Some of the loudest cheer leaders for the Iraqi invasion have turned their backs on Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld. These despicaple opportunists do not regret that they aided and abetted a criminal enterprise – just that the glorious neo-con dream of world domination has been crushed due to the "incompetence" of their former hero George Bush and his administration.
For example, Ken Adelman the superhawk who sat on Bush’s secretive Defence Policy Board, lamented,"the idea of using our power for moral good in the world," has lost its credibility with the public and after Iraq, "it’s not going to sell." Adelman was also the confident braggart who had predicted that liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Several other warmongers have deserted Bush’s leaky warship and are busy rehabilitating their own reputations.(After Iraq, will that sell?) Here is what some other neo-cons who had lionized Bush and were instrumental in destroying Iraq and causing world wide turmoil, are saying:
Richard Perle: "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn’t get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly," Mr Perle told Vanity Fair, according to early excerpts of the article. "At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible."
Asked if he would still have pushed for war knowing what he knows now, Mr Perle, a leading hawk in the Reagan administration, said: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, ‘Should we go into Iraq?’, I think now I probably would have said, ‘No, let’s consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists’."
Kenneth Adelman: "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent," Mr Adelman said.
"They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."
He too takes back his public urging for military action, in light of the administration’s performance. "I guess that’s what I would have said: that Bush’s arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked ‘can’t do’. And that’s very different from ‘let’s go’."
Mr Adelman, a senior Reagan adviser at cold war summits with Mikhail Gorbachev, expressed particular disappointment in Mr Rumsfeld, who he described as a particular friend. "I’m crushed by his performance," he said. "Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don’t know. He certainly fooled me."
Michael Rubin: Michael Rubin who worked on the staff of the Pentagon’s office of special plans and the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad, accused Mr Bush of betraying Iraqi reformers.
The president’s actions, Mr Rubin said, had been "not much different from what his father did on February 15 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up and then had second thoughts and didn’t do anything once they did".
David Frum: Mr Frum, who as a White House speechwriter helped coin the phrase "axis of evil" in 2002, said failure in Iraq might be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them". The blame, Mr Frum said, lies with "failure at the centre", beginning with the president.
How is it that some of us non-experts along with the Dixie Chicks, knew from the very start that invading Iraq was an immoral and disastrous undertaking? We were vilified as cowards and traitors by the likes of those who are now backtracking to save their own hide. And Bush? He continues to act the brave warrior with his empty bravado and delusional claims of a "complete victory" in Iraq for the benefit of his own bruised ego and the right wing voting bloc. Asked about the article in Vanity Fair on Bush’s turncoat friends, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, "We appreciate the Monday-morning quarterbacking, but the president has a plan to succeed in Iraq and we are going forward with it."
How can he not? The two biggest rats are still on board.
(cartoon by Steve Bell of Guardian Unlimited: click to enlarge)
Accidental Blogger 
8 responses to “Rats On A Sinking Ship”
There is another interpretation Ruchira, one that suggests that support for the Republican position was not quite as monolithic as it is made out to be. From this perspective, people are not so much deserting the ship as “peeling off” when they see that their own private agendas are not being met.
Example: Both Rubin & Frum could be expressing disappointment about the lack of partisan support to the Shias in Iraq. Why would this matter to Rubin/ Frum? In one word – Israel. Supporting the shias in iraq will almost certainly create a powerful shia presence stretching from iran-iraq-lebanon, presenting a threatening counterweight to the ovewhelming sunni influence in that region. With the power of the Hezbollah, it is not inconceivable that they could come to power in Lebanon with help of two Shia states.
The more Shia-Sunnis fight each, guess who benefits?
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Ruchira,
“Rats leaving the ship” was exactly the simile that occurred to me when I heard about Perle’s remarks on the news this morning.
Let us hope 2006 will mark the end of the Repub/neo-con alternate reality for decades to come!
