its Shiite extremists and AQ infiltrators. A fine mess left behind by an American president so ignorant of what he was doing that he had never even heard of Sunnis and Shiites a week before the invasion.
It is inevitable that those who stand to lose under a Maliki government will increase their violence as the American withdrawal begins. But Americans have reached a consensus -- we should never have invaded and are unwilling to expend more blood and treasure there, especially when the genuine terrorist threat is located, as it was in the first place, in Afpakistan.
Honestly. It's the most stupid comment yet. And something that points to the sheer paranoia people have with Bush.
Newsflash: He's gone and everyone is different and their own person.
Quite true.
As you say, everything is evaluated in light of Mr. Bush--whether it's so very different from him (=good) or too much like him (=bad).
Some posters here are quite obsessed with him. Poor things.
America likes to turn the page on ugly historical events, particularly if our government is on the wrong side of history, but to turn the page on the Iraq war even as it rages on is beyond belief as is the nation's willingness to turn the page on the use of torture linked to a war and a country that was no threat to the US and played no role in the 9/11 attacks.
One big difference would be that Bush/Cheney had no intentions of removing U.S. troops ever.
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That's not true. They thought it would be a cakewalk and we wouldn't need to stay very long. They didn't even have plans in place to maintain law enforcement and social services. They thought that stuff would just sort itself out.
False the written record shows that Cheney wanted to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely.
the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX", must be rolling over in his grave.
Is it any wonder that the interest on the deficit is on either side of one $trillion.?
This becomes end of story for me in terms of casting any doubt on the president (related to Iraq) because what it says is doom was built into the act of invasion...which no matter how the propaganda machine of the future might spin it, preceded the president. He is in charge of cleaning up something that is potentially...forever soiled...a most difficult task. (no matter how we rub and scrub the tub of Iraq, that ghastly stain of invasion, toppling and hanging the president and stacking up hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians along with the thousands of Americans and other “coalition of the willing” forces, topped off with no-bid contracts that funneled money from the America coffers to a group of American and international thieves, that stain will not relent.)
“The word was "failure." The surge, Ricks said, failed. All the big political issues Iraq faced before the surge are still there, he said.”
Yet they tell the lie so well we now have Patraeus day. Yet they tell the lie so well, Surge and success have become interchangable...synonymous.
Obama needs to absorb this from Ricks:
*"The best-case scenario for Iraq is a country that is not particularly democratic, is not ... stable, is not a great respecter of human rights, is almost certainly a closer ally with Iran than it is with Washington. That's the best-case scenario."
The logical nation to suppress al Quaeda in Iraq is Iran. They tried to help us with this after 9/11, and they still dislike the "Caliphate" nonsense Osama touts. They're Persians, after all. Rather than keeping American forces in country, which only exacerbates their activity, we need to turn this role over to Iran's armed forces and retreat to Kurdistan. There, we can defend the Kurds and prevent them provoking an attack from Turkey.
This would be an excellent outcome from our newly minted negotiating policy with iran, and should once and for all squelch insane Israeli ideas about attacking Iran.