"State of Denial," page 254.
It was all Bremer's fault.
No, seriously. That's the claim that the people Woodward interviews are making. A remarkably large number of people are going on record (again, both directly and indirectly) as saying that Bremer was a control freak, lacked management skills, failed to tell Washington DC what he was doing, and made up his own policies (didn't take direction from DC). People running with this line: Gingrich, Rice, Wolfowitz (not so clearly), and a few important-but-unknown people in Republican foreign policy circles.
Woodward reports that everyone in Washington saw two potential plans for how to run Iraq: a MacArthur-In-Japan model where Bremer was basically a dictator, and a Karzai-in-Afghanistan model where as quickly as is humanly possible local officials are given power and authority. According to Woodward, everyone in Washington agreed that the Karzai model was the right one to follow (including Bremer in his pre-going-to-Iraq discussions), but that Bremer unilaterally choose the MacArthur model (without consulting or even informing anyone in DC). Bremer didn't participate in Woodward's book, so all Woodward can do to defend Bremer is quote from Bremer's book. This is insufficient as a defense, since people are making specific allegations to Woodward about Bremer, and Bremer's book isn't a defense against those allegations. Bremer comes off looking like an idiot, and primarily at fault for the whole mess.
Be interesting to know if any of this was actually true, wouldn't it.
Oh, Rumsfeld remains a complete idiot. By September of 2003 he has completely washed his hands of any active involvement in Iraq, even though Bremer's chain of command goes directly to him.
Almost half way through!
Posted by baltar at October 6, 2006 09:17 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Books | International Affairs | Iraq | PoliticsRumsfeld's complete indifference to Iraq is very well established. Read any of the military blogs, or, say, Packer's book, and it's clear he couldn't care less about the place.
As to the "Blame Bremer" movement, isn't there a slight problem with that? Last time I checked his title wasn't Padishah Emperor. I was under the impression that someone in DC was in charge of overseeing his activities (and presumably stepping in and fixing mistakes or letting the guy go if he engaged in systematic incompetence, as this meme suggests he did). I'm not saying Bremer didn't make disasterous decisions - but didn't Bremer have a boss?
Posted by: Armand at October 6, 2006 11:43 AM | PERMALINKI'm not arguing that Rumsfeld's indifference isn't new news, just pointing out Woodward's coverage of it. Maybe I didn't explain it well: the book makes clear that Rumsfeld doesn't care, but that he bureaucratically won't give an inch to anyone else. At one point, Bremer speaks directly to Bush, and Rumsfeld goes nuts because Bremer just stepped out of the "chain of command" (which legally does go from Bremer to Rumsfeld to Bush). So it's not just the indifference, it's the indifference plus the unwillingness to let anyone else take away any of his authority.
And the point about Bremer is that, yes, he has a boss in DC, but according to Woodward (quoting a bunch of DC people) Bremer just does what he wants no matter what the DC people say. And for political reasons (in late 2003 it becomes apparent, in Woodward's timeline, that Bremer is off on his own, and can't be reigned in; thus this is happening a year before the 2004 Presidential elections), they can't get rid of Bremer: they've just kicked Garner out, so getting rid of two reconstruction heads within six months would clearly show political weakness, according to their political calculations. Thus, they put up with Bremer even though he does what he wants.
All of this is according to Woodward.
Posted by: baltar at October 6, 2006 11:53 AM | PERMALINKCan't get rid of a dangerous failure for political reasons ... you know, you'd think that him making the place a costly disaster would be a political net loss, and that they'd want to end. But I guess they preferred fostering an image of confidence in their own work, rather than fixing the failures they saw and presumably knew would haunt them later.
It's sort of as if the captain of the Titanic had ordered the ship to proceed at full speed toward the iceberg - because, well you wouldn't want to appear weak or indecisive in terms of how you were going to deal with the iceberg.
That's precisely the analogy: it didn't matter that Bremer (again, according to Woodward's sources) was failing, it mattered that firing him would look like they were failing, so they couldn't fire Bremer (only try to work around and limit him in order to work for success).
As I noted, it's an interesting book. I'll be curious to see what the historical take on Woodward's accuracy is in twenty years.
Posted by: baltar at October 6, 2006 01:20 PM | PERMALINK