Thomas P.M. Barnett

BOOK REVIEW: "Mistakes Were Made" (Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran), by Moises Naim, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 2-8 October 2006, p. 32.
BOOK EXERPT: "Ties Trump Experience: GOP connections counted in who got sent to rebuild Iraq," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 2-8 October 2006, p. 6.

Part of the great advantage of being a WAPO writer: you pen a book and you're guaranteed (let's be honest) a nice review and exerpts. Chandrasekaran is very good, but let's just indulge in some professional jealously for a moment...

(sigh!)

It is a damning book that says all the macro signals we sent to fellow Core states about the postwar being America's party and America's alone were true--but even worse. It was a Bush-GOP "friends and family" sort of party that doled out contracts and top appointments with almost no reference to talent or experience.

The killer line called out in the text: "Six of the 'ten young gofers' that the CPA had requested from the Pentagon to handle minor tasks found themselves managing Iraq's $13-billion budget."

Paul Bremer's brain trust, as identified in the book, were all Bush-Cheney cronies, so, for example, Williamson Evers becomes the senior advisor on education. His credentials? He advised Bush on educational policy in his two elections. His experience in dealing with education in the Middle East or developing countries in general? Not identified here, but one imagines it is scant-to-zero.

Again, a killer string of paras that open the exerpt:

Affter the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 12003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans--restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Bierne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Bierne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed more important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Bierne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

Many of those chosen by O'Bierne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance--but had applied for a White House job--was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. A recent graduate of an evangelical university for home-schooled children was tapped to help manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though he had no background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2-year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one fo the Bush administration's gravest errors...

And for this Bremer gets a medal?

To me, this is go-to-jail sort of cronyism. Why? Let me give you just over two-thousand reasons.

The Bush administration's ideological blinders are directly (but not totally) responsible for 2100-plus combat deaths since "mission accomplished." But unlike the military's blunders, which can be explained by the Vietnam Syndrome's long shadow, or the State Department's failing to enlist allies, which the White House openly torpedoed, the Bush people involved in setting up the CPA have no good excuse other than extreme stupidity.

Cleary, this administration wanted to succeed, but then chose this route of cronyism as their perceived best bet for ensuring it, and to me, that's just indefensibly dumb. No wonder everyone sees conspiracies. The truth is just too hard to swallow.

I keep asking myself: If I'm Wolfowitz or Feith or Bremer and I'm heading into this thing, do I just keep crossing my fingers or do I succumb, for self-preservation reasons, to all these good arguments that say, "history tells us this and past operations tell us that"? I mean, the ass-covering choice on this is just too obvious for words: you do the usual American thing and throw all the best brains and resources you can at the problem. But these guys did the opposite: they went cheap and stupid on the peace, thus invalidating a spectacularly planned and executed war. I just don't know how you do that to your own military, the guys you live and work with every day. I just don't have anywhere the balls to glide through all those self-doubts--day after day. I would have done a much better job simply by giving into my fears and self-doubts. Anybody would have.

But these guys didn't. Somehow they just knew so much better. They mistook their vision skills for execution skills. They told the military--as I described in BFA--how to suck eggs, despite all evidence to the contrary that they outranked the military on this one. My God, Shinseki and a lot of these guys cut their teeth in the Balkans. How do you just blow that off?

Hubris isn't the word for that. I'm not sure there is one.

And yet, books like this encourage me greatly. I've interacted with so many military who were there for that missing year, and it's clear we have the brain power for the task within the force. They were just cursed this time around by a Republican leadership which had none.

But admitting that does get me a bit depressed. The Republicans are the types to have the balls to pull off an Iraq war, but the Dems are the types to have the brains to pull off an Iraq postwar. Go with the GOP and you end up with Iraq today. Go with the Dems and you have a much harder time getting the go-ahead in the first place for the war.

I know, I know. It's the usual duality of our political system.

That just says we need centrists with great talent at working across the aisle. That's why I'm pulling for Clinton and McCain to emerge in '08. I do want leaders burning so bad with ambition that they'll routinely enrage the extreme wings of their parties.