What Went Wrong in Iraq

According to the Asia Times, the reason Iraq became a clusterfuck was because the Iraqi people have been opposed all along to our being there.

Gee, who could have foreseen that the people of a nation might object to being invaded and conquered. The morons in the Bush Administration, who apparently thought that they could waltz in like West Germany, forgot that the Allied air forces had smashed most everything of value in Germany and then much of the country was taken by hard fighting. As for Japan, every city of any significant size, other than Kyoto, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, had been burned to the ground by the B-29s of the 20th Air Force while the submarines and air-dropped mines of the Navy had cut off food shipments from the Chinese mainland. The Army planned for the occupation of both nations and the size of the occupying forces was in the hundreds of thousands. The German Army was either slaughtered or were in POW camps. Much of the Japanese Army had been stranded in China.

None of that was true in Iraq. One of the tenets of military planning is that "you hope for the best and plan for the worst." Rumsfeld's Defense Department only planned for the best. There was no planning for the occupation, indeed, Rumsfeld tried to say the insurgency was over by declaring it over by fiat.

All this was overseen by the most incompetent and incurious president since Franklin Pierce. General Sanchez has published his memoir on the Iraq War, which has been largely ignored due to the flap over McClellan's book. Sanchez has quoted Bush as ranting thusly about Fallujah:

"Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can't send that message. It's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal. There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"

(Jawohl, mein Fuhrer Yes, Mr. President)

General Sanchez also stated what is obvious to everyone outside of the Administration: Torture indeed was going on.

Thanks to Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq and to his wholesale abandonment of the principles of human rights and civilized decency, we have lost the high ground from which to lead the world. In a manner that is eerily similar the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the only reason people listen to this president anymore is because of the ability to project power by force of arms. Thanks to Iraq, we went from a nation which had the sympathy and support of the world after the 9/11 attack to nation that, should we be hit again in the near term, the prevailing view of the world will be: "That's a pity, but they had it coming."

More than anything else, we as Americans need to send a message to the world that we are going to reclaim the rule of law and that we are going to resume behaving as a civilized nation. We will not get there by electing John McCain, the man who has declared that he will follow the policies of George Bush.

We will only get there if the next president is Barack Obama.