"I'm the master of low expectations."  George W. Bush, Aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003

Mr. Bush has once again stepped up to the back of the line on a major issue of American politics.  Realizing that the public discourse over immigration was becoming increasingly intense, and threatening to cause Republicans heartburn in the mid-term elections, Mr. Bush finally joined the parade.    In doing so, he offered largely unimpressive proposals and satisfied no one.....which seems to be par for the course these days when it comes to presidential leadership.

Conservatives and Republican members of the House, predictably, are outraged that he would even hint at a guest worker program or, as they put it, amnesty labeled something else.   But those who oppose any sort of forgiveness and assimilation of illegal immigrants still perceive it as amnesty, and as Mr. Bush himself once noted, politics is all about perception.    In an attempt to pacify (or perhaps divert) the hardliners who want to round up all illegal immigrants and ship them home, he presented the band-aid step of deploying a few thousand National Guard troops along the border.    This after having repeatedly failed to fund or support the previous promises he has made to beef up the border patrol. THe Guard can add border patrol to their list of duties, along with counter-insurgency in Iraq and disaster relief here at home.    Not to worry though, instead of training for counter-insurgency or other military deployments, they will spend their summer training period staring at sagebrush and cacti.    One more burden added to an already over-extended military force.

All of this is simply one more example of the re-active presidency.   Other than the invasion of Iraq, a policy that the White House was clearly pro-actively engaged with from the first days in office, and tax cuts, this administration almost always reacts to events, only taking action or speaking up long after something becomes a problem issue.   The list includes terrorism, disaster relief, immigration, rising gas prices, Medicare, energy dependency, North Korea and Iran, Darfur, global warming, etc., etc.    Mostly, they haven’t reacted unless there is a perceived political danger to themselves, or the problem hits them up the side of the head with a two-by-four.    

In the rare instances where this president has attempted to promote something before it becomes a threat to his poll numbers or a major issue of public attention, the effort has been a failure.    In the aftermath of the 2004 election, Mr. Bush boasted about how he now had political capital and he was going to be spending it.   Out on the road he went, pitching a social security privatization plan that got a less than favorable reception.   And as it became clear that he wasn’t making headway in selling the plan, he simply continued going down the same path, banging his head against the wall.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been impressed by people who continue to bang their heads against the wall long after they know it hurts.    By the time he finally gave up, several months later, his plan (and any hope of real social security reform) was dead as a doornail.    Moreover, he had expended whatever political capital he might once have had.

I suppose it is unremarkable that a man who doesn’t read newspapers and has little or no intellectual curiosity isn’t likely to be someone who will be out in front of issues, leading rather than reacting.    Clearly, this isn’t a person who tries to think through the consequences of policies or actions either, as the on-going debacle in Iraq (which was both predictable and predicted) has demonstrated.    He has surrounded himself with people who will not outshine him, which means a level of mediocrity and lack of imagination that only allows reactive thinking and policy.    

The result of the re-active presidency, however, is a lack of leadership, a lack of imagination in devising intelligent, effective policies, and a tendency to allow bad situation to become even worse before even acknowledging that there is a problem.   This country is going to pay a heavy price for that in the future.

dtf

"The guerrilla wins if he does not lose; the conventional army loses if it does not win." Henry Kissinger (1969)

There’s a lot of attention being paid to the relatively innocuous and irrelevant changes being made in White House personnel lately.   Andy Card resigns and his job is taken over by a former deputy, Josh Bolten; Karl Rove gives up his policy responsibilities.....not a big deal since the administration no longer has any new or credible policy initiatives anyway.....: Scott McClellan leaves as Press Secretary.   But none of these changes suggest a serious shift in emphasis or policy, only an effort to revive the public relations effort to sell the same policies and positions that they’ve been pushing for the past six years.    Sure, they’re likely to push Treasury Secretary Snow out the window.....I mean door....but it seems they’re having some trouble finding a replacement who is willing to just be a better shill for the administration’s fiscal policies.   Not many serious corporate or Wall Street names want the thankless task of trying to justify further tax cuts in the face of massive deficits and a trade imbalance that threatens to undercut the tepid economic success the administration has enjoyed.

