After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.
To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.
The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.
I'm getting to this one a bit late, so most of what needs to be said here has already been said by others. Here are a few responses that need your attention:
Billmon is right - the only thing new about this story is the fact that it is finally running in the mainstream media. Josh Marshall, Washington Monthly, and Laura Rozen all reported about this extensively on their blogs more than three years ago.
Chandrasekaran's article is taken from his new book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, which is definitely a great title as well as a great gag ("This doesn't look like Kansas, Toto!") I wish I'd thought of it. The book appears to be part of a trend on the part of the Washington Post and its reporters to tell the paper's readers all the things they badly needed to know three years ago about the conduct of the Iraq War.
TPM reader DK follows up on that with this thought:
(A)ny reasonable person's reaction to the Post story will be a variation on, "Duh!" Bush placed a premium on political fealty rather than competence and effectiveness? Who is surprised by that? No one. So you read the piece for the anecdotes, like the fact that the Pentagon official responsible for screening political appointees is Jim O'Beirne, husband of conservative commentator Kate O'Beirne.
Isn't it usually the other way around? Reporters, and their readers, look for the facts in order to construct a larger picture. Ideally the facts are pieced together into a mosaic in which discrete bits of information that may otherwise be meaningless standing alone now contribute to a greater level of understanding.Not so with many Bush era stories. The President's modus operandi is so well established, but the cloak of secrecy so tightly closed, that the broad outlines of a story may be known months or years before the particular facts are uncovered to flesh out the details. The closest thing I can compare it to is reading the next day's sports story after watching the game. You read not to learn who won, but for colorful anecdotes, and at some level to confirm what you have already seen and know to be true.
And Kevin Drum makes this excellent point - where are the books by administration supporters, or better yet by those who helped plan this war, defending their policies and decisions? Blind Into Baghadad, Fiasco, Cobra II, The Assassins' Gate, and numerous other books are all thoughtful, well-researched, and highly detailed accounts of the disaster that is Iraq. Where are the responses from those who planned this effort? Or are they simply going to abdicate and offer up no defense?
Last but not least, Digby, whose quote will stand on its own:
The Republicans are telling us that they should be re-elected because the Democrats aren't serious about national security and only they can be trusted to keep the terrorists from killing us in our beds.
But the way the administration went about creating the CPA illustrates everything you need to know about the childlike sciolism of these so-called grown-ups. They insisted on invading a well contained country of 25 million people, ripped its society to shreds, and then put a bunch of low level cronies and inexperienced schoolkids in charge of creating a Club for Growth wet dream in the desert. And they spent billions and billions of dollars failing to do anything but lay the groundwork for civil war. I don't know if it's possible to screw up on a grander scale than that.Here's the question for the American people. Let's, for the sake of argument, say that you don't like Democrats. You have the vague feeling in the pit of your stomach that they just don't have the cojones to do "what needs to be done." You can't get over the feeling that they aren't serious enough.
But if you are a thoughtful person of any political persuasion who is concerned about national security or the economy, you simply cannot read that story above and have even the slightest faith that such people can be trusted to continue to run the government with no oversight.
The question is not whether the Democrats have a better plan to correct these grievous errors or whether they are hard enough to deal with hard issues. The question is how anyone could think Democrats could possibly be worse than an administration that ordered the US government to eschew all expertise and give billions of taxpayer dollars to inexperienced Republican functionaries to rebuild a foreign country from the ground up? Considering the stakes in all this, I don't see how anyone can think it's a good idea to let these people continue unchecked. They screw up everything they touch and they never, ever, learn from their mistakes.
I find it very hard to believe that anyone who isn't a purely faith-based voter can read this story in the Washington Post and come away believing that the Republicans are capable of running any government, much less the government of the most powerful country in the world. They are like children playing Risk and Monopoly.
UPDATE: Great headline from TPMMuckraker:
Pentagon Iraq Office Checked for Fealty, Not Faculty
UPDATE II: Matthew Yglesias on the difference between the incompetence that was Katrina and the incompetence that was Iraq:
I think Katrina is a useful example to bring up in this regard. What I would say about it is that, clearly, the Bush administration badly mishandled that situation and, as a result, things became much worse than they might have been. On the other hand, though, it's not Bush's fault that a hurricane hit New Orleans.
From there Matt heads on into deep political science waters, examining in detail just why the odds of a successful Iraqi adventure were so long from the start. Definitely worth a thoughtful read.
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