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.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18771
