Fareed Zakaria is a well respected Newsweek writer. Here he writes a good article pointing out the biggest flaw in Washington is a refusal for nuance. He argues going to Iraq was the right thing, but that the post war operations was botched, primarily for not taking a business approach to it.

 

Aug. 23 issue - John Kerry isn't being entirely honest about his views on Iraq. But neither is President George W. Bush. "Knowing what we know now," Bush asked, "would [Kerry] have supported going into Iraq?" The real answer is, of course, "no." But that's just as true for Bush as for Kerry. We now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Is Bush suggesting that despite this knowledge, he would still have concluded that Iraq constituted a "grave and gathering threat" that required an immediate, preventive war? Please. Even if Bush had come to this strange conclusion, no one would have listened to him. Without the threat of those weapons, there would have been no case to make to the American people or the world community. There were good reasons to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, but it was the threat of those weapons that created the international, legal, strategic and urgent rationale for a war. There were good reasons why intelligence agencies all over the world?including those of Arab governments?believed that Saddam had these weapons. But he didn't.

 

The more intelligent question is, given what we knew at the time, was toppling Saddam's regime a worthwhile objective? Bush's answer is yes, Howard Dean's is no. Kerry's answer is that it was a worthwhile objective but was disastrously executed. For this "nuance" Kerry has been attacked from both the right and the left. But it happens to be the most defensible position on the subject.

 

By the late 1990s, American policy on Iraq was becoming untenable. The U.N. sanctions had turned into a farce. Saddam was able to siphon off billions for himself, while the sanctions threw tens of thousands of ordinary Iraqis into poverty every year. Their misery was broadcast daily across the Arab world, inflaming public opinion. America and Britain were bombing Iraqi military installations weekly and maintaining a large garrison in Saudi Arabia, which was also breeding trouble. Osama bin Laden's biggest charges against the United States were that it was occupying Saudi Arabia and starving the Iraqi people.

 

Given these realities, the United States had a choice. It could either drop all sanctions and the containment of Iraq and welcome Saddam back into the world community. Or it had to hold him to account. Given what we knew about Saddam's past (his repeated attacks on his neighbors, the gassing of the Kurds, the search for nuclear weapons) and given what we thought we knew at the time (that his search for WMD was active), conciliation looked like wishful thinking. It still does. Once out of his box, Saddam would almost certainly have jump-started his programs and ambitions.

 

Bush's position is that if Kerry agrees with him that Saddam was a problem, then Kerry agrees with his Iraq policy. Doing something about Iraq meant doing what Bush did. But is that true? Did the United States have to go to war before the weapons inspectors had finished their job? Did it have to junk the United Nations' process? Did it have to invade with insufficient troops to provide order and stability in Iraq? Did it have to occupy a foreign country with no cover of legitimacy from the world community? Did it have to ignore completely the State Department's postwar planning? Did it have to pack the Governing Council with unpopular exiles, disband the Army and engage in radical de-Baathification? Did it have to spend a fraction of the money allocated for Iraqi reconstruction?and have that be mired in charges of corruption and favoritism? Was all this an inevitable consequence of dealing with the problem of Saddam?

 

Perhaps Iraq would have been a disaster no matter what. But there's a thinly veiled racism behind such views, implying that Iraqis are savages genetically disposed to produce chaos and anarchy. In fact, other nation-building efforts over the past decade have gone reasonably well, when well planned and executed.

 

"Strategy is execution," Louis Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, American Express and RJR Nabisco, has often remarked. In fact, it's widely understood in the business world that having a good objective means nothing if you implement it badly. "Unless you translate big thoughts into concrete steps for action, they're pointless," writes Admin Bossidy, former CEO of Honeywell.

 

Bossidy has written a book titled "Execution," which is worth reading in this context. Almost every requirement he lays out was ignored by the Bush administration in its occupation of Iraq. One important example: "You cannot have an execution culture without robust dialogue?one that brings reality to the surface through openness, candor, and informality," Bossidy writes. "Robust dialogue starts when people go in with open minds. You cannot set realistic goals until you've debated the assumptions behind them."

 

Say this in the business world and it is considered wisdom. But say it as a politician and it is derided as "nuance" or "sophistication." Perhaps that's why Washington works as poorly as it does.

