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

Thus Speaks. . . uh. . .General Petraeus?

Over and over again, the Bush administration has told us to be patient with the "surge" in Iraq until General Petraeus gives his report in September. This week on The Daily Show William Kristol repeated that advice. General Petraeus, Kristol told Jon Stewart, would give his report on how the surge has made Iraq a better place to be. "Don't trust me. Don't trust the president," Kristol said. "But trust Petraeus."

But who is writing the report that General Petraeus will give those of us waiting for his wise analysis? The Bush administration, reports the LA Times

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

So General Petraeus will say what the administration wants him to say. Now, watch the sock puppet .

With a Friend Like This. . . .

Matthew Lee, Associated Press Writer, published a short piece yesterday about how few Iraqi refugees the United States has taken in. According to Lee (and other sources I've read), approximately 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing their country every month, yet the United States has "only taken in 190 refugees since last year." Because we started this war, we owe something to the Iraqi people, especially to those who helped us and continue to help us there. This news report reminded me of an in-depth article I read some months ago, written by George Packer and published in The New Yorker. The title of the article is "Betrayed", and in the article, Packer describes in horrifying detail the ways in which the United States failed--and continues to fail--the Iraqis who serve as interpreters and staff and thus risk their lives and the lives of their friends and relatives.

Another writer has written more recently of an Iraqi friend who served as an interpreter for four years for the U. S. Army. The interpreter's house was bombed, his wife and young children threatened, and relatives (his father and brother) kidnapped and murdered. The American officers and soldiers who have worked with this Iraqi have written letters attesting to the young man's faithfulness and trustworthiness and of the need to get him out of Iraq before his family is murdered in retaliation for that very friendliness to Americans. But "Andy" has not been successful in acquiring immigration status. Read and weep over Maura Stephens' description of American bureaucratic incompetency and her follow-up to Andy's story.

George Packer describes how this failure to help our friends foreshadows our defeat: "America’s failure to understand, trust, and protect its closest friends in Iraq is a small drama that contains the larger history of defeat."