Looking Backward, Looking Forward

Update below

Yes, it's New Year's Eve, and I'm online. We've turned our house over to a handful of teenagers this evening for their New Year's Eve Party, while we're quietly enjoying glasses of wine, online reading, and a little novel reading (such as, American Gods, by Neil Gaiman) in our study. So while taking a break from the novel reading and straightening up a bit after the teenagers, who have gone to a nearby park for some nighttime frisbee and football-throwing, I came across a very interesting note on TPM Muckraker.

When I began this blog, I had just moved four states east and had read already a couple of books on the war in Iraq. From my reading, I was dismayed to learn of the inept handling of the war in Iraq and especially of the reconstruction efforts afterward, and I posted on that subject: here, here, here, and here, among others. Many well-known and well-respected journalists and other writers have recorded how ideologues rather than Middle-Eastern experts were chosen to lead the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Whether they could speak the language or knew anything about the culture counted for a lot less than whether or not they had voted for George Bush or were against abortion.

So it's worth reading Zachary Roth's post on TPM, "Top Pentagon Official: Obama Team Still the 'Opposition'", posted this evening. The top Pentagon official referred to in the post is Jim O'Beirne, the special assistant to the secretary of defense for White House liaisons. As Roth reminds us,

O'Beirne led the disastrous process in which key posts in the Coalition Provisional Authority were given to Heritage Foundation research assistants who knew nothing about Iraq but were loyal to the GOP.

Ideological to the very end, O'Beirne praises the ninety Bush-appointees in the DOD that Obama has dismissed to replace with the new administration's appointments, telling them that they can be proud that their ideological purity is what made them open to dismissal. (Hmmmm.....where would that put Defense Secretary Robert Gates?) That is faint praise, indeed, coming from a man who led that disastrous vetting and recruitment of hopeful applicants to the Coalition Provisional Authority.

So here at the end of the year, it is definitely instructive to hear this voice from the past still trumpeting a failed policy. (For a review of that policy, see this article that Roth links to at The Washington Post: "Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq: Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone," Rajiv Chandrasekaran, September 17, 2006.)

One of the very hopeful signs of the incoming administration is that Obama is choosing professionals for posts in government, people with areas of expertise assigned to appropriate posts, rather than making choices based on the purity of one's ideology. It remains to be seen how successful our new president will be, but here at the end of the old year, I feel a breath of fresh air, and I don't think it's just coming from the windows we opened to remove the smoke from a badly started fire in the fireplace.

Update: Other Comments on this topic

Steve Benen comments on Jim O'Beirne's letter to the dismissed Pentagon staff in this post dated January 2, 2009: "O'Beirne Still Causing Trouble at the Pentagon", Political Animal blog at The Washington Monthly