This is completely off topic, but there was a Newsweek article I wanted to find and seeing this reminded me about it. Thanks F_M.

Nice article as usual F_M

What's astounding is that these guys from Project For A New American Century (Cheney, Rummy, Wolfie, Perle, etc) all had been pushing for war in Iraq for years, yet when they finally get their wish, the war plans still have all these holes in it. I'm not so naive to think something like war is supposed to go perfectly according to the book, but after the initial "shock & awe" stuff was over with, there's been a glaring lack of planning. Heck even Bill Kristol who helped found the group said there were nowhere near the number of troops needed.

This article doesnt prove at all why 'kerry is right on iraq'. The writer makes assumptions based on kerry's statements but does nothing to actually discuss kerry's opinions or the like. Not only that the 'racism' issue sounds like more leftist nonsense to me. Furthermore, i dont think people on either camp have thought of the fact yet that democracy can not be forced on a people. its the simple issue of prescriptive rights. Has nothing to do wiht racism or not liking muslims the fact is, perhaps because of religion, many iraqi's dont want democracy or do not feel democracy is something good.

This article doesnt prove at all why 'kerry is right on iraq'. The writer makes assumptions based on kerry's statements but does nothing to actually discuss kerry's opinions or the like. Not only that the 'racism' issue sounds like more leftist nonsense to me. Furthermore, i dont think people on either camp have thought of the fact yet that democracy can not be forced on a people. its the simple issue of prescriptive rights. Has nothing to do wiht racism or not liking muslims the fact is, perhaps because of religion, many iraqi's dont want democracy or do not feel democracy is something good.

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Kerry is so concerned with maintaining a populist message that he enjoys no discernable seperation from Bush on the most crucial issue of the election, Iraq.

This article doesnt prove at all why 'kerry is right on iraq'. The writer makes assumptions based on kerry's statements but does nothing to actually discuss kerry's opinions or the like. Not only that the 'racism' issue sounds like more leftist nonsense to me. Furthermore, i dont think people on either camp have thought of the fact yet that democracy can not be forced on a people. its the simple issue of prescriptive rights. Has nothing to do wiht racism or not liking muslims the fact is, perhaps because of religion, many iraqi's dont want democracy or do not feel democracy is something good.

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Kerry is so concerned with maintaining a populist message that he enjoys no discernable seperation from Bush on the most crucial issue of the election, Iraq.

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The media has put iraq in the forefront, but the truth is that the war on terrorism (lets not debate if iraq is including in this or not) and the issue of antional security in general is much more important than anything happenign in iraq. We also are negating economic issues for the most part. I'm not voting for kerry not b/c of national security, not because of anything he did or did not do in vietnam, but because i dont agree with his liberal domestic policy, i dont critsize him for this thats the platform a democrat should take. And b/c bush has increased govt and led to deficit spending DOES NOT mean that a liberal democrat is the answer. Bush who has a fiscally conservative ideology can do much more to fix these problems if he sticks to his original guns that were disrupted by 9/11 and iraq.

Not only that the 'racism' issue sounds like more leftist nonsense to me. Furthermore, i dont think people on either camp have thought of the fact yet that democracy can not be forced on a people. its the simple issue of prescriptive rights. Has nothing to do wiht racism or not liking muslims the fact is, perhaps because of religion, many iraqi's dont want democracy or do not feel democracy is something good.

 

 

Fareed Zakaria is not some leftist nut. He is a moderate writer for Newsweek who is pretty well respected. Plus he basically comes out and says even without WMDs, invading was the right thing to do.

 

Plus would you have disagreed with the failure of democracy argument when the right was touting it around as one of the many so called pillars for invasion? In fact reading some of what the staunch Bush supporters on this board write, it seems like they still do believe it.

 

Sounds to me like an excuse for screwing up in the postwar rebuilding is being leaked out and Zakaria has caught it. They probably want it both ways. If it works, we brought democracy, if it doesnt, they its the savages' fault. No way the right might actualy be...gasp...wrong.

In addition, this article was pretty much about a specific attack Bush has been lobbing out. The silly flipflopper argument. The writer simply argues its a bad argument since its ok for Kerry to want invasion while being ok for him to critize Bush for his postwar job and still not be a flipflopper.