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Peter
Galbraith reviews L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer’s book, My Year in Iraq and The Assassin’s
Gate by George Packer at NY Review of Books From his
introduction: "In his State
of the Union address, President Bush told his Iraq critics, 'Hindsight is not
wisdom and second-guessing is not a strategy.' His comments are understandable.
Much of the Iraq fiasco can be directly attributed to Bush's shortcomings as a
leader. Having decided to invade Iraq, he failed to make sure there was
adequate planning for the postwar period. He never settled bitter policy
disputes among his principal aides over how postwar Iraq would be governed; and
he allowed competing elements of his administration to pursue diametrically
opposed policies at nearly the same time. He used jobs in the Coalition
Provisional Authority to reward political loyalists who lacked professional
competence, regional expertise, language skills, and, in some cases, common
sense. Most serious of all, he conducted his Iraq policy with an arrogance not
matched by political will or military power." These shortcomings
have led directly to the current dilemmas of the US both in Iraq and with Iran.
Unless the President and his team—abetted by some oversight from Congress— are
capable of examining the causes of failure in Iraq, it is hard to believe he will
be able to manage the far more serious problem with Iran. Two books, George
Packer's The Assassins' Gate and L. Paul Bremer's My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of
Hope, written with Malcolm McConnell, are essential for those who
want to understand what went wrong. Packer's book is written with great clarity
and draws on his experience as one of The
New Yorker's more perceptive reporters. He is clearly a thorough and
careful notetaker. As a result, the people he writes about—Washington neoconservatives,
CPA bureaucrats, and ordinary Iraqis whose lives were turned upside down by
decisions made elsewhere—speak to the reader in their own voices. In analyzing
the war, Packer begins with the ideologies that shaped its architects' thinking
and then brilliantly describes the unrealistic assumptions and bureaucratic
maneuvering that resulted in the US taking over Iraq with no plan for its
postwar administration. Bremer, as his title suggests, does not believe that
the occupation was a complete disaster. He provides a briskly written account
of an eventful year, assigning most of the blame to others, notably Donald
Rumsfeld, General Ricardo Sanchez, and the members of the Iraqi Governing
Council whom he appointed. The value of his book lies in his often inadvertent
revelations of failure. |
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