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Sanjay:
It just happens that the Vanity Fair article features some of the neo-cons who are Jewish and also extremely pro-Israel. (I believe that Joe Lieberman belongs in this same group) Had there been so much naked allegiance shown by other American citizens for the defence concerns of another nation (other than Israel), questions about dual loyalty would have been flying left and right. Being termed anti-Semitic for any criticism of Israeli policies makes many people nervous. BTW, there is wide spread support of Israeli policies among Indian Americans and Indians because of a common hatred and fear of Arabs / Muslims. Partisan self interest (enemy of my enemy… etc.) makes strange and new bed fellows.
I don’t know what exactly these people had in mind for Israel’s security. Neither Shias nor Sunnis are particularly kindly disposed towards Israel. In fact Israel may be one area in which these two feuding factions agree with each other. Most likely, what they had in mind was establishing a puppet regime in Iraq with someone like Ahmed Chalabi at the helm. He would have been on the payroll of the US and therefore also subservient to Israel. But that didn’t happen, did it? Spreading democracy is a “messy” thing as Rumsfeld reminded us. We now have an Iraqi government whose members are looking out for their own sectarian advantage and none of them is particularly eager to look out for Israel’s economic or defence interests.
But Israel is not the only issue. After all, not all neo-cons are Jewish although many are and even the non-Jewish ones support Israel. What about Christopher Hitchens? He used to be on the left and critical of Israeli policies. He too now is jumping on Bush after acting as one of the most ruthless supporters of the invasion . As does the idiot Andrew Sullivan. Hitchens and Sullivan are both British born pundits who displayed a vicious post colonial mentality of teaching a non-white nation a punishing lesson. Chalabi, the Iraqi neo-con has not been heard from since his own chances of replacing Saddam have vaporized, at least for now.
In any case, we can blame the pro-Israel lobby for helping draw America into an unnecessary and immoral war. But it is not their fault in the final analysis. The responsibility lies squarely with Bush and Cheney. What was their agenda? The benefit to Israel was only a side effect of their central plan, I believe. We know that for Cheney it was one of purely cold hearted greed – to line the pockets of Halliburton and ease the path of US oil companies. Both Cheney & Rumsfeld wanted to make amends for Nixon’s failed war in Vietnam and prove that they are superior warriors. The most puzzling question is what was Bush’s motivation? His must be the most pathetic, childish, personal and vindictive one – like besting his own father and bringing on the Armageddon!
PIAW: Rats they all are – just as vicious and opportunistic.
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Ruchira,
I agree with you about the neo-cons and money but not sure it is enough for war. There has to be an ideological component and the only thing that the neo-cons feel passionately about is the free market (aka democracy, in neo-con eyes). Conversely, the one thing a neo-con would perhaps hate intensely is anything that disrupts or threatens the market (aka democracy). And, what could be more stark than an attack on the mecca of free market?
The neo-con position on outsourcing (pro, cheap labour,), illegal immigration (pro, cheap labour) etc indicates how strongly they are driven by market considerations, not bothered either by losing american jobs or political support from anti-immigrant types.
Over 2.5 billion people in India, China, Russia etc feel that they are benefiting from and being uplifted by globalisation, the key driver of which is the free market. They will have a very low tolerance for anything that disrupts the market. Strong notional support for the neo-con pro-market position.
Ergo, staying the course in Iraq now makes neo-con sense. Iraq is the one place where the only extremist threats with global reach – sunni, shia – & with the proven ability to disrupt the market can be pitted against each other. As long as it can be contained within Iraq, of course. If Iraq could be democratized in the process, all the better.
Your reading of cheney as an opportunist, bush with a an “alexander” complex, the israeli lobby etc may well be correct. However, I see these as various private agendas coming together to build critical mass, not the fundamental driver.
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Ruchira,
Btw, on that Chalabi issue, recall that it was the americans that hauled him on the carpet recently about all those shia death squads in the police and army. So, chalabi is not getting a free hand in iraq because of the americans. Of course, “getting the iraqis to defend themselves, so we don’t have to” has been the neo-con strategy for a while now. What is really playing out on the ground is that the Shias have slowly gained control of the army, police and government & it is the americans that have trained them!