But that is simply camouflage and diversion not the real story.    The real story right now is the quiet creation of an Iraq Study Group under the direction of former Secretary of State James Baker, III.   Baker, a close adviser to former Presidents Reagan and Bush senior, has been asked to undertake a thorough review of the administration’s Iraq policies.    Buried in the back pages of the news, and not even mentioned by most media outlets, it amounts to an admission that the Bush project in Iraq is, at best, foundering.     Make no mistake, however, this is on a level with Lyndon Johnson’s appointment of Clark Clifford as SecDef in 1967, and the subsequent involvement of the so-called “Wise Men” of the American foreign policy establishment......which led to Johnson’s rejection of further escalation and commitment in Vietnam as well as his decision not to run for reelection in 1968.

Co-chairing the Iraq Study Group is former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, who was also a co-chair of the well-respected 9/11 Commission.   Other members will be William J. Perry (SecDef under Clinton), former NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani, recently retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Coner, former CIA Director Robert Gates, Washington attorney Vernon Jordan, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, and former Senators Charles Robb and Alan K. Simpson.    

Mr. Baker brings considerable credibility to the task, given his long history of respected service to the nation, and to Mr. Bush’s father and former President Reagan in particular.  Giving him added weight, however, is his position on the Iraq war: while carefully avoiding any public criticism of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, he presciently wrote in his memoirs that he had opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 1991 out of concern that doing so would precipitate sectarian civil war, generate significant international resentment toward the United States, and result in an eventual loss of domestic American support for an ongoing occupation.   He has since told colleagues that he feels vindicated.

Although Condeelza Rice’s spokesperson has said that she welcomes the new initiative, two officials directly involved in setting it up have reported she was in fact opposed, believing the effort was not likely to come up with alternatives to what the administration is already doing.   Creating such a study group in the first place is, of course, a slap at Rice and the  administration’s National Securitypolicy team, an acknowledgment that the current policies in Iraq are not working and the White House team has no good ideas for how to fix it.   Officials involved with the study group have said that the effort involves an admission in the Bush White House that the effort to train an Iraqi Army and police force have fallen short, and the continued lack of an Iraqi government that can win the confidence of Iraq’s various sectarian groups poses a serious threat to any hope of success there.   It is also a sign that the administration has finally understood it needs outside help in weighing its options and trying to generate more public support for its policy in Iraq.    Unfortunately, calling in the adults to try to fix things now may be a matter of too little, too late.

James Baker has only taken the assignment with the understanding that it be a truly bipartisan effort, and that the effort not simply be window-dressing or a rubber-stamp of the administration’s policies.   Given the membership of the group, that last is hardly likely.  The point, Mr. Baker has said, is not to engage in “hand wringing about the past” but to “come up with some advice and insights that might be useful to the policy makers in Washington.”    If he follows through on that, the administration may find it doesn’t like what it hears from the Iraq Study Group.

dtf

“To confuse tactical competency with strategic adequacy has been the folly of recent years.”   Tom Donnelly, editor, Armed Forces Journal International   

     While the White House and Mr. Rumsfeld’s supporters try to shrug off recent criticism by a number of retired senior officers, the reality is that such highly public and vocal criticism of an administration by the military is relatively unprecedented.  Not even at the height of the Vietnam War, or during the administration of Bill Clinton when relations between the administration and the Pentagon were often less than friendly, did this kind of public airing take place to the degree we are seeing right now.    It is indicative of an unusually high degree of discord and frustration among elements of the officer corps of a kind not seen perhaps since the Civil War when McClellan challenged President Abraham Lincoln for the White House.    Although Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is the apparent target of the criticism, the underlying challenge is directed more generally at an administration that took the military into a war with “a casualness and swagger” that many professional soldiers found disconcerting.   

