Punditry and memory often don't mix. Consider Max Boot's Thursday column in the Wall Street Journal on "How To Win in Afghanistan." According to Mr. Boot, "If we don't make a substantial commitment--one that will require raising our troop strength beyond the 68,000 to which the administration is already committed--we are likely to lose."
For the record, I agree with him. But six years ago, he had a slightly different strategy for Afghanistan: In March 2003, he argued that the manhunt for Al Qaeda there "is a job for the U.S. intelligence community, the FBI and a small number of Special Operations troops," and that our Afghan involvement shouldn't stop us from invading Iraq. And the disastrously flawed thinking behind that recommendation largely explains how we got to the Afghan war's current sorry state.
While I'm at it, I can't resist quoting this other howler from Boot's March 2003 piece: "Will invading Iraq lead to long lines at al-Qaeda recruiting offices? Possible, but not probable. The sort of people who are willing to become 'martyrs' for the cause are pretty far gone already. An invasion might push a few over the edge, but it might also give others second thoughts." The wonder is that Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is still taken seriously.
Same for former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, whose Washington rehabilitation advances in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy with his attack on the foreign policy doctrine of "realism." I'm not necessarily disagreeing with Wolfowitz's call for a definition of national interests that recognizes the need to promote democratic reform. Plus "democratic realism" just sounds catchy and hard to argue with. But let's rewind the tape. Wouldn't the doctrine of "surrealism" best describe Wolfowitz's assessments in the run-up to and early days of the Iraq War? A recap:
On how many troops will be needed to stabilize Iraq: "There's been a good deal of comment, some of it quite outlandish, about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq....[T]he notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq [is] wildly off the mark."
On the prospects for civil strife: "There's been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia, along with a continuing requirement for large peacekeeping forces to separate those militias."
On the reception of Americans: "I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep [troop] requirements down."
On Iraq reconstruction: "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon." (Wolfowitz told Congress that Iraq would earn between $50 and $100 billion from oil exports over the next three years; it earned about $23 billion.)
Forgive me for belaboring old news. But some statements are worth remembering even if their authors might like you to forget them.
Were there any accountability among the Villagers, these blood-thirsty idiots would have been shunned from polite society and run out of town. Instead of, say, put in charge of the World Bank.
How about Harry Reid: "The war in Iraq is lost" - 2006.
Seriously, I am sure you can find this kind of thing in Krugman, Kristoff and the other NY Times libs just as easily. Although the Wolfowitz predictions especially are embarrasing in retrospect.
Reid said he told President Bush on Wednesday he thought the war could not be won through military force, although he said the U.S. could still pursue political, economic and diplomatic means to bring peace to Iraq.
You took the quote out of context, what he meant was military might would not win the war in Iraq. As the recent pull-outs have shown, it seems like unless we want to play policeman there forever our military can't do much to make Iraq a peaceful state.
"Seriously, I am sure you can find this kind of thing in Krugman, Kristoff and the other NY Times libs just as easily."
If it's so easy to do, please do it.
Paul Krugman in particular has been doing a remarkable job of consistently calling things right when the "mainstream" media has remained far off the mark.
I'm not sure how Reid was wrong. Iraq remains a mess, and is likely to remain blood covered and hugely unstable for years, maybe decades to come. It's democratic process, whilst a huge improvement on the Saddam years is barely functioning and intolerant of many minorities or minority opinions. Women's rights have been set back a couple of generations, and it's increasingly under the sway of Iran.
I guess victory depends on how you define it. Bringing the troops home is not one of the standard defining parameters.
The war in Afghanistan is much more then a "manhunt for Al Qaeda." Boot was pretty much right about the forces required for that limited mission.
You can't seriously be claiming that the situation in Afghanistan is the same as six years ago!
"You claim it's bright and sunny, but 36 hours ago you said it was dark! You flip-flopper!"
He didn't claim that at all, so you can rest at ease. He claimed that specific people sounding off on how to do things in Afghanistan and Iraq were boldly, dramatically, over-the-top wrong 6 years ago, and thus their present ideas about what we should "obviously" do there, or how simple those actions would be, should not be unquestioningly accepted.
Firstly, in Mr. Fallows introduction to this article he states,
What most people would not realize is how particularly trenchant a judgment this is, coming from him. As a one-time Foreign Service officer (and former executive editor of Foreign Policy magazine), James Gibney is no one's idea of a hothead. He is more gentlemanly than most people who express views on this site (not to mention on the whole untrammeled web), and less known for harsh opinions.
Of some relevance are Mr. Gibney's previous occupations as well as his infrequent use of "harsh opinions." That's fine and good. However, the fact that Mr. Gibney may indeed be a gentleman, while no doubt pleasing to those with whom he interacts, unfortunately bears little if any relevance to the veracity of his opinions. I won't go further and besmirch Mr. Gibney by citing any number of gentlemen, past and present, whose opinions either left much to be desired, or at worst were misguided, short-sighted, or outright wrong.
Secondly, if Mr. Gibney desires to cherry-pick statements by Wolowitz from before the war began and by Boot from a single article in the very early stages of Afghanistan, that's his prerogative. Additionally let's put aside the fact that opinions about the 'upcoming' Iraqi war diverged wildly by all who proffered them (wars and their aftermath are notoriously difficult to predict). Finally let's ignore Mr. Gibney's decidedly ungentlemanly swipe at Boot, that it's a "wonder" Boot "is still taken seriously at the Council on Foreign Relations."
The problem is that after one excuses all these items, the article hardly lives up to the grand introduction by Mr. Fallows. What's more, Mr. Gibney points out his agreements with both Boot and Wolfowitz on some of their more recent and weighty judgments. One is thus left to wonder why this article, otherwise strewn with mostly petty "gotchas" was ever produced by Mr. Gibney, the gentleman.
Predicting the future of war and politics is not at all reliable.
We have no reason to suspect that the current crop of analysts is any better than Boot or Wolfowitz. They just haven't been as publicly wrong. Yet.
And were the Democrats wrong when they supported the war powers act for Iraq or when they (including Obama) called for quitting and letting al-Queda and the Baath party take over? Or were they wrong both times?
And if our best policy analysts are so fallible, how do we deal with the Iran nuclear situation? We should err on the side of caution. But which side is more cautious?
Should the holocaust-denying government of Iran that rapes its own citizens and constantly screams "Death to America" be allowed to have nuclear weapons and guided missiles? Is that cautious?