So much so that a confident Chalabi is on record recently saying that he wants the americans out – now that the iraqi police and army are all stacked in his favour. He said, somewhat ominously, that he can bring “peace and stability” in Iraq if the americans would only leave.! Throw in the iranian nuclear issue and it doesn’t take a supercomputer to model up game theory scenarios that includes a shia bomb to go with the sunni version in pakistan. The spectre of the former is the driver of the Iran policy.
The neo-cons got into Iraq but it is all americans that are well and truly stuck, regardless of who is in Congress.
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Sanjay:
Perhaps you already know how I might feel about going to war to defend the free market, especially under false pretense. And isn’t the idea of waging a brutal war to save the so called “free” market preposterously oxymoronic? Like killing to save or raping to preserve honor?
I agree that several evil confluences came together under one roof to make this immoral war possible – free oil flow, Israel, colonial hubris, an opportunity to give out no bid contracts to their cronies by the champions of the free market etc.
I also agree that the war criminals got us into Iraq but we are now all in it. I don’t see what peaceful solution the Dems can come up with. Probably not much. In any case, a large number of them, like Tony Blair, are themselves guilty in aiding and abetting this criminal misadventure.
I have an idea. But it will never be implemented because no one wants to rock the boat of domestic politics. Saddam Hussain has just been sentenced to death for war crimes against Iraqi citizens. It is now a well established fact that Bush – Cheney’s DNA fingerprints are all over Iraq implicating them in the deaths of far more Iraqis and more than 3000 members of the US armed forces. Can we try them at home? Perhaps not in the criminal court, but in the US House and Senate? By impeaching them for war crimes and lies? If the rest of world sees that we are honest as a country in accepting our culpability in Iraq, they will come forward in helping to bring about an acceptable diplomatic solution. Given Bush’s unpopularity among our allies, no help will be forthcoming as long as he is in power.
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Ruchira,
I suppose your “good vs evil” model is a valid frame of reference and i’m curious where the millions of jubilant shias fit into it? US-Britain “realpolitik” propped up a minority sunni govt in Iraq for 50 yrs, the last instance of this largesse being when Bush Sr left Saddam untouched. Where does this fit into your model? when Bush Jr says he is bringing democracy to Iraq i.e. enabling the majority to finally rule their own country, how do you make it fit on the “evil”side?
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Because it was none of our business, just as it was not the business of the British after WWI. The Europeans (especially the Brits) have been carving up the non-European world – the middle east, India / Pakistan and putting in power puppet regimes for what they see as their advantage in the post colonial world. Now the US, which was staunchly anti-colonialist to begin with, has joined the same game.
I want it to stop. Whatever harm has already been done – in Iraq, in Palestine / Israel, India -Pakistan, no more interference is necessary. Let locals work it out. Any mediation by outside powers, when necessary, ought to be of the diplomatic kind, not a military one. There are ethnic grievances in many places. The Gypsies in eastern Europe, Kurds in Turkey, Arabs in Israel, non-Muslims in the Muslim world, Indians in Malaysia, Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia, Burmese in Myanmar, Hindus in Sri Lanka, Shi’as in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon –and some would say, Muslims in India. Which one of these should we redress militarily?
The rare cases where I can see the justification of military intervention is widespread genocide or blatant attack on our own soil. That is why I thought the invasion of Afghanistan (it should have been accompanied by extreme pressure on Pakistan) to root out the Taliban and Al Qaida, was justified. But Bush-Cheney’s hearts were not in that. They wanted to go after Iraq for its oil wells and to settle a personal score with Saddam. India’s role in liberating Bangladesh (although India probably regrets it now) in 1971 was similarly justified.
I cannot see ANY reason to have invaded Iraq – none at all. For all its faults, Iraq was stable and relatively secular when we invaded. If the Shi’as need redress of their situation, it should have happened locally with the help of regional powers. We had no business going in there and break up another country which had done nothing to us. And Darfur was (and still is) raging and we have turned a blind eye. In any case, the argument here is not one of tit for tat or of historical precedence. A new wrong doesn’t set an old one right. We have made a huge mistake in Iraq, not just politically but morally.
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