    The Secretary of Defense has responded with a numbers game, pointing out that only a handful out of thousands of active duty and retired officers have been critical, and talking about the hundreds of meetings he has held with military leaders.    But the number of meetings held is irrelevant, it is what takes place in those meetings that matters, and as the recently published study of the Iraq war Cobra II clearly demonstrates, the military war planners were under constant pressure from Mr. Rumsfeld to deliver a set of war plans consistent with his desire for a small, quick invasion force.   Moreover, the administration’s disdain for “nation building” and inattention to the possible post-invasion circumstances is clear from descriptions of those meetings.    The civilian leadership was interested in taking down Saddam Hussein, doing it quickly, and accomplishing it with a minimal amount of force.  They were not worrying about what would follow the “shock and awe” phase of marching into Baghdad, believing that once Saddam was gone, the Iraqis would quickly take over running the country without difficulty.   That the administration was already committed to war with Iraq by the summer of 2002 is not in doubt, and that they entered that conflict relying entirely on “best case” scenarios for the outcome seems increasingly beyond question as well.    It was not only Secretary Rumsfeld who promoted those overly optimistic projections, and responsibility for subsequent failures does not rest on his shoulders alone.

    As for Mr. Rumsfeld’s “body count” of the total number of officers compared to the handful who have expressed their concerns, it simply evades the fact that for even a small number of senior officers to speak out this way is quite unprecedented.   And we aren’t talking about a bunch of desk jockeys or officers who were never involved with the war in Iraq, we’re talking about some of the most competent combat commanders there are, as well as officers who were closely and deeply engaged in the planning of the Iraqi war.

    There are broader aspects to this “revolt” of the generals.   It is a way for the army in particular to strike back at a civilian leadership that, in the view of many officers, has severely weakened the military by refusing to expand the force while engaged in a high-intensity deployment schedule in Iraq.   The very fact that a number of high profile officers would speak out like this indicates a serious lack of confidence in the current civilian leadership, and a concern that existing policy is eroding the army’s long-term capability and competence.

    This outspokenness also represents the opening shots in the “who lost Iraq” debate that is certain to follow in the not to distant future.    Right now it is unclear how things will turn out in Iraq, but no objective observer is going to bet that the outcome will be all that good.   The possibility of sectarian civil war looms over the horizon, and the continued inability of the Iraqi political leadership to form a viable government nearly five months after elections is not encouraging.   The administration has already begun to lay the groundwork for a campaign that would blame the media for any failure in Iraq, but the military, and the army in particular, also fear they will be saddled with some of the blame.   The book Cobra II indicates that very early on in the planning stages the military planners were told it would be the responsibility of the State Department to handle the post-invasion occupation.   This has also been corroborated by officers involved in the war planning, as well as army historians whose task it was to document the process.

    Last, but not least, the public outspokenness of the retired generals is a “pre-emptive” strike related to the administration planning for military action against Iran.   Despite the denials of the White House (all too similar to the denials issued during the summer and fall of 2002, as Iraq war planning was already well underway), it is clear that the White House is exploring military options and devising plans for some sort of military action against the regime in Teheran.    Never enthusiastic about diplomacy, the Bush White House exhibits a worrisome preoccupation with regime change in Teheran, and views the current impasse over Iran’s nuclear programs as an opportunity to pursue that objective.     Yet there is deep concern within the military that any action against Iran will not merely fail to accomplish the optimistic outcomes the civilian leadership expects (much as the invasion of Iraq failed to produce the optimistic results envisioned by administration members prior to March 2003, but will also backfire in significant and dangerous ways against us....with U.S. forces in Iraq being the most obvious target of expected blowback.

    By speaking out now, raising questions and doubts about the planning process for Iraq, pointing out the lack of interest and attention to the “what happens after we attack,” and by drawing attention to the overly optimistic assumptions of civilian policymakers in the run-up to that war, the military leadership is implicitly raising the barrier for a new adventure in Iran.    If nothing else, they hope their very public commentary will raise doubts and far wider debate about a possible war with Iran than took place in the run up to Iraq.

